I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding.
Also, don't bother to apply if you got your 4-year degree more than a few years ago, work experience notwithstanding. The application process requires recommendations and the online recommendation form is completely oriented towards coursework. If your recommenders aren't former classmates or professors, it will be hard for them to complete the form.
Because they were intended to help kids learn, not turn them into office drones. There were all sorts of interesting educational apps. Also, the OLPC laptops run Linux and you can open a terminal shell if so inclined.
The OLPC laptop was rugged and repairable. It is great for an environment where you can't just ship it off for service when something breaks. Also, the keyboard is great for kid-sized hands.
The OLPC tablet is fragile (particularly in comparison to the OLPC laptop) and is not repairable by most users. It seems like it is really intended for a "first world"-type environment, not the same environment as the laptop.
My biggest complaint about my OLPC laptop is that it is slow. However, the target users wouldn't have as much experience using computers as I do, so wouldn't have the same expectations as I do and it wouldn't seem slow to them. I would love to have upgraded h/w that I could put in the case.
Did you do Give 1 Get 1 when OLPC was doing fulfillment or when Amazon was? When they were doing it, it was a disaster. I think I got mine five months after placing the order. On the other hand, I heard that things went more smoothly when Amazon was doing fulfillment (which is what you would expect).
If we are plugging Kickstarter-backed films that fulfilled their promise to deliver a DRM-free HD download, let me add "Easier Said Than Done" to the list.
"Of course, that wouldn’t yield much information if a plane is blown out of the sky by a bomb, or suffers a sudden catastrophic structural failure at cruising altitude. But in those rare cases, conventional black boxes are really the only viable technology."
MH370 was sending data when it disappeared. The ADS-B data can be found on FlightRadar 24. Rolls Royce indicated that it was receiving ACARS data from the engines.
All of this stuff was either switched off or stopped working because of a sudden catastrophic failure.
My two kids asked for a Wii U, so that is what I got them. I don't know what games they are playing, but I see them and the neighborhood kids playing multiplayer games on it all of the time.
My youngest kid had a DSi and wanted a 3DS XL. Now the older one wants to replace his DSi as well.
They occasionally take my iOS devices (I have a gaggle for testing apps), but they usually prefer to play with their Nintendo devices.
I gave up on bikes. Too many clueless drivers on the road. Too many close calls when I was doing everything that I should have been. Didn't like arriving at my destination exhausted from having to exert so much effort watching out for idiots. But maybe that is just Seattle.
I rode a sport bike (FZR400) from Seattle to San Jose. Just because one can do something doesn't mean they should or the equipment is suited for that purpose.
My daughter has a scooter at college. She used to ride it a lot, but now seems to take public transit.
My daughter doesn't have a car at school because of the cost of insurance. She drives the car a lot when she is home.
I would say merge the Carolinas, Dakotas & Virginias (-3), and then do the above split of CA. Instead of 6 states, make it 3 - North coast (starting from San Louis Obispo and going right up to OR), South Coast (from Santa Barbara to San Diego) and Inland (Calexico to Eureka). Sacramento would remain the capital of inland CA, make Oakland the capital of the North Coast and Compton the capital of the South Coast. Stars go down to 49, and you can have a 7x7 array, and make the corner a square strip.
This won't work because northern California will be leaving the US to join Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to create the new country of Cascadia.
Not really. California has a long and inglorious history of trying to turn itself into its own country -- second only to Texas in it's zest for trying to co-opt, twist, and otherwise manipulate federal law. See also: "This product is known to cause cancer in the State of California." They also have the highly controversial three strikes law that results in infinite prison....
Note that both the "causes cancer" and "three strikes" were voter approved initiatives (Prop 65 (passed with 63%) and Prop 36 (passed with 61%) respectively), not something slipped through the legislature.
The will of the people should prevail until you disagree, right?
As a specific example of intentionally slowing cars down in racing, consider F1 - they removed the turbos from F1 cars because they were just too damn fast. The body counts were getting pretty high and they needed to make it safer.
Please learn the history of a topic before posting on it. I think that you are confusing it with the Group B era of rally.
Before Senna and Ratzenberger were killed in 1994, the previous deaths in F1 were de Angelis in a test in 1986 and Paletti in a race in 1982. de Angelis died in an accident caused by a wing failure and Paletti crashed into the back of a car that stalled on the grid.
The "turbo era" of F1 was 1979-1988. Nominally, they were banned on safety grounds with rumors of ridiculous horsepower, but they were expensive and unreliable.
F1 was generally considered the most dangerous through the 70s, more-or-less ending around the time that turbos became competitive.
Snowden's revelations may indeed have the results that you are concerned about. That means that the US should have been more circumspect when deciding to take the actions in the first place.
I continue to be disgusted by people who keep apologising for this vile individual.
I guess you don't need to feel disgusted by me then. I don't apologize for Snowden. He did the right thing and no apology is needed.
I was reading through the comments to this just now and I got a call from one of these guys. I just broke out in laughter. Then I explained about the ComputerWorld article. Of course, he had nothing to say except "Thank you, sir" and then he hung up.
We (my wife and I) haven't gotten a call in a while, but a month ago we were getting daily calls.
We would ask them questions about exactly what part of Microsoft they work for. We would ask them what their real name was and where were they really calling from. We would echo back everything that they said to us. We would note that we only have Mac and (other) Unix systems systems in the house and then give various takes on "how could you be getting warnings from our Windows computer when we have none here". At one point, we had a contest to see how long we could keep them on the line until they got frustrated and hung up.
I took that first Thrun/Norvig pre-Udacity AI course. I have been taking one or two Udacity or Coursera courses per season since they started up. Before any of this, I was watching Stanford courses on iTunesU. Sometimes I complete the course. Sometimes I don't. But I almost always get something out of the courses. I am a mid-senior software engineer, but I still have plenty to learn.
I have never been the kind of student who approached the professor outside of class, so I think that MOOCs are fine (I barely even use the MOOC forums.) Most of the problems that I have found with the MOOCs could have just as easily been a problem with an in-person course.
For example, I recently took a Coursera Social Psychology course. It started off very interesting, but, about halfway through, it seemed clear to me that the lecturer had an agenda and the course veered into promoting the agenda (plus a little "help me refine some psychology software that I have been developing") over education on the topics. Since I was more than halfway through I finished watching all of the lectures, but found myself rolling my eyes more and more frequently. But, I have seen that kind of thing in in-person courses, as has my perpetual grad student brother.
I have applied for the Udacity/GATech Online Master of CS program. If I get in, since I will be paying money, I will take it more seriously than I have the other MOOCs that I have taken.
I wonder about the facts presented in the TFA. For example, it says:
That means that even if you still have a stove or a fireplace, you can’t burn it for fear of a fine. Puget Sound, Washington, is one such location.
Well, first, there is no city called "Puget Sound" in WA, so, they are presumably referring to the Puget Sound region. For the Puget Sound region, the EPA page says:
Air-quality burn bans temporarily restrict some or all indoor and outdoor burning, usually called when weather conditions are cold and still.
So, when there are burn bans, they are temporary. Except during a burn ban, one can use a stove or fireplace without fear of a fine. Looking at the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency web site, there is no burn ban in effect now, so there is no problem with the fire that is burning in my wood stove now (or, judging by the smell outside, the fires going at my neighbors' houses).
Under a burn ban, you can still use your fireplace or wood stove if it is the only adequate source of heat in your house.
However, the white house, senate, supreme courts etc doesn't seem to care. They're all acting like it is no big deal and we should forget about it (or maybe that is how the media is portraying it).
I asked my Congressional Representative about this. He is firmly in the "give up a little freedom for security"/"they are just doing what they can to keep us safe" camp. I know a few people who do care and understand what they are giving up, but still give the NSA the benefit of the doubt.
I have a plain old iPhone 4 and iOS 7 works fine for me as far as speed and responsiveness. I have noticed a few more glitches on occasion, but it mostly works fine.
I hate a bunch of the UI changes. Seems like elegance and simplicity has replaced what I thought was UI basics, like giving the user an indication of what text is a "button" that can be tapped and what text is just a label.
Kind of like how Laserdisc never really took off. VHS tape was way more durable and practical than something that looked like a giant CD that only held about 30 minutes of analog video per side. The damn things were ridiculously fragile because they had no error correction.
I have owned LDs since '89 (the titles that I still have are primarily things not available on DVD/BD) and I have not found them to be "ridiculously fragile". For example, despite handling and playing the kids titles that I have, my kids haven't destroyed any of them.
30 min/side is true for CAV discs, but CLV discs held 60 min/side.
Actually, they looked more like giant LPs and the size was likely chosen so that the LDs and LPs could be stored on the same shelves.
The TREAD Act does not even mention RFID (or any other tracking technology). Neither does any of the implementing regulations.
You deliberately quoted a paper out of context to try and make it look like tire manufacturers are installing RFID tags in their normal road tires when, in fact, that is just a proposal (for the purpose of tracking recalled tires that have been recapped, a common practice for commercial tires).
The RFID tag that you linked to is a product for specialty tires, not for general use tires.
As far as the Interstate tolling story, maybe up there in the sticks outside of Bellingham, this is news, but, in Seattle and Olympia, this issue has been discussed for some time. In fact, tolling on the I-90 bridge across Lake Washington is in the planning stages. There has been on-going discussion of how to replace revenue to maintain the Interstates in response to declining gasoline tax revenue because cars are getting more efficient and using less fuel. This is a real issue. Many people are opposed to the tracking/tolling solutions because of the possibility of Big Brother use of the resulting data and the issue remains open. Nothing has been implemented.
But do you know what has been implemented? Tolled roads that collect billing information through transponders and/or OCR scans of license plates. Why didn't you put links to info about that system in your post?
BTW, there are roads here where solo drivers can pay to use the carpool lane. For drivers who have a transponder in their car, but are not solo drivers, there is a shield that you can put on your transponder so that it isn't read so you don't get billed.
But, let's pretend that there are RFID tags in all tires. How does the government associate a particular tire with a particular car? Why would they bother when license plate OCR is fairly reliable?
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I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding.
Also, don't bother to apply if you got your 4-year degree more than a few years ago, work experience notwithstanding. The application process requires recommendations and the online recommendation form is completely oriented towards coursework. If your recommenders aren't former classmates or professors, it will be hard for them to complete the form.
Because they were intended to help kids learn, not turn them into office drones. There were all sorts of interesting educational apps. Also, the OLPC laptops run Linux and you can open a terminal shell if so inclined.
The OLPC laptop was rugged and repairable. It is great for an environment where you can't just ship it off for service when something breaks. Also, the keyboard is great for kid-sized hands.
The OLPC tablet is fragile (particularly in comparison to the OLPC laptop) and is not repairable by most users. It seems like it is really intended for a "first world"-type environment, not the same environment as the laptop.
My biggest complaint about my OLPC laptop is that it is slow. However, the target users wouldn't have as much experience using computers as I do, so wouldn't have the same expectations as I do and it wouldn't seem slow to them. I would love to have upgraded h/w that I could put in the case.
Did you do Give 1 Get 1 when OLPC was doing fulfillment or when Amazon was? When they were doing it, it was a disaster. I think I got mine five months after placing the order. On the other hand, I heard that things went more smoothly when Amazon was doing fulfillment (which is what you would expect).
If we are plugging Kickstarter-backed films that fulfilled their promise to deliver a DRM-free HD download, let me add "Easier Said Than Done" to the list.
In ye olden days, a manufacturer would ship Windows, which could not be changed
What the hell is he talking about?
"Of course, that wouldn’t yield much information if a plane is blown out of the sky by a bomb, or suffers a sudden catastrophic structural failure at cruising altitude. But in those rare cases, conventional black boxes are really the only viable technology."
MH370 was sending data when it disappeared. The ADS-B data can be found on FlightRadar 24. Rolls Royce indicated that it was receiving ACARS data from the engines.
All of this stuff was either switched off or stopped working because of a sudden catastrophic failure.
And 2.3% Denisovan
2.5% according to the Genographic Project.
My two kids asked for a Wii U, so that is what I got them. I don't know what games they are playing, but I see them and the neighborhood kids playing multiplayer games on it all of the time.
My youngest kid had a DSi and wanted a 3DS XL. Now the older one wants to replace his DSi as well.
They occasionally take my iOS devices (I have a gaggle for testing apps), but they usually prefer to play with their Nintendo devices.
Just another data point.
Misc. points:
I gave up on bikes. Too many clueless drivers on the road. Too many close calls when I was doing everything that I should have been. Didn't like arriving at my destination exhausted from having to exert so much effort watching out for idiots. But maybe that is just Seattle.
I rode a sport bike (FZR400) from Seattle to San Jose. Just because one can do something doesn't mean they should or the equipment is suited for that purpose.
My daughter has a scooter at college. She used to ride it a lot, but now seems to take public transit.
My daughter doesn't have a car at school because of the cost of insurance. She drives the car a lot when she is home.
I would say merge the Carolinas, Dakotas & Virginias (-3), and then do the above split of CA. Instead of 6 states, make it 3 - North coast (starting from San Louis Obispo and going right up to OR), South Coast (from Santa Barbara to San Diego) and Inland (Calexico to Eureka). Sacramento would remain the capital of inland CA, make Oakland the capital of the North Coast and Compton the capital of the South Coast. Stars go down to 49, and you can have a 7x7 array, and make the corner a square strip.
This won't work because northern California will be leaving the US to join Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to create the new country of Cascadia.
Not really. California has a long and inglorious history of trying to turn itself into its own country -- second only to Texas in it's zest for trying to co-opt, twist, and otherwise manipulate federal law. See also: "This product is known to cause cancer in the State of California." They also have the highly controversial three strikes law that results in infinite prison. ...
Note that both the "causes cancer" and "three strikes" were voter approved initiatives (Prop 65 (passed with 63%) and Prop 36 (passed with 61%) respectively), not something slipped through the legislature.
The will of the people should prevail until you disagree, right?
Follow the links to the actual letter on Markey's site. It really does say "kill the breaks".
As a specific example of intentionally slowing cars down in racing, consider F1 - they removed the turbos from F1 cars because they were just too damn fast. The body counts were getting pretty high and they needed to make it safer.
Please learn the history of a topic before posting on it. I think that you are confusing it with the Group B era of rally.
Before Senna and Ratzenberger were killed in 1994, the previous deaths in F1 were de Angelis in a test in 1986 and Paletti in a race in 1982. de Angelis died in an accident caused by a wing failure and Paletti crashed into the back of a car that stalled on the grid.
The "turbo era" of F1 was 1979-1988. Nominally, they were banned on safety grounds with rumors of ridiculous horsepower, but they were expensive and unreliable.
F1 was generally considered the most dangerous through the 70s, more-or-less ending around the time that turbos became competitive.
And you libertoons think this is a good thing?
Name-calling doesn't help promote your argument.
Snowden's revelations may indeed have the results that you are concerned about. That means that the US should have been more circumspect when deciding to take the actions in the first place.
I continue to be disgusted by people who keep apologising for this vile individual.
I guess you don't need to feel disgusted by me then. I don't apologize for Snowden. He did the right thing and no apology is needed.
I was reading through the comments to this just now and I got a call from one of these guys. I just broke out in laughter. Then I explained about the ComputerWorld article. Of course, he had nothing to say except "Thank you, sir" and then he hung up.
We (my wife and I) haven't gotten a call in a while, but a month ago we were getting daily calls.
We would ask them questions about exactly what part of Microsoft they work for. We would ask them what their real name was and where were they really calling from. We would echo back everything that they said to us. We would note that we only have Mac and (other) Unix systems systems in the house and then give various takes on "how could you be getting warnings from our Windows computer when we have none here". At one point, we had a contest to see how long we could keep them on the line until they got frustrated and hung up.
We haven't gotten a call in over a month.
I took that first Thrun/Norvig pre-Udacity AI course. I have been taking one or two Udacity or Coursera courses per season since they started up. Before any of this, I was watching Stanford courses on iTunesU. Sometimes I complete the course. Sometimes I don't. But I almost always get something out of the courses. I am a mid-senior software engineer, but I still have plenty to learn.
I have never been the kind of student who approached the professor outside of class, so I think that MOOCs are fine (I barely even use the MOOC forums.) Most of the problems that I have found with the MOOCs could have just as easily been a problem with an in-person course.
For example, I recently took a Coursera Social Psychology course. It started off very interesting, but, about halfway through, it seemed clear to me that the lecturer had an agenda and the course veered into promoting the agenda (plus a little "help me refine some psychology software that I have been developing") over education on the topics. Since I was more than halfway through I finished watching all of the lectures, but found myself rolling my eyes more and more frequently. But, I have seen that kind of thing in in-person courses, as has my perpetual grad student brother.
I have applied for the Udacity/GATech Online Master of CS program. If I get in, since I will be paying money, I will take it more seriously than I have the other MOOCs that I have taken.
I wonder about the facts presented in the TFA. For example, it says:
That means that even if you still have a stove or a fireplace, you can’t burn it for fear of a fine. Puget Sound, Washington, is one such location.
Well, first, there is no city called "Puget Sound" in WA, so, they are presumably referring to the Puget Sound region. For the Puget Sound region, the EPA page says:
Air-quality burn bans temporarily restrict some or all indoor and outdoor burning, usually called when weather conditions are cold and still.
So, when there are burn bans, they are temporary. Except during a burn ban, one can use a stove or fireplace without fear of a fine. Looking at the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency web site, there is no burn ban in effect now, so there is no problem with the fire that is burning in my wood stove now (or, judging by the smell outside, the fires going at my neighbors' houses).
Under a burn ban, you can still use your fireplace or wood stove if it is the only adequate source of heat in your house.
So, what else does the article get wrong?
However, the white house, senate, supreme courts etc doesn't seem to care. They're all acting like it is no big deal and we should forget about it (or maybe that is how the media is portraying it).
I asked my Congressional Representative about this. He is firmly in the "give up a little freedom for security"/"they are just doing what they can to keep us safe" camp. I know a few people who do care and understand what they are giving up, but still give the NSA the benefit of the doubt.
I have a plain old iPhone 4 and iOS 7 works fine for me as far as speed and responsiveness. I have noticed a few more glitches on occasion, but it mostly works fine.
I hate a bunch of the UI changes. Seems like elegance and simplicity has replaced what I thought was UI basics, like giving the user an indication of what text is a "button" that can be tapped and what text is just a label.
Kind of like how Laserdisc never really took off. VHS tape was way more durable and practical than something that looked like a giant CD that only held about 30 minutes of analog video per side. The damn things were ridiculously fragile because they had no error correction.
I have owned LDs since '89 (the titles that I still have are primarily things not available on DVD/BD) and I have not found them to be "ridiculously fragile". For example, despite handling and playing the kids titles that I have, my kids haven't destroyed any of them.
30 min/side is true for CAV discs, but CLV discs held 60 min/side.
Actually, they looked more like giant LPs and the size was likely chosen so that the LDs and LPs could be stored on the same shelves.
'Assassin' is still played at my daughter's college. Nerf guns are used.
Need more tin foil for your hat?
The TREAD Act does not even mention RFID (or any other tracking technology). Neither does any of the implementing regulations.
You deliberately quoted a paper out of context to try and make it look like tire manufacturers are installing RFID tags in their normal road tires when, in fact, that is just a proposal (for the purpose of tracking recalled tires that have been recapped, a common practice for commercial tires).
The RFID tag that you linked to is a product for specialty tires, not for general use tires.
As far as the Interstate tolling story, maybe up there in the sticks outside of Bellingham, this is news, but, in Seattle and Olympia, this issue has been discussed for some time. In fact, tolling on the I-90 bridge across Lake Washington is in the planning stages. There has been on-going discussion of how to replace revenue to maintain the Interstates in response to declining gasoline tax revenue because cars are getting more efficient and using less fuel. This is a real issue. Many people are opposed to the tracking/tolling solutions because of the possibility of Big Brother use of the resulting data and the issue remains open. Nothing has been implemented.
But do you know what has been implemented? Tolled roads that collect billing information through transponders and/or OCR scans of license plates. Why didn't you put links to info about that system in your post?
BTW, there are roads here where solo drivers can pay to use the carpool lane. For drivers who have a transponder in their car, but are not solo drivers, there is a shield that you can put on your transponder so that it isn't read so you don't get billed.
But, let's pretend that there are RFID tags in all tires. How does the government associate a particular tire with a particular car? Why would they bother when license plate OCR is fairly reliable?