I've been out of the TV loop for a while. Every time I get tempted to start watching again, I'm put off by the overabundance of hype and the poor signal to noise ratio - see other poster's comment about stretching two minutes of substance into half an hour.
That said, I'm looking forward to the day when we have giant mechatronic "robots" fighting in arenas. By "giant" I mean big enough that you'll need to host these in stadiums - think monster-truck shows, and attendant audiences. This would, of course, be vastly expensive, but at $30/seat in a 30,000 seat stadium plus corporate sponsorship, it could work. I'm talking fire-breathing, metal crunching, roaring beasts, twenty or thirty feet tall. Burning Man meets Survival Research Labs meets Mythbusters, with enough WWF to keep the seats full of hollering fans full of two percent beer.
No, I think his point is more "why the hell spend money on cutting edge hardware when that money goes further on traditional materials". To which I fully agree. I think the amount many schools spend on desktop machines is scandalous. You don't need brand new hardware to teach kids computer skills. You need to teach kids the basics of fishing rather than how to catch a trout using the latest carbon-fibre rod and GPS depthfinder. Teach kids how to use Open Office AND how to use the 'net to learn what they don't know. Industry can plop them in front of shiny silicon and the latest M$ "Productivity Suite" and they WILL function.
I used some of the very first computers in schools in my county (thanks Mr. Varney!) but I now have a very dim view of computers in education, to the point our daughter is on a waiting list for a primary school that uses NONE.
Well, someone's been trolled. MDI is linked to IndraNet here in New Zealand, and these buffoons have been scamming investors for years by bringing out the Next Big Thing every couple of years. Mesh Networks, the nGen Engine (try to figure out how it works!), and air cars. Vapour central. As far as I know, they have never actually made a product or earned a dime, but that hasn't kept them from spewing PR crap and soliciting suc.. - I mean, investors.
Run. Away.
Well, there's "can they charge you with it?" and there's "do you want to pay for a lawyer to defend you from it?" I'm quite sure popping any restraints, no matter what you do afterwards, is going to get you further charges, either escape or resisting arrest. Neither furthers your cause. If you're protesting to make a point, don't give the press or the judge further ammo. A future prospective employer/border control officer may not care so much about a disorderly conduct if the reasons are explained, but the resisting arrest or escape can look a lot worse.
Look, if you're protesting, you should go into it knowing how far you're willing to go, and if it's arrest, just take the medicine and get on with it. Most cops would much rather be fighting "real" crime than clearing away a bunch of filthy free software types upset about Unity,
The irony is if you had somehow made public the names of the kids responsible for the thefts you would probably be sued for charged with violating libel/slander/privacy laws. Frustrating!
My experience with the Panasonic Viera with cam has been less than satisfactory. In fact, it sucks so bad we just use my netbook ( and yeah, try to keep the toddler from touching keys or pad). The wireless and camera were a "gimme" when we bought the panel. Which is just as well, if I'd paid list for them ($NZ300? No way) I'd have taken them back. The firmware is buggy, slow, and closed source. Acquiring wireless signal is hit or miss (netbook picks up strong signal in same room, that part of house isn't wired with CAT5 yet). And to top it off, folks on the other end tell me both our HP Mini and Toshiba netbooks, with their tiny pinhole cameras, give much better picture. Probably my last Panasonic purchase for a good long while. Avoid. Unfortunately, you can't try these things out in the store so you can get stuck with a turkey. Pity, because in theory it's brilliant.
And to anyone who nay-says the need for a child to have Skype, EABOD. Our toddler can identify five different grandparents and gets to talk to them every other week. Someday you'll be old and your kids will move to the other side of the planet and then reproduce. Toddlers don't "do" letters and usually clam up when you hand them a phone with someone on the other end (they'll fucking recite the Gettysburg address into the TV remote just after you hang up though).
I reckon the group most affected by this will be patternmakers. This is already a dying art, now designers can print a pattern directly from their desktop, with shrinkage rates and draft calculated by software. I've worked a bit in a foundry - our guys were more mouldmakers than patternmakers, and the amount of work it takes to make a mould that allows a clean finished part is phenomenal. This technology could take most of their work away - except for the most tedious final polishing.
We are still a long way away from people making bootleg Fisher-Price at home, but I'm sure that day will come. Hopefully the manufacturing industry can cope with it better than the media companies have with their product!
Maybe I'm getting old, but wouldn't we be better off spending $1.6B educating, feeding, and homing people? I feel the same way about manned space flight. I'm not saying it has nothing more to offer us, but as a benefit to mankind, the cost/benefit ratio doesn't look good.
...which I read over my Christmas holiday, having jetted 12,000 miles, is "Oil 101" by Morgan Downey. Very very good information, written by an oil trader. Explains how they find it, how they get it, and what they do to it to make the stuff we use.
One good point in this book is that now that a lot of the "low hanging fruit" has been tapped dry, the remaining wells produce a more sulfurous product which yields poorer quality feedstocks and requires more hydrogen (you know, the stuff we're gonna run our cars on in the Magical Future) to refine.
Somebody please stand up and say we have to consume less of this stuff. Not "none", just "a lot less".
If not, your non-techy boss shouldn't complain, except perhaps about his staff.
I sure did after that. The size of the operation didn't warrant daily checks of the logs - this was a bricks and mortar toy/hobby store that did maybe $500 a week over the website and I wasn't webmaster as much as I was "guy who knew more than anyone else". Why should someone not complain about $1000 of totally unnecessary bandwidth usage? You provide restrooms for your customers, but you don't expect anyone to come and take a grand's worth of toilet paper and walk out without buying anything.
This was when MS was in testing of their search engine, and Google searches at the time showed we were far from the only ones hit.
I reckon this is because SEO's and link farm scum are throwing all their weight at gaming Google rather than Bing.
I still haven't forgiven Microsoft for pounding, and I mean pounding, a self-hosted (long story) site for a small retailer I worked for a few years ago. We got a nearly $1000 bill for excess bandwidth. I checked the logs and they were downloading entire directories of images over and over and over. Non-techy Boss NOT impressed.
There's a difference between being a search engine that can be abused to search for illegal material and a search engine not only designed for it, but one that lists the top twenty current searches, most of which are copyrighted material. Check out isohunt's homepage - if you were a jury member not familiar with things like Linux ISOs and you were shown a screencap of that page, what conclusion would you draw? Isohunt has not made a good case for themselves.
Headshops have been allowed to exist in many communities because they publicly distance themselves from the illegal use of their products. If Isohunt had done so, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in now.
As a side note, Nora Guthrie (Woody's daughter, Arlo Guthrie's sister) is the curator of the Woody Guthrie collection has been handing out bits and pieces of her fathers poetry, lyrics, and unfinished songs to various musicians to finish up or add melodies to. Probably the most famous (ok the only one I know of) is "Mermaid Avenue" volumes one and two by Wilco and Billy Bragg. One of my faves.
nfb
FTFA:
Range: 20 miles.
Geez, that's kinda weak. Most plug-in electrics'll do 50-75 miles. Hope the Baddies aren't driving a Prius!
At least it's a two-fold increase in the KITT2k, 10 miles would hardly cover a round trip to Hair Club For Men.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, I'm looking forward to the day when we have giant mechatronic "robots" fighting in arenas. By "giant" I mean big enough that you'll need to host these in stadiums - think monster-truck shows, and attendant audiences. This would, of course, be vastly expensive, but at $30/seat in a 30,000 seat stadium plus corporate sponsorship, it could work. I'm talking fire-breathing, metal crunching, roaring beasts, twenty or thirty feet tall. Burning Man meets Survival Research Labs meets Mythbusters, with enough WWF to keep the seats full of hollering fans full of two percent beer.
THEN I'd watch TV.
No, I think his point is more "why the hell spend money on cutting edge hardware when that money goes further on traditional materials". To which I fully agree. I think the amount many schools spend on desktop machines is scandalous. You don't need brand new hardware to teach kids computer skills. You need to teach kids the basics of fishing rather than how to catch a trout using the latest carbon-fibre rod and GPS depthfinder. Teach kids how to use Open Office AND how to use the 'net to learn what they don't know. Industry can plop them in front of shiny silicon and the latest M$ "Productivity Suite" and they WILL function. I used some of the very first computers in schools in my county (thanks Mr. Varney!) but I now have a very dim view of computers in education, to the point our daughter is on a waiting list for a primary school that uses NONE.
Well, someone's been trolled. MDI is linked to IndraNet here in New Zealand, and these buffoons have been scamming investors for years by bringing out the Next Big Thing every couple of years. Mesh Networks, the nGen Engine (try to figure out how it works!), and air cars. Vapour central. As far as I know, they have never actually made a product or earned a dime, but that hasn't kept them from spewing PR crap and soliciting suc.. - I mean, investors. Run. Away.
Look, if you're protesting, you should go into it knowing how far you're willing to go, and if it's arrest, just take the medicine and get on with it. Most cops would much rather be fighting "real" crime than clearing away a bunch of filthy free software types upset about Unity,
The irony is if you had somehow made public the names of the kids responsible for the thefts you would probably be sued for charged with violating libel/slander/privacy laws. Frustrating!
And to anyone who nay-says the need for a child to have Skype, EABOD. Our toddler can identify five different grandparents and gets to talk to them every other week. Someday you'll be old and your kids will move to the other side of the planet and then reproduce. Toddlers don't "do" letters and usually clam up when you hand them a phone with someone on the other end (they'll fucking recite the Gettysburg address into the TV remote just after you hang up though).
I reckon the group most affected by this will be patternmakers. This is already a dying art, now designers can print a pattern directly from their desktop, with shrinkage rates and draft calculated by software. I've worked a bit in a foundry - our guys were more mouldmakers than patternmakers, and the amount of work it takes to make a mould that allows a clean finished part is phenomenal. This technology could take most of their work away - except for the most tedious final polishing.
We are still a long way away from people making bootleg Fisher-Price at home, but I'm sure that day will come. Hopefully the manufacturing industry can cope with it better than the media companies have with their product!
Also, see http://bathsheba.com/
Yes, I know the Kindle one is really easy too, but the bar for "World's Simplest" is one click. That's a tough act to beat. :)
And Amazon has patented the one click method anyway...
I'm keen to have them re-create the Moa and the Haast's Eagle. Nothing says bad-ass like a bird with a 9-foot wingspan that can dive at 50mph
Maybe I'm getting old, but wouldn't we be better off spending $1.6B educating, feeding, and homing people? I feel the same way about manned space flight. I'm not saying it has nothing more to offer us, but as a benefit to mankind, the cost/benefit ratio doesn't look good.
...which I read over my Christmas holiday, having jetted 12,000 miles, is "Oil 101" by Morgan Downey. Very very good information, written by an oil trader. Explains how they find it, how they get it, and what they do to it to make the stuff we use. One good point in this book is that now that a lot of the "low hanging fruit" has been tapped dry, the remaining wells produce a more sulfurous product which yields poorer quality feedstocks and requires more hydrogen (you know, the stuff we're gonna run our cars on in the Magical Future) to refine. Somebody please stand up and say we have to consume less of this stuff. Not "none", just "a lot less".
Did you have a robots.txt telling it not to?
If not, your non-techy boss shouldn't complain, except perhaps about his staff.
I sure did after that. The size of the operation didn't warrant daily checks of the logs - this was a bricks and mortar toy/hobby store that did maybe $500 a week over the website and I wasn't webmaster as much as I was "guy who knew more than anyone else". Why should someone not complain about $1000 of totally unnecessary bandwidth usage? You provide restrooms for your customers, but you don't expect anyone to come and take a grand's worth of toilet paper and walk out without buying anything.
This was when MS was in testing of their search engine, and Google searches at the time showed we were far from the only ones hit.
I reckon this is because SEO's and link farm scum are throwing all their weight at gaming Google rather than Bing.
I still haven't forgiven Microsoft for pounding, and I mean pounding, a self-hosted (long story) site for a small retailer I worked for a few years ago. We got a nearly $1000 bill for excess bandwidth. I checked the logs and they were downloading entire directories of images over and over and over. Non-techy Boss NOT impressed.
I can't wait for them to discover charity.
Headshops have been allowed to exist in many communities because they publicly distance themselves from the illegal use of their products. If Isohunt had done so, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in now.
Great idea - if you were a crackhead and you knew there was a one-in-five chance any given car had twenty bucks in it, you'd be livin' large.
Or just wait for your jetpack to arrive.
One step ahead of you, mate.
http://www.martinjetpack.com/
I was amazed at the power of the magnets I took out of an old hard drive.
FTFA: Range: 20 miles. Geez, that's kinda weak. Most plug-in electrics'll do 50-75 miles. Hope the Baddies aren't driving a Prius! At least it's a two-fold increase in the KITT2k, 10 miles would hardly cover a round trip to Hair Club For Men.