I didn't say they should make a new laptop in five years, just that the macbook air might be a more feasible product if it waited for 5 more years of product enhancements - by then they'd have a 300-400 GB flash drive, etc. And I know plenty of people who use the WiFi technology to get online with their iPod Touch models, maybe not when they travel around the city like you can with the iPhone but just in general. And like I said, I didn't know of a solution to that.
Ok, fascism is not the word, but the orders given by the IACC to Portlock definitely sounded like the course was intended for something other than academia. Otherwise, they would not have aimed it at college students.
The school engineered the course to teach the industry viewpoint and ensured (via industry observers) that the professor did not deviate from the talking points. when the story initially broke, the school decided that it was an internal matter and didn't merit any outside scrutiny
The professor in question voiced real ethical problems with the course but was basically told to shut up and teach--because he didn't have tenure that was pretty much his only option. The job market for PhD's without tenure isn't exactly robust.
I don't think the professor deserves nearly the same amount of blame as the administrators and the IACC, either. The course sounds like it was designed by a fascist regime than any American company, which is ironic, since the list of IACC members is a who's-who of American conglomerates: Abercrombie & Fitch, AOL Time Warner, and The Walt Disney Company, to name just a few.
Wow, that's funny, because the Woz was kind enough to visit San Jose's biggest Apple Store on iPhone's release date and talk to the people in line. I wish I was there just so I could shake his hand and get a photo.
But hey, I totally get his reasoning. The Macbook Air was a disappointment for me, too. It belongs in Ripley's Believe it or Not moreso than a computer museum, what with such a small hard drive, etc... It was totally premature, imo - if they waited five more years, the MacBook Air might have replaced Apple's current line or laptops altogether. The iPod Touch seems like a bigger jump for Apple, but it barely gained the attention of the press. It uses uses Wi-Fi, and the iPhone uses cellphone networks. if the iPod Touch could be used to make phone calls, couldn't it just replace the iPhone? Other than needing a good signal...
If a library doesn't have what you want, they're usually networked with other libraries around the county or state, allowing you to search for books through their databases. If you find one, you can request it to be sent to your library for pick up, essentially expanding your amount of resources tenfold. It takes a little time, for sure, but it's better than searching library after library looking for the right book. That's all thanks to that whole computer networking thingamajigger people have been raving about. Really nifty, too. Used it myself when I worked at a library.
Libraries are going to continue being the main source of information for people as long as they can maintain their relevance in the digital age. The way libraries can network to provide content is just one way of doing it, but it isn't perfect by any means - it can improve, either through a faster delivery process or digital transfers. The doomsday vault for books sounds good, too. But I seriously don't think Google is able to solve the problem of "I'm looking for that book that talks about the thing you mentioned yesterday." For that, librarians and library scientists are important. They can guide you to what you want better than any search engine could.
Another way to make a library better is to make sure the shelves aren't filled with crap written by authors like Kevin Trudeau or James Frey. As much as I love books and the information in them, it seems like anybody within earshot of an editor or publisher can get him or herself a book deal, for better or worse.
Santa Clara University requires all CS majors to take the introductory course to Embedded Systems as well as the Operating Systems course offered by the Computer Engineering department (I was a CS major and graduated a couple years ago). We also had to take an introductory course into Logic Design from the Electronic Engineering department as well. The philosophy behind this, as explained by my faculty adviser was that Computer Scientists should at least have some background in lower-leveled programming. Computer Engineers, on the other hand, had to take the advanced courses in those fields as well. Most of the programming we did in either the Computer Science or Computer Engineering courses were done using Linux or Minix, too. If we worked on Windows machines we were either using a VLSI program, Dev-cpp or MATLAB. And they also have the Business software covered in the Operation & Management Information Systems degree - you learn all the business software and a little bit of programming, but everything else has to do with business, marketing and accounting. It isn't as advanced as the CS and CE departments, though - one class, for instance, focuses on data input and management in Microsoft Excel (you can imagine how CS/CE ppl react to hearing this).
So I totally agree with you secondstory - look for Embedded programmers with Computer Engineering backgrounds. Never hire someone whose experience is with proprietary software like Visual Basic or Oracle's stuff.
I was a sophomore when Facebook was put onto the series of tubes. At first I was reluctant to sign up, and for the same reason most are inciting right now: loss of privacy. I mulled it over and realized that Facebook was a good tool to keep in touch with people you could not or would not see that often. This can be important, especially in the college environment the site was designed for. You'd have one class with someone you were interested in - either as a friend or something else - and then you'd never see them again. So for those of us who wanted to continue keeping in contact with one another on a semi-regular basis, we could just look each other up on Facebook. The same went for getting in contact with old high-school buddies, too.
But depending on how you use it, it can be a good or bad thing. Anybody who has used Facebook could easily use it to scan different people they like and try to find out more about their personal life (and trust me, many people do it). If a girl or guy you like is "in a relationship", that feels pretty bad. But hey, if they don't even list themselves as "in a relationship" and are seeing somebody, is that worse? It's a real insecure thing to do, but college students are about as insecure as they come.
In all honestly I made a bunch of stupid mistakes on my Facebook profile that got me into some trouble with friends - thankfully, it didn't have any impact on my professional life - but I learned my lesson the hard way. From what I can tell, there's no harm in Facebook as long as you don't post "naughty" stuff like discriminatory remarks and racy photographs. You might as well wear an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt to every job interview and career fair you attend.
Now, though, you have to be wary of anything you put onto your profile because you don't know which program will take information from it. Big business found Facebook and thought to itself "That's a huge demographic", just like they thought when they first discovered the World Wide Web.
...I really need to check these things more often, or at least set my E-mail to tell me when I get a response. That way out of courtesy I can give a response.
Haha, I don't mean disrespect for Pac-Man, but when I was a 3-year-old kid I had a hard time playing it! I've used those same floppy disks, too, when I had to use an Apple II to learn how to use Logo and basic fractions, and I must admit I enjoyed using it:D. If you want to, you can also see a couple samples of COBOL and FORTRAN I've used. Don't mean to disappoint ya', old man, but I respect my history.
As for the whole children thing, I'm not scared of my kids driving around in my car running over hobos. I just don't want my kids to ask me why particular women seem to help the PC recover his health after getting out of bed with them. Things like "sting jobs", "rats", and "whacking" are going to go over their heads so they'll ask me or the missus why they need to kill a guy, too. I'm not saying I'm going to give them the wrong answer or avoid the question like a lazy parent. I'm just saying that if I had kids, they'd be raised to have a curiosity in them and try to learn anything about everything around them, and they'd want to know why all this stuff happens. Some kids just absorb the behavior into them no questions asked. They're the ones currently screaming obscenities on XBox Live.
But yeah, really sorry about the lack of a response.
At the beginning it seemed as that iTunes 7.6 is just as likely to be the culprit as the ISPs, but given that the peoples' speeds returned to normal (I, too, rtfa'd) - without an update patch for iTunes - it would seem like it was an issue on the server side of Apple or Time Warner. Since nobody from other areas in the United States complained about the issue as frequently as those from the Austin, Texas region this is not likely caused by Apple. Odds are it is a Time Warner issue. I never studied servers or networking, so all I can go by is my own experience.
I was 3 when I first played a video game. It was PacMan on an Atari. Never really cared for it, though. Then I got a Nintendo for Christmas of 1990. I was 5.
Seven is a good age, and five is okay as well. But I'd be paying close attention to the games my child plays, and the games he/she plays at their little friends' house. If I find them playing Grand Theft Auto at the next-door neighbor's house at the age of 10, I'm going to have a stern talk with the parent. They can't use the excuse "video games are harmless" because I'd just show them my International Game Developers' Association card - they knew I knew better than them. w0rd. Then I'd show them the master's degree I earned in media studies.
I knew a lot of people who worked at a local Circuit City, and from what they've told me (since they left for greener pastures) Circuit City shot itself in the foot when it took away the commission program from its salespeople. The best salespeople could earn a living wage or more on commission. True, a lot of them seemed like they were pushy, but that's just their job. It's how they put food on the table.
After commission left, experienced salespeople left and the new employees were paid minimum to do the same work. Then they stopped selling kitchen appliances. And then Best Buy came in. But I am not surprised by their business practices over the past five or ten years. They just took their employees for granted and that made the quality service suffer.
Sadly I was too overworked to play too many games this season - what with learning Operating Systems, animating a robot in Maya and working in Washington DC (I'm not bragging, these are just excuses)... the only games I bought and played were.hack//G.U. Vol. 2: Reminisce and Super Mario Galaxy. But dear God, Super Mario Galaxy reminded me why I love video games so much. It was... just... without the graphics of the XBox 360 or PS3 or PCs, all you really need for a good, amazing experience are good controls, level designs, and game mechanics. Polishing the presentation of the game helps, but this is good.
Oh yeah, totally forgot. Most of the games I did buy were for the Virtual Console.
My outlook on the creation of the universe is a bit different than any others and incredibly simplistic.
From what I've seen of the universe, every single celestial body might have life cycles similar to the ordinary star: birth via supernova, maturation, and then collapse. If during a collapse the star is reduced to nebula, couldn't it be possible that the gravitational forces from each atom of the nebula pull one another together to create another supernova and bear forth a star? Maybe the universe works in the same way - expanding then pulling itself back and compressing? If stars do that, then why not galaxies and universes? Maybe sometime in the far flung future the energy that propelled everything away from the "center of the universe" (ie, big bang ground zero) will dissipate; and the only force acting upon the universe's numerous celestial body will be both their corresponding gravitational pulls and the gravitational pull found at the "center of the universe." If there is a pull at the center of the universe, that is. Perhaps its just some huge vacuum void of all matter, and its force is overpowered by the force created by the big bang.
I'm not a theoretical physicist, astrologist, or whatnot. I'm just a/.er who likes the natural patterns he finds in nature and thinks it points to something big; like the universe is telling us something.
Count me in for Super Mario Galaxy. It felt like I was playing Super Mario 64 all over again, but the bite-sized levels felt a lot more like Super Mario Bros. 3 as well. Add to it the return of the Airships, the Fire Flower, the incredible (for the Wii) graphics and stellar orchestration and you've got a game that can last for ages. Oh, and Luigi's Purple Coins will pwn your sorry butt, believe me.
Of all the things that were mentioned in that article, not once did I see anything on the controversy surrounding Jade Raymond and Assassin's Creed. In particular, the comic depicting Jade whoring herself out to geeks just so they would buy the game. It was a disgusting and misogynistic piece that discourages women's involvement in video game development. I can't for the life of me understand how this was ignored.
We need a fourth console in this race as much as we need a hole in the head. Seriously, the best idea is to not release a new console. They would do themselves a favor by a formal press release, too: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to not produce a new console this year." I'll bet that statement alone would improve investors' confidence in the company and they'll have a few yen increase or something.
For searches, yeah, it works. I was actually referring to the applications used. But would a lot of people with dial-up be able to handle applications over the internet?
Bandwidth is simply too much of a variable when considering reliability of data delivery in an application. Never mind all the privacy issues and data theft and such. Ask any exec when dealing with a B2B application where mission-critical data is dependent on an unstable network. I agree with this. I enjoy my decent DSL service, but the thing likes to phase out on me once every month or so. Why should I use an online application when there's risk of getting cut off from the source? If all our applications were web-based, losing internet access would be like losing your utilities - you could do things, sure, but that's a huge loss in productivity. That's why I believe desktop applications will still be relevant and in-demand for the next few decades: If it's on my computer, all I have to do is turn it on and click on the file. If it's on the web, I have to ensure that (1) my computer's on, (2) my connection's good, (3) my ISP has no problems and (4) Google's servers are up and running. If one of those elements are cut, my productivity is shot.
And another perspective on Google's business model: Google would never have come into existence if we were still using 56.6kbps/dial-up to get onto the internet. That's because almost everything they want to provide almost requires you to have broadband. Today that means Google's software might be most successful in other countries where broadband is as common as indoor plumbing (Sweden, Norway, etc.), but here in the United States where broadband is a luxury I find it hard to believe Google's web-based apps are going to be successful any time soon. But this is another argument for another day, I suppose.
I've got mixed feelings. Yeah, having a real-life thing to be your companion sounds nice but if you want that kind of companionship you might want to get a real pet. Then again in areas like South Korea and Japan - where these things would likely flourish - people don't own pets that much. Here's where I can see this going: for a group of nations whose children grew up watching things like Astro Boy, of course they'd have an appreciation of this real world robot/digital world avatar. But we westerners having been raised on I, Robot have a negative outlook on robotics.
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I didn't say they should make a new laptop in five years, just that the macbook air might be a more feasible product if it waited for 5 more years of product enhancements - by then they'd have a 300-400 GB flash drive, etc. And I know plenty of people who use the WiFi technology to get online with their iPod Touch models, maybe not when they travel around the city like you can with the iPhone but just in general. And like I said, I didn't know of a solution to that.
Ok, fascism is not the word, but the orders given by the IACC to Portlock definitely sounded like the course was intended for something other than academia. Otherwise, they would not have aimed it at college students.
The professor in question voiced real ethical problems with the course but was basically told to shut up and teach--because he didn't have tenure that was pretty much his only option. The job market for PhD's without tenure isn't exactly robust.
I don't think the professor deserves nearly the same amount of blame as the administrators and the IACC, either. The course sounds like it was designed by a fascist regime than any American company, which is ironic, since the list of IACC members is a who's-who of American conglomerates: Abercrombie & Fitch, AOL Time Warner, and The Walt Disney Company, to name just a few.
Wow, that's funny, because the Woz was kind enough to visit San Jose's biggest Apple Store on iPhone's release date and talk to the people in line. I wish I was there just so I could shake his hand and get a photo.
But hey, I totally get his reasoning. The Macbook Air was a disappointment for me, too. It belongs in Ripley's Believe it or Not moreso than a computer museum, what with such a small hard drive, etc... It was totally premature, imo - if they waited five more years, the MacBook Air might have replaced Apple's current line or laptops altogether. The iPod Touch seems like a bigger jump for Apple, but it barely gained the attention of the press. It uses uses Wi-Fi, and the iPhone uses cellphone networks. if the iPod Touch could be used to make phone calls, couldn't it just replace the iPhone? Other than needing a good signal...
If a library doesn't have what you want, they're usually networked with other libraries around the county or state, allowing you to search for books through their databases. If you find one, you can request it to be sent to your library for pick up, essentially expanding your amount of resources tenfold. It takes a little time, for sure, but it's better than searching library after library looking for the right book. That's all thanks to that whole computer networking thingamajigger people have been raving about. Really nifty, too. Used it myself when I worked at a library.
Libraries are going to continue being the main source of information for people as long as they can maintain their relevance in the digital age. The way libraries can network to provide content is just one way of doing it, but it isn't perfect by any means - it can improve, either through a faster delivery process or digital transfers. The doomsday vault for books sounds good, too. But I seriously don't think Google is able to solve the problem of "I'm looking for that book that talks about the thing you mentioned yesterday." For that, librarians and library scientists are important. They can guide you to what you want better than any search engine could.
Another way to make a library better is to make sure the shelves aren't filled with crap written by authors like Kevin Trudeau or James Frey. As much as I love books and the information in them, it seems like anybody within earshot of an editor or publisher can get him or herself a book deal, for better or worse.
Santa Clara University requires all CS majors to take the introductory course to Embedded Systems as well as the Operating Systems course offered by the Computer Engineering department (I was a CS major and graduated a couple years ago). We also had to take an introductory course into Logic Design from the Electronic Engineering department as well. The philosophy behind this, as explained by my faculty adviser was that Computer Scientists should at least have some background in lower-leveled programming. Computer Engineers, on the other hand, had to take the advanced courses in those fields as well. Most of the programming we did in either the Computer Science or Computer Engineering courses were done using Linux or Minix, too. If we worked on Windows machines we were either using a VLSI program, Dev-cpp or MATLAB. And they also have the Business software covered in the Operation & Management Information Systems degree - you learn all the business software and a little bit of programming, but everything else has to do with business, marketing and accounting. It isn't as advanced as the CS and CE departments, though - one class, for instance, focuses on data input and management in Microsoft Excel (you can imagine how CS/CE ppl react to hearing this).
So I totally agree with you secondstory - look for Embedded programmers with Computer Engineering backgrounds. Never hire someone whose experience is with proprietary software like Visual Basic or Oracle's stuff.
I was a sophomore when Facebook was put onto the series of tubes. At first I was reluctant to sign up, and for the same reason most are inciting right now: loss of privacy. I mulled it over and realized that Facebook was a good tool to keep in touch with people you could not or would not see that often. This can be important, especially in the college environment the site was designed for. You'd have one class with someone you were interested in - either as a friend or something else - and then you'd never see them again. So for those of us who wanted to continue keeping in contact with one another on a semi-regular basis, we could just look each other up on Facebook. The same went for getting in contact with old high-school buddies, too.
But depending on how you use it, it can be a good or bad thing. Anybody who has used Facebook could easily use it to scan different people they like and try to find out more about their personal life (and trust me, many people do it). If a girl or guy you like is "in a relationship", that feels pretty bad. But hey, if they don't even list themselves as "in a relationship" and are seeing somebody, is that worse? It's a real insecure thing to do, but college students are about as insecure as they come.
In all honestly I made a bunch of stupid mistakes on my Facebook profile that got me into some trouble with friends - thankfully, it didn't have any impact on my professional life - but I learned my lesson the hard way. From what I can tell, there's no harm in Facebook as long as you don't post "naughty" stuff like discriminatory remarks and racy photographs. You might as well wear an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt to every job interview and career fair you attend.
Now, though, you have to be wary of anything you put onto your profile because you don't know which program will take information from it. Big business found Facebook and thought to itself "That's a huge demographic", just like they thought when they first discovered the World Wide Web.
Well, I had a fair idea about how a gyroscope worked, but not an accelerometer; that's a startling contrast between the two technologies.
Okay, then for clarification - what would be the difference between an accelerometer and a gyroscope?
IIRC, the wiimote's Nunchuck/Nunchaku attachment attachment is what contains the gyros.
...I really need to check these things more often, or at least set my E-mail to tell me when I get a response. That way out of courtesy I can give a response.
:D. If you want to, you can also see a couple samples of COBOL and FORTRAN I've used. Don't mean to disappoint ya', old man, but I respect my history.
Haha, I don't mean disrespect for Pac-Man, but when I was a 3-year-old kid I had a hard time playing it! I've used those same floppy disks, too, when I had to use an Apple II to learn how to use Logo and basic fractions, and I must admit I enjoyed using it
As for the whole children thing, I'm not scared of my kids driving around in my car running over hobos. I just don't want my kids to ask me why particular women seem to help the PC recover his health after getting out of bed with them. Things like "sting jobs", "rats", and "whacking" are going to go over their heads so they'll ask me or the missus why they need to kill a guy, too. I'm not saying I'm going to give them the wrong answer or avoid the question like a lazy parent. I'm just saying that if I had kids, they'd be raised to have a curiosity in them and try to learn anything about everything around them, and they'd want to know why all this stuff happens. Some kids just absorb the behavior into them no questions asked. They're the ones currently screaming obscenities on XBox Live.
But yeah, really sorry about the lack of a response.
At the beginning it seemed as that iTunes 7.6 is just as likely to be the culprit as the ISPs, but given that the peoples' speeds returned to normal (I, too, rtfa'd) - without an update patch for iTunes - it would seem like it was an issue on the server side of Apple or Time Warner. Since nobody from other areas in the United States complained about the issue as frequently as those from the Austin, Texas region this is not likely caused by Apple. Odds are it is a Time Warner issue. I never studied servers or networking, so all I can go by is my own experience.
I was 3 when I first played a video game. It was PacMan on an Atari. Never really cared for it, though. Then I got a Nintendo for Christmas of 1990. I was 5.
Seven is a good age, and five is okay as well. But I'd be paying close attention to the games my child plays, and the games he/she plays at their little friends' house. If I find them playing Grand Theft Auto at the next-door neighbor's house at the age of 10, I'm going to have a stern talk with the parent. They can't use the excuse "video games are harmless" because I'd just show them my International Game Developers' Association card - they knew I knew better than them. w0rd. Then I'd show them the master's degree I earned in media studies.
Dear God, I would like to file a bug report.
I knew a lot of people who worked at a local Circuit City, and from what they've told me (since they left for greener pastures) Circuit City shot itself in the foot when it took away the commission program from its salespeople. The best salespeople could earn a living wage or more on commission. True, a lot of them seemed like they were pushy, but that's just their job. It's how they put food on the table.
After commission left, experienced salespeople left and the new employees were paid minimum to do the same work. Then they stopped selling kitchen appliances. And then Best Buy came in. But I am not surprised by their business practices over the past five or ten years. They just took their employees for granted and that made the quality service suffer.
Sadly I was too overworked to play too many games this season - what with learning Operating Systems, animating a robot in Maya and working in Washington DC (I'm not bragging, these are just excuses)... the only games I bought and played were .hack//G.U. Vol. 2: Reminisce and Super Mario Galaxy. But dear God, Super Mario Galaxy reminded me why I love video games so much. It was... just... without the graphics of the XBox 360 or PS3 or PCs, all you really need for a good, amazing experience are good controls, level designs, and game mechanics. Polishing the presentation of the game helps, but this is good.
Oh yeah, totally forgot. Most of the games I did buy were for the Virtual Console.
My outlook on the creation of the universe is a bit different than any others and incredibly simplistic.
/.er who likes the natural patterns he finds in nature and thinks it points to something big; like the universe is telling us something.
From what I've seen of the universe, every single celestial body might have life cycles similar to the ordinary star: birth via supernova, maturation, and then collapse. If during a collapse the star is reduced to nebula, couldn't it be possible that the gravitational forces from each atom of the nebula pull one another together to create another supernova and bear forth a star? Maybe the universe works in the same way - expanding then pulling itself back and compressing? If stars do that, then why not galaxies and universes? Maybe sometime in the far flung future the energy that propelled everything away from the "center of the universe" (ie, big bang ground zero) will dissipate; and the only force acting upon the universe's numerous celestial body will be both their corresponding gravitational pulls and the gravitational pull found at the "center of the universe." If there is a pull at the center of the universe, that is. Perhaps its just some huge vacuum void of all matter, and its force is overpowered by the force created by the big bang.
I'm not a theoretical physicist, astrologist, or whatnot. I'm just a
Count me in for Super Mario Galaxy. It felt like I was playing Super Mario 64 all over again, but the bite-sized levels felt a lot more like Super Mario Bros. 3 as well. Add to it the return of the Airships, the Fire Flower, the incredible (for the Wii) graphics and stellar orchestration and you've got a game that can last for ages. Oh, and Luigi's Purple Coins will pwn your sorry butt, believe me.
Of all the things that were mentioned in that article, not once did I see anything on the controversy surrounding Jade Raymond and Assassin's Creed. In particular, the comic depicting Jade whoring herself out to geeks just so they would buy the game. It was a disgusting and misogynistic piece that discourages women's involvement in video game development. I can't for the life of me understand how this was ignored.
Dreadnaught Purple Coins were challenging. Luigi's Purple Coins were Wiimote breaking.
We need a fourth console in this race as much as we need a hole in the head. Seriously, the best idea is to not release a new console. They would do themselves a favor by a formal press release, too: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to not produce a new console this year." I'll bet that statement alone would improve investors' confidence in the company and they'll have a few yen increase or something.
Wouldn't this go under "Your Rights Online"?
For searches, yeah, it works. I was actually referring to the applications used. But would a lot of people with dial-up be able to handle applications over the internet?
And another perspective on Google's business model: Google would never have come into existence if we were still using 56.6kbps/dial-up to get onto the internet. That's because almost everything they want to provide almost requires you to have broadband. Today that means Google's software might be most successful in other countries where broadband is as common as indoor plumbing (Sweden, Norway, etc.), but here in the United States where broadband is a luxury I find it hard to believe Google's web-based apps are going to be successful any time soon. But this is another argument for another day, I suppose.
I've got mixed feelings. Yeah, having a real-life thing to be your companion sounds nice but if you want that kind of companionship you might want to get a real pet. Then again in areas like South Korea and Japan - where these things would likely flourish - people don't own pets that much. Here's where I can see this going: for a group of nations whose children grew up watching things like Astro Boy, of course they'd have an appreciation of this real world robot/digital world avatar. But we westerners having been raised on I, Robot have a negative outlook on robotics.
Are we robophobic in the United States?