Notepad is almost featureless and has not changed in a decade or so. It has no code highlighting, no handling of different line endings, no support for different encodings, no tab handling, no plugin framework, no multi-file mode, and in fact its only feature is a search feature without regular expressions. Yeah funny that, it's almost as if notepad was just meant to be a light weight text editor to be used for not much more than jotting down notes. If only they hadn't chosen such a misleading name to make us think that it would be on par with vim and emacs!
I'll never say good riddance, because the loss of another chain just helps the oligopoly consolidate their power. For those that live in a big city, you still I'm sure have many options. And there always is shopping online. But step into a small town and see how the choices are at most Walmart, Best Buy, and Circuit City and you can see how desperate the situation is starting to become. CompUSA was not a great chain sure, but was it that much worse than those stores?
I was getting kind of tired of pirating my Mathematica software. That's not the reason why open source mathematics software needs to be better developed (your comment is also sadly echoed in the article which didn't get the point). It has nothing to do with the price tag (free as in beer is not why foss is important in math and science), it has to do with reproducibility. The whole point of science and math is that a result can't be accepted if it can't be reproduced. And anything that uses closed source algorithms as part of the process is not transparent, and thus not necessarily reproducible. From personal experience I can tell you that numerical computations depend strongly on the algorithm that you choose, and it's just as important as the rest of the problem.
I lecture on MBA programs, teach (mainly my own kids) and also do training in industry, including very senior Execs.
The general standard of 'teachers' that I observe around me is appalling. Well this is an extremely limited experience to base your perspective on. You are teaching a soft discipline where you can easily translate experience in the work force into a course you can teach. That would not carry over at all in the more academic disciplines that dominate university studies. You would not survive teaching philosophy, genetics, chemistry, calculus, literature etc etc I would not consider you necessarily to be a qualified teacher. And fyi a good teacher is one that strives to teach better. A bad teacher is one that boasts about how great a teacher he is. If you are a great teacher, you don't need to say it, your students will.
Given the littered battlefield of failed MMO's why do people keep dipping into this pool. I know WoW makes a ton of jack but has anyone else really made another winner like that recently? Isn't it possible that all the MMO geeks are full up and that the rest of the world isn't waiting for another MMO to jump into because the MMO experience doesn't appeal to them. Frankly they can keep tweaking the formula until Hades freezes over but the problem in MMO's is the first (M) because I don't want to play with the masses. There's no nice way to say this-- you're completely wrong. MMOs are highly popular. You act like WoW is the only popular one, and the rest are failures. Sorry, no there are many successful MMOs and the genre is probably the most popular in PC gaming. Is it "possible that all the MMO geeks are full up"? Nope. If you "don't want to play with the masses" then you are not the typical gamer, and your attitude towards MMOs does not reflect the gaming community.
You can complain about lack of innovation as you did, but people whine about that in every genre of pc and console gaming, it's not a novel complaint that can only be leveled at mmos.
Compare this to a $400+ X-box 360 (if you have the audacity to expect a decent hard drive), as well the requisite HDTV (that was a severe clincher), throw in controllers and a Live subscription, and you're looking in the ballpark of $1000. PC's being looked at as elitist money-machines has long since been a bit of market fraud eaten up by people afraid to build their own system. (a) the xbox 360 works on a standard tv as well as an hdtv. So you can't add on the cost of a tv, sorry.
(b) the xbox 360 costs $350 for the premium, $280 for the standard.
(c) it includes a controller.
(d) you only need to buy live if you're using it for multiplayer. There are plenty of people like me that only care about single player games.
So what you are really saying is that you can build a modest pc that under performs compared to the xbox 360 for twice as much. Haha that's funny!
Here let's try something more honest. The average joe
(a) does not need to buy a gaming pc, nor build one
(b) does not need to buy an hdtv
What the actual comparison is
(a) buy a good video card or
(b) buy a console
Guess what? Both choices cost about the same. Long term spending--
(a) Get a midrange card and update every six months to a year if you go with pc gaming.
(b) Pay more for new games on a console.
(c) Pay less for games on a console by renting from video stores.
fan outrage brought the original versions back for Star Wars Except it's not anamorphic so it doesn't count. The release of the original versions was done so poorly that it was more like a deliberate slap in the face instead of it giving the fans what they want.
Just don't go. Problem solved. Let the rest of us enjoy it. The end, everyone wins. Criticizing a movie is not the same as preventing people from watching it. What, do you think your fellow/. posters are going to egg you as you go in the theater? Valid criticism does sting, but it shouldn't bother you since are not involved in the production of the movie.
I agree that condensed matter doesn't get the PR that it deserves, which is the fault of condensed matter physicists. String Theory has so much press because people like Brian Greene and Kaku generated it. If you had people going out telling people how cool materials science can be, you could get the media's attention. But don't complain about funding, materials science gets much better funding than any other area of physics. Complaining about funding is wrong headed to the point where I would question if you work in a decent department to realize what the funding situation really is.
You should be happy to know that yesterday I talked (in the physics class that I teach) about superconductivity and high temperature superconductivity. So even if you condensed matter types can't be bothered to excite people about your research, we pi in the sky theory types will do some of it for you.
I thought that he was finally getting back into form toward the end, especially the second half of #11. I'm sorry to see him go. I agree, I thought it his last installment was almost at the level of #4 and 5 (my favorites) and a big step up from the last several. Everything was starting to unravel, and everything was falling into place for the Last Battle. I had a strong feeling that the final volume was going to be worth the wait, and then looking back at the series as a whole (instead of judging by sum of parts) it will be judged much better by people than it is now. Well I guess we'll never know.
It's so true. He should have done what R.A. Salvatore has done. Rather than taking his trilogy and making it 12 books long, he just wrote another trilogy using the same characters and then another. Then he wrote a prequel trilogy and so on ad infinitum. The end result is a story-line that is nearly as long as WoT, but is manageable because you take it in chunks. Each series of books is fairly self-contained, and tells a story in itself while still leaving enough loose ends on which to base another series of books.
Actually, now, as I am writing, I am reminded of the best at this, Terry Pratchett. You don't even have to read the books in order. He really is a genius at making every book completely self-contained, yet having them still sit in a larger story line. In many of his trilogies I have actually read the second or third before the first, and it made complete sense. But that's just the style that *you* like. Jordan was writing an epic, there is a difference you know. Writers shouldn't conform to simply the most digestible, easiest format for readers. Else we would only have short stories anyway! lol For what Salvatore and Pratchett wanted to do, the standalone novel works, but for what Jordan, Martin, Elliott and others are trying to write (high fantasy epics) standalone novels will not work, even trilogies won't really work. They want to fully embrace complexity to show the unfolding of events that effect an entire world, you can only do that with a tapestry of characters and plotlines. If you don't like that kind of story, then just don't read it. Don't demand that the authors conform to your taste.
I absolutely loved the series until the last chapters of book three. But the first part of the series was just warmed over LOTR. Especially the first book, it was just a carbon copy. Anyone who thinks that the very beginning of the series was the best part must be a Terry Brooks fan, because seriously jesus.
For me, books 4 and 5 are the highlight of the series. Jordan finally finds his own voice and really establishes what the series is about, and breaks free from the cliche. And then book 6 and on RJ just got bogged down in minor characters and plotlines.
For math books I personally was inspired by and really enjoyed the Mathematical Recreations books by Martin Gardner and Ian Stewart. They really made math fun.
To explore the creative fun aspect of science, I think reading and writing is not the key for children. What I really liked was those 1000 in 1 electronic kits. When you can make a radio and hear yourself on the radio, it's really cool!
So those are the things that I enjoyed when I was a kid.
I have to agree that Mandriva's team responds to bug reports too slowly, and do not do enough to fix them. I think that is simply due to lack of man power. But they are making better and better distros since they came into being (I mean Mandriva, not Mandrake). Perhaps if they pick up popularity, they will also make more money and then they can hire enough man power to do it right. Right now though they are far away from being there. I hope to see them improve to get to see better times though.
If you really want to talk pedagogy, presentations are usually the worst way to teach students to think critically and absorb the information, while hands-on work which pulls in individual traits and interests is the best way.
I personally think that there is something to be gained from both styles of teaching, which is why I do both. On one level they need to simply see the information, and see several worked examples, on another they need to actually solve problems to get a feel for the mathematical framework. I teach an 80 minute class on General Physics. So what I do is use the first fifty minutes for lecture, with class participation (I use the socratic method, and occassionally have a student solve a problem on the board with the help of their fellow students); and then the last thirty minutes I have the students work on a challenging problem in groups, and I walk around and assist them.
So, what is the problem with a blackboard? Be precise.
For me (I am a Physics Instructor) the problem with the board is that my handwriting is awful! Not only that but having a powerpoint keeps me on track/schedule for what I had planned for the lecture. And writing the powerpoint usually forces me to evaluate the material in a much more detailed way than I would have if I had just written notes down in my notebook.
Is the technology going to allow you to better explain some difficult concepts or will the focus end up being on the technology?
The technology is just a tool, the students are not distracted by my powerpoints because I'm not filling them with flashy videos. Good use of animations is to point by point single out sections of graphs and display equations that match each other. It can be naturally more effective to draw the attention of students to the right place, and works better than what can be done on the board. However, I still use the board (that is I use both) despite my handwriting because both techniques compliment each other well.
This actually seems pretty clear cut. If Novell package gplv3 software, and MS distributes it, then MS is bound by gplv3. However, as long as Novell only packages gplv2 software, no problem. And I don't see why there would be a problem anyway-- MS is not trying to tivo linux with those vouchers. And you can't simply say that if they distribute gplv3 software, it automatically makes all of their own software gplv3, it doesn't. So who cares?? Really who cares? Do you really think that MS was planning on using those silly vouchers to try to do something mischievous with linux? It was simply a business deal to make money for both companies, that's all.
I can whore for kharma too--
Vista drools, linux rules!
The RIAA and MPAA are evil!
I for one welcome our [insert here] overlords!
Good grief people you're as predictable as the farkers were with Will Wheaton.
Tell me again why unskilled labor should be payed at the same rate as a highly trained, skilled worker? They shouldn't be paid at the same rate. But they should be paid at a living wage. You don't seem to understand that the wages that people make at places like Walmart is typically below the cost of living!
How are these people supposed to take your advise and go to night school when they can't afford insurance for them and their family? I'm starting to get sick and tired of uninsightful, narrowminded bullshit being modded +5 on slashdot. You guys are about as bad as digg, you know that?
Word of advise: if you can't even imagine walking in someone else's shoes, then just don't embarrass yourself. Even if your handle is not traced back to you, you know that what you wrote reflects poorly on you.
We now accept crap MP3 audio as "acceptable", stuttering vocoders and dropped calls as "tolerable", and reduced/compressed bandwidth as "louder (hence better)". Bad slashdotters! You just modded up a common misconception as insightful.
Mp3 compression is not the same compression as dynamic compression. We're talking about dynamic range, which is the intensity or volume of the loudest passage compared to the quietest. Our music has gone downhill in terms of sound quality because they brought the quietest passage up really close to the loudest passage-- so that a quiet passage is nearly as loud as the loudest passage.
Mp3 compresses the file size based on psychoacoustics, it does *not* squash the dynamic range. It also doesn't squash the bandwidth either, it's sampled at the same 44.1 kHz that cds are. I can't believe three different types of compressions were all equated in one sentence!
Don't blame mp3s. The industry has moved to compressing dynamic range because of the prevalence of people listening to music on the go these days. People listen in commutes, exercise, etc etc i.e. loud places. We don't usually sit down in a quiet room anymore. It's hard to listen to music driving down the freeway if it has a large dynamic range.
I'm thinking we should give parents the tools to moderate what their kids see, rather than having a big ol' Nanny State which knows best telling parents what their kids should watch. Have you even thought about what that would actually entail? If you didn't have rating systems that you could set your tv to filter by, you would have to manually look over thousands of shows each week to decide what shows your children are allowed to watch, and what they are not. Does that sound reasonable?
Ratings are not 1984 fascism, they are a simply a tool for parents to use to make an overwhelming problem just a little bit easier.
If all these parents didn't just park Little Johnny in front of the TV or leave him to surf the Net unattended for long stretches of time, then there would be less of a problem. Okay so let me get this straight-- if a parent can't constantly baby sit their children then they must be bad. Including the majority of those parents that have to both work to support the family financially and save up to put their children through college. Well thanks for getting that straight, if it weren't for you I would not have known that those parents are villains!
And here's another thing to remember, kids have about as much trouble finding porn as they do finding booze; which is to say they don't have much trouble at all. It would be better to expect kids are going to see nasty things, and to give them some bearings early on so that they are prepared. Wow really you think? I never heard that before, truly you have cut through the Gordian knot here. Please oversimplify other matters for me, I love the fresh naivety of youth!
Consider that right now it is very difficult to find DVD players that support even Divx and MPEG-2 playback in HD. That's funny because the $40 magnavox player at walmart that I bought last week has divx and mpeg-2 support. Gee whiz that was difficult.
One thing that needs to be considered is distance.
(a) the cosmic speed limit: radio waves will move at the speed of light.
(b) spherical waves lose intensity by the inverse square of the distance from the source.
The blogger laughed off the rare Earth problem, and he shouldn't have. As long as it's sufficiently difficult to setup the right conditions to have life, it will be likely that other intelligent life is too far away to broadcast signals powerful enough for us to receive.
There is a rating of technology levels of civilizations based on how much power they could harness. It's called the Kardashev scale. You would have to be able to harness the power of an entire sun or an entire galaxy etc for the different types. The further out you look the more advanced on that scale a civilization would have to be for you to receive a signal from them. I don't think that technology advancement is always increasing. It will either plateau or collapse. Extinction or population control are more likely than galactic colonization.
But what if there are civilizations out there like that? What are the bright objects that we can see at high redshift? Quasars and grbs, how hardcore does a civilization have to be to harness that much power? And why would they use it to send a postcard? It's not as if our governments are spending a large portion of their budgets on SETI, so why should we assume that other civilizations will be any different?
Most office workers use more apps than e-mail and websurfing, and if 100% compatibility with Excel macros is required, you're going to run Microsoft Excel, no matter what. The same principle can be applied to most other apps in an office. And that's why I use Excel, and prefer it to OO. People say "that's not Linux's fault!" But it is. MS is not responsible for creating oss clones of their software. They are not to blame if someone tries but only manages partial compatibility.
And I use Powerpoint over Impress because it's actually a much better program. It's more powerful, more sophisticated, while at the same time having an easier to use UI.
And OO Writer makes formatting such a chore! The formatting on most word processors is more intelligent and you don't have to fight it.
People need compatibility, but that's not the only issue, OO is not equal in quality to MS.
For those that didn't RTFA, the summary was wrong, nowhere in TFA does it say that the mysterious *they* are considering charging anyone. TFA reported that the sheriff reported that legal action was possible, an important distinction.
Also if you RTFA you would realize that (a) the ATM was tampered with, and (b) after it had been unplugged someone came in, in the middle of the night and plugged it back in, does that sound like the actions of an innocent man? These rants about the evil, corporate banks are off topic because nowhere in TFA did it say that the bank that owns that ATM were planning on grinding the ATM users face into the dirt.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll never say good riddance, because the loss of another chain just helps the oligopoly consolidate their power. For those that live in a big city, you still I'm sure have many options. And there always is shopping online. But step into a small town and see how the choices are at most Walmart, Best Buy, and Circuit City and you can see how desperate the situation is starting to become. CompUSA was not a great chain sure, but was it that much worse than those stores?
(b) the xbox 360 costs $350 for the premium, $280 for the standard.
(c) it includes a controller.
(d) you only need to buy live if you're using it for multiplayer. There are plenty of people like me that only care about single player games.
So what you are really saying is that you can build a modest pc that under performs compared to the xbox 360 for twice as much. Haha that's funny!
Here let's try something more honest. The average joe
(a) does not need to buy a gaming pc, nor build one
(b) does not need to buy an hdtv
What the actual comparison is
(a) buy a good video card or
(b) buy a console
Guess what? Both choices cost about the same. Long term spending--
(a) Get a midrange card and update every six months to a year if you go with pc gaming.
(b) Pay more for new games on a console.
(c) Pay less for games on a console by renting from video stores.
Just don't go. Problem solved. Let the rest of us enjoy it. The end, everyone wins. Criticizing a movie is not the same as preventing people from watching it. What, do you think your fellow
I agree that condensed matter doesn't get the PR that it deserves, which is the fault of condensed matter physicists. String Theory has so much press because people like Brian Greene and Kaku generated it. If you had people going out telling people how cool materials science can be, you could get the media's attention. But don't complain about funding, materials science gets much better funding than any other area of physics. Complaining about funding is wrong headed to the point where I would question if you work in a decent department to realize what the funding situation really is.
You should be happy to know that yesterday I talked (in the physics class that I teach) about superconductivity and high temperature superconductivity. So even if you condensed matter types can't be bothered to excite people about your research, we pi in the sky theory types will do some of it for you.
The color scheme depends on the version you use. So if you hate the baby blue pastel theme, just wait until try the awful orange one! lol
Okay, seriously, can't wait to try out this release, Mandriva keeps getting better.
For me, books 4 and 5 are the highlight of the series. Jordan finally finds his own voice and really establishes what the series is about, and breaks free from the cliche. And then book 6 and on RJ just got bogged down in minor characters and plotlines.
For math books I personally was inspired by and really enjoyed the Mathematical Recreations books by Martin Gardner and Ian Stewart. They really made math fun. To explore the creative fun aspect of science, I think reading and writing is not the key for children. What I really liked was those 1000 in 1 electronic kits. When you can make a radio and hear yourself on the radio, it's really cool! So those are the things that I enjoyed when I was a kid.
I have to agree that Mandriva's team responds to bug reports too slowly, and do not do enough to fix them. I think that is simply due to lack of man power. But they are making better and better distros since they came into being (I mean Mandriva, not Mandrake). Perhaps if they pick up popularity, they will also make more money and then they can hire enough man power to do it right. Right now though they are far away from being there. I hope to see them improve to get to see better times though.
I personally think that there is something to be gained from both styles of teaching, which is why I do both. On one level they need to simply see the information, and see several worked examples, on another they need to actually solve problems to get a feel for the mathematical framework. I teach an 80 minute class on General Physics. So what I do is use the first fifty minutes for lecture, with class participation (I use the socratic method, and occassionally have a student solve a problem on the board with the help of their fellow students); and then the last thirty minutes I have the students work on a challenging problem in groups, and I walk around and assist them.
For me (I am a Physics Instructor) the problem with the board is that my handwriting is awful! Not only that but having a powerpoint keeps me on track/schedule for what I had planned for the lecture. And writing the powerpoint usually forces me to evaluate the material in a much more detailed way than I would have if I had just written notes down in my notebook.
Is the technology going to allow you to better explain some difficult concepts or will the focus end up being on the technology?The technology is just a tool, the students are not distracted by my powerpoints because I'm not filling them with flashy videos. Good use of animations is to point by point single out sections of graphs and display equations that match each other. It can be naturally more effective to draw the attention of students to the right place, and works better than what can be done on the board. However, I still use the board (that is I use both) despite my handwriting because both techniques compliment each other well.
This actually seems pretty clear cut. If Novell package gplv3 software, and MS distributes it, then MS is bound by gplv3. However, as long as Novell only packages gplv2 software, no problem. And I don't see why there would be a problem anyway-- MS is not trying to tivo linux with those vouchers. And you can't simply say that if they distribute gplv3 software, it automatically makes all of their own software gplv3, it doesn't. So who cares?? Really who cares? Do you really think that MS was planning on using those silly vouchers to try to do something mischievous with linux? It was simply a business deal to make money for both companies, that's all.
I can whore for kharma too-- Vista drools, linux rules! The RIAA and MPAA are evil! I for one welcome our [insert here] overlords! Good grief people you're as predictable as the farkers were with Will Wheaton.
How are these people supposed to take your advise and go to night school when they can't afford insurance for them and their family? I'm starting to get sick and tired of uninsightful, narrowminded bullshit being modded +5 on slashdot. You guys are about as bad as digg, you know that?
Word of advise: if you can't even imagine walking in someone else's shoes, then just don't embarrass yourself. Even if your handle is not traced back to you, you know that what you wrote reflects poorly on you.
Mp3 compresses the file size based on psychoacoustics, it does *not* squash the dynamic range. It also doesn't squash the bandwidth either, it's sampled at the same 44.1 kHz that cds are. I can't believe three different types of compressions were all equated in one sentence!
Don't blame mp3s. The industry has moved to compressing dynamic range because of the prevalence of people listening to music on the go these days. People listen in commutes, exercise, etc etc i.e. loud places. We don't usually sit down in a quiet room anymore. It's hard to listen to music driving down the freeway if it has a large dynamic range.
One thing that needs to be considered is distance.
(a) the cosmic speed limit: radio waves will move at the speed of light.
(b) spherical waves lose intensity by the inverse square of the distance from the source.
The blogger laughed off the rare Earth problem, and he shouldn't have. As long as it's sufficiently difficult to setup the right conditions to have life, it will be likely that other intelligent life is too far away to broadcast signals powerful enough for us to receive.
There is a rating of technology levels of civilizations based on how much power they could harness. It's called the Kardashev scale. You would have to be able to harness the power of an entire sun or an entire galaxy etc for the different types. The further out you look the more advanced on that scale a civilization would have to be for you to receive a signal from them. I don't think that technology advancement is always increasing. It will either plateau or collapse. Extinction or population control are more likely than galactic colonization.
But what if there are civilizations out there like that? What are the bright objects that we can see at high redshift? Quasars and grbs, how hardcore does a civilization have to be to harness that much power? And why would they use it to send a postcard? It's not as if our governments are spending a large portion of their budgets on SETI, so why should we assume that other civilizations will be any different?
Also if you RTFA you would realize that (a) the ATM was tampered with, and (b) after it had been unplugged someone came in, in the middle of the night and plugged it back in, does that sound like the actions of an innocent man? These rants about the evil, corporate banks are off topic because nowhere in TFA did it say that the bank that owns that ATM were planning on grinding the ATM users face into the dirt.