Look, if it was hair or body spray that some fake-tanned douchebag burned through a can a day, I'd agree on the whole environmental thing. But right now our health care costs are bullshit enough as it is. Two of my best friends have pretty bad asthma and they spend a lot of money as it is trying to stay healthy (and this is WITH OTC inhalers.
Yeah, those Scottish conscripts were a real bunch of assholes! The nerve of them, fighting for an empire that would kill them and/or their families if they didn't fight for the crown.
That's how it should be - confiscated when it's used inappropriately and/or being disruptive to either you or your classmates' learning experience.
As for the Scottish teacher, well, you guys do have that whole past few centuries of dicking over other countries. I can sorta understand how he might still be a bit mad about that. That's inter-generational anger right there.
I took a lot of tests in elementary and high school. Some of the big stand-outs were the SATs and the GEPA in my (young) memory - I took them in 7th and 8th grade respectively. Here's how they (and damn near every prior and subsequent test) went for me:
1) 40 minutes to complete section.
2) Complete section in 20 minutes.
3) Spend 3-4 minutes double-checking my work, even though I never made a change.
4) Sit on my ass for 15-20 additional minutes doing nothing.
5) Repeat for every test section until the test is over. Then repeat for the reading assignment, classowork, etc.
Every classroom assignment, test, quiz, etc. would inevitably involve me sitting idle half the time and trying not to fall asleep. The best part was the grating voice of some of my teachers telling me to "recheck my work" after I already have once or twice. 3 or 4 hours of this shit every day can drive you nuts.
Sure, school is for education, but it's for education to the lowest common denominator. You can't cut special education or remedial courses, but gifted & talented courses and/or extracurricular activities are always on the chopping block. You have students who are "above the bar" in one or more subjects being bored out of their goddamn minds because they have the unfortunate luck of being better than the government standards require them to be.
A dumbass kid leaves his phone ringer on 11 during a test? Sure, suspend his phone privaledges. Playing Gameboy with the sound all the way up? Okay. Reading a book at an inappropriate time? Kosher, take it for a little while. But blanket bans with stuff like this just ends up having the kids who know what the hell they're doing sit on their ass half the time.
This very stuff is what makes me resent jobs that have any kind of bullshit "busy work" in them - work for the sake of work to fill up time. I'm given 8 hours to complete a task, finish in 4, and I have to sit on my ass for another 4 hours to meet a state/federal standard (in the case of school) or punch a time clock (in the case of adult life). The system encourages everybody to slow down and hurts the people who have the capability to excel.
No wonder our country's productivity is in the shitter.
Sadly a lot of the convertible tablets were very short on RAM. The aforementioned Toshiba shipped with 512 megs. Keep in mind that the rule of thumb is that XP needs 2 gigs to run comfortably, and the tablet stuff should ideally have another gig or so of RAM. One of the issues, RAM and processor-wise, was that Microsoft Journal (or whatever their tablet-y program was called) appeared to use vector graphics and as such was very processor and RAM intensive. Processor intensive + RAM intensive + not enough RAM = overheating.
A better headline would be, Physicists Come up with Idea to Build Perfect Magnetic Shield. As the article states, the device itself is hypothetical no proof of concept has been built.
I'd say "Come up with idea" and "Devise" are pretty much the same thing.
I seem to remember reading about traces of certain plastic showing up in people's blood after many years of use. Anyone got more details on this?
Imagine if plastic flatware, cups, etc. is the "lead mugs" of the next few generations? In 2250 they'll look back on us and wonder what the hell we were thinking...
Libraries often function as community centers in many regards. They have useful classes such as ESL or ones for fun such as learning to knit a potholder.
Meanwhile, we have "rec centers" that have pools, gyms, game rooms (foosball, billiards, ping pong) but nothing of educational value). Millions of dollars get put into these and libraries struggle to keep up with the bills.
Clearly, we as a society value entertainment over knowledge any day of the week.
I agree, there are some things that paper just plain does better. Marking up a document, taking quick notes at a meeting (I've yet to see something that beats a simple notepad for free-form note taking), objective evidence (digital files can be tampered and altered.. and while I suspect there are solutions, paper with someones signature on it still means a lot).
I fixed a friend's convertible Toshiba tablet 4 or so years ago. (Toshibas are garbage IMO.) The tablet had a stylus, and while the handwriting recognition was iffy it was about as close to paper as you could get while writing. One of the options was a "Highlight" mode that let you highlight text on the screen (or on a document) just like - get this - a highlighter.
This was all on Windows XP Tablet edition, which was pretty half-assed as far as tablet software goes and yet they got this right. How is it impossible in this day and age to have a tablet that can handle touch + stylus that doesn't cost a boatload of money?
capital gains which are taxed (inexplicably) at a much lower rate than income.
No, it's easy to explain. The guy busting his ass at a construction site or driving a truck doesn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in stocks and bonds. It's a tax law that (unsurprisingly) caters to the wealthy.
Yeah, the Star Trek universe just solved hunger, most major diseases, poverty, and practically every form of discrimination. They've got it so hard!
When your biggest worry is about finding a fulfilling career (or the occasional Borg attack), I'd say you have it a fair bit easier than the majority of the world today.
I think in our modern age 14 years is unreasonable and even 28 years is downright insane.
Let's say we never changed it from the maximum 28 years. This year we would see the following films entering the public domain (examples are the top ten grossing films in 1983): Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Trading Places, Wargames, Octopussy, Sudden Impact, Staying Alive, Mr. Mom, Risky Business.
Nostalgia factors aside, I wouldn't exactly call those "culturally relevant" to the modern age - things move way, way faster now. Sure, in the late 1700s a book written 28 years prior would probably still be quite popular and very relevant to the times.. but the times changed faster and faster.
Something like 1 year would be more fair to all parties in my opinion, at least on an item-by-item basis. Don't most movies, games, music albums, etc. make the vast majority of their money in the first few months? Sequels wouldn't be affected because they would be filed under a new copyright.
Years ago, I didn't know what "^H^H^H^H^H" meant. (It is, apparently, how one typed a backspace on a rather old type of computer). When I asked what it meant (as it had interested me) I was told by a few kind persons, but I was also chided about not knowing about an obscure computer that was popular before I was born.
Ouch. Don't revel in your ignorance. Unix/Linux isn't "obscure". Neither are DOS/Windows machines.
I explained in a brother post a bit higher up the page, but I recall being told that it was used on pre-DOS terminals. Thinking about that I do suppose that that would be Unix. I've never used Unix though and I've very limited Linux experience.
And I never revel in my ignorance. I'm rather aware of it. Wasn't it Plato who said "I don't know nothing."? *
Open a terminal on your Linux box.
Sorry, I don't have a Linux box. I'd like one, but I'm a heavy gamer and I'm honestly not up for all of the headaches involved with tinkering with drivers or trying to get games to work in WINE. I'd view one as a novelty and/or a more secure machine for things such as banking, but that's about as far as my interest extends. I don't really have the funds to dedicate towards building a spare box to tinker, and I unfortunately don't have the resources to back up and try a dual-boot or something similar on my main rig. I'm rather uncomfortable on doing stuff that I'm quite unfamiliar with on my only (barely) working computer.
The reason that ^H became so well known, and not ^U (which is a shortcut I use every day - it erases your entire line of input) is due to the modem days causing the ctrl-h's to appear when people typed backspace some of the time (depending on the settings and lag).
Well, it's sort of an orthogonal issue. There's lots of stories that don't make CNN that aren't appropriate for/. -That said, I agree with what you're saying in spirit - that it's nice that there's a website like Slashdot that will run stories about neat, hackish things like the tricorder-like thing described in TFA.
That's an interesting bit of history. I haven't used terminal, well, anything other than DOS. I've truly never seen ^H on a computer screen save as a Slashdot post. It's just something outside of my area of interest and expertise.
.
.
.
Disclaimer for the humor deficient: yes, I know it was Socrates, and the quote is "I know that I know nothing".
And.. you know what.. forget everything. It looks like you meant to say, "obscure computer trick," which is pretty true at this point.
No no, the way it was originally explained to me was that it was used on old terminal machines, but I've honestly never heard of it. The oldest OS I've ever used was DOS.
I'm 25, but I've only had Internets for 6 years. I'd better be classified as a "poor nerd". My first computer was a 199Mhz Pentium... maybe a Pentium 2, don't remember. My second computer was literally built from abandoned parts I found on the street. I learned about computer hardware by salvaging and rebuilding computers, and my dad scrapped the rest.
Is this news for nerds just because it is open source? I mean - a potentiostat? Really?
What measure is a nerd?
Years ago, I didn't know what "^H^H^H^H^H" meant. (It is, apparently, how one typed a backspace on a rather old type of computer). When I asked what it meant (as it had interested me) I was told by a few kind persons, but I was also chided about not knowing about an obscure computer that was popular before I was born.
Your nerdiness is not my nerdiness. I personally judge whether or not a story is good for Slashdot by the likelihood of seeing it on CNN (when it isn't related to a major event such as a natural disaster or a major product release). Would you see anything like this on the front page of Faux News or even a much more reputable outlet like the BBC? (According to my BBC RSS feed, the answer is firmly in the negative.)
Geek culture is a mysterious, ethereal thing that spans interests of many different types and complexities. Ignore a story about something that doesn't interest you, sure - I don't read 3/4 of the articles Slashdot posts - but please don't chastise them for actually posting something that's relevant to using technology (cheaply!) to do something cool that will actually help people. Strike that last - just using technology to do something cool.
Hey, at least it's not a story about Bitcoin or the latest Apple drivel.
Grey water can't be used for showers, washing dishes, or (obviously) drinking, but it can be safely used to flush your toilet. That's how it could hit home for the average person.
Why can't we kill two birds with one eco-friendly stone?
Invest - heavily - in more green technologies. Get LED lightbulbs down from the $50-$100 they are now. Get solar panels attached to boomboxes and cell phones. Create a cheap grey water reclamation system that can be installed in new homes.
You create more jobs and help the environment. Win/win.
That was something that always bothered me. You get popped in the nose by a bully, you get right back up and sock him in the face. Building anything less magnificent than what was already there is like crawling away crying while the bully kicks you.
Redesigned towers? Sure. But there should have been two of them, and they should have been bigger and better.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, if it was hair or body spray that some fake-tanned douchebag burned through a can a day, I'd agree on the whole environmental thing. But right now our health care costs are bullshit enough as it is. Two of my best friends have pretty bad asthma and they spend a lot of money as it is trying to stay healthy (and this is WITH OTC inhalers.
A parking lot more hazardous than downtown Baghdad at night?
Yeah, those Scottish conscripts were a real bunch of assholes! The nerve of them, fighting for an empire that would kill them and/or their families if they didn't fight for the crown.
That's how it should be - confiscated when it's used inappropriately and/or being disruptive to either you or your classmates' learning experience.
As for the Scottish teacher, well, you guys do have that whole past few centuries of dicking over other countries. I can sorta understand how he might still be a bit mad about that. That's inter-generational anger right there.
I took a lot of tests in elementary and high school. Some of the big stand-outs were the SATs and the GEPA in my (young) memory - I took them in 7th and 8th grade respectively. Here's how they (and damn near every prior and subsequent test) went for me:
1) 40 minutes to complete section.
2) Complete section in 20 minutes.
3) Spend 3-4 minutes double-checking my work, even though I never made a change.
4) Sit on my ass for 15-20 additional minutes doing nothing.
5) Repeat for every test section until the test is over. Then repeat for the reading assignment, classowork, etc.
Every classroom assignment, test, quiz, etc. would inevitably involve me sitting idle half the time and trying not to fall asleep. The best part was the grating voice of some of my teachers telling me to "recheck my work" after I already have once or twice. 3 or 4 hours of this shit every day can drive you nuts.
Sure, school is for education, but it's for education to the lowest common denominator. You can't cut special education or remedial courses, but gifted & talented courses and/or extracurricular activities are always on the chopping block. You have students who are "above the bar" in one or more subjects being bored out of their goddamn minds because they have the unfortunate luck of being better than the government standards require them to be.
A dumbass kid leaves his phone ringer on 11 during a test? Sure, suspend his phone privaledges. Playing Gameboy with the sound all the way up? Okay. Reading a book at an inappropriate time? Kosher, take it for a little while. But blanket bans with stuff like this just ends up having the kids who know what the hell they're doing sit on their ass half the time.
This very stuff is what makes me resent jobs that have any kind of bullshit "busy work" in them - work for the sake of work to fill up time. I'm given 8 hours to complete a task, finish in 4, and I have to sit on my ass for another 4 hours to meet a state/federal standard (in the case of school) or punch a time clock (in the case of adult life). The system encourages everybody to slow down and hurts the people who have the capability to excel.
No wonder our country's productivity is in the shitter.
Sadly a lot of the convertible tablets were very short on RAM. The aforementioned Toshiba shipped with 512 megs. Keep in mind that the rule of thumb is that XP needs 2 gigs to run comfortably, and the tablet stuff should ideally have another gig or so of RAM. One of the issues, RAM and processor-wise, was that Microsoft Journal (or whatever their tablet-y program was called) appeared to use vector graphics and as such was very processor and RAM intensive. Processor intensive + RAM intensive + not enough RAM = overheating.
A better headline would be, Physicists Come up with Idea to Build Perfect Magnetic Shield. As the article states, the device itself is hypothetical no proof of concept has been built.
I'd say "Come up with idea" and "Devise" are pretty much the same thing.
I seem to remember reading about traces of certain plastic showing up in people's blood after many years of use. Anyone got more details on this?
Imagine if plastic flatware, cups, etc. is the "lead mugs" of the next few generations? In 2250 they'll look back on us and wonder what the hell we were thinking...
They're not overpriced, it's just a convenience fee on their stock price for investors who have the good taste to buy iStock.
Libraries often function as community centers in many regards. They have useful classes such as ESL or ones for fun such as learning to knit a potholder.
Meanwhile, we have "rec centers" that have pools, gyms, game rooms (foosball, billiards, ping pong) but nothing of educational value). Millions of dollars get put into these and libraries struggle to keep up with the bills.
Clearly, we as a society value entertainment over knowledge any day of the week.
I agree, there are some things that paper just plain does better. Marking up a document, taking quick notes at a meeting (I've yet to see something that beats a simple notepad for free-form note taking), objective evidence (digital files can be tampered and altered.. and while I suspect there are solutions, paper with someones signature on it still means a lot).
I fixed a friend's convertible Toshiba tablet 4 or so years ago. (Toshibas are garbage IMO.) The tablet had a stylus, and while the handwriting recognition was iffy it was about as close to paper as you could get while writing. One of the options was a "Highlight" mode that let you highlight text on the screen (or on a document) just like - get this - a highlighter.
This was all on Windows XP Tablet edition, which was pretty half-assed as far as tablet software goes and yet they got this right. How is it impossible in this day and age to have a tablet that can handle touch + stylus that doesn't cost a boatload of money?
capital gains which are taxed (inexplicably) at a much lower rate than income.
No, it's easy to explain. The guy busting his ass at a construction site or driving a truck doesn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in stocks and bonds. It's a tax law that (unsurprisingly) caters to the wealthy.
Yeah, the Star Trek universe just solved hunger, most major diseases, poverty, and practically every form of discrimination. They've got it so hard!
When your biggest worry is about finding a fulfilling career (or the occasional Borg attack), I'd say you have it a fair bit easier than the majority of the world today.
I think in our modern age 14 years is unreasonable and even 28 years is downright insane.
Let's say we never changed it from the maximum 28 years. This year we would see the following films entering the public domain (examples are the top ten grossing films in 1983): Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Trading Places, Wargames, Octopussy, Sudden Impact, Staying Alive, Mr. Mom, Risky Business.
Nostalgia factors aside, I wouldn't exactly call those "culturally relevant" to the modern age - things move way, way faster now. Sure, in the late 1700s a book written 28 years prior would probably still be quite popular and very relevant to the times.. but the times changed faster and faster.
Something like 1 year would be more fair to all parties in my opinion, at least on an item-by-item basis. Don't most movies, games, music albums, etc. make the vast majority of their money in the first few months? Sequels wouldn't be affected because they would be filed under a new copyright.
I'm hoping that stuff like this means saner candidates and third-party candidates will have a better shot in the 2012 elections in the States.
Thanks! Interesting stuff.
Ouch. Don't revel in your ignorance. Unix/Linux isn't "obscure". Neither are DOS/Windows machines.
I explained in a brother post a bit higher up the page, but I recall being told that it was used on pre-DOS terminals. Thinking about that I do suppose that that would be Unix. I've never used Unix though and I've very limited Linux experience.
And I never revel in my ignorance. I'm rather aware of it. Wasn't it Plato who said "I don't know nothing."? *
Open a terminal on your Linux box.
Sorry, I don't have a Linux box. I'd like one, but I'm a heavy gamer and I'm honestly not up for all of the headaches involved with tinkering with drivers or trying to get games to work in WINE. I'd view one as a novelty and/or a more secure machine for things such as banking, but that's about as far as my interest extends. I don't really have the funds to dedicate towards building a spare box to tinker, and I unfortunately don't have the resources to back up and try a dual-boot or something similar on my main rig. I'm rather uncomfortable on doing stuff that I'm quite unfamiliar with on my only (barely) working computer.
The reason that ^H became so well known, and not ^U (which is a shortcut I use every day - it erases your entire line of input) is due to the modem days causing the ctrl-h's to appear when people typed backspace some of the time (depending on the settings and lag).
That's an interesting bit of history. I haven't used terminal, well, anything other than DOS. I've truly never seen ^H on a computer screen save as a Slashdot post. It's just something outside of my area of interest and expertise.
.
.
.
Disclaimer for the humor deficient: yes, I know it was Socrates, and the quote is "I know that I know nothing".
And.. you know what.. forget everything. It looks like you meant to say, "obscure computer trick," which is pretty true at this point.
No no, the way it was originally explained to me was that it was used on old terminal machines, but I've honestly never heard of it. The oldest OS I've ever used was DOS.
You are a "young nerd" if I read that.
I'm 25, but I've only had Internets for 6 years. I'd better be classified as a "poor nerd". My first computer was a 199Mhz Pentium... maybe a Pentium 2, don't remember. My second computer was literally built from abandoned parts I found on the street. I learned about computer hardware by salvaging and rebuilding computers, and my dad scrapped the rest.
Is this news for nerds just because it is open source? I mean - a potentiostat? Really?
What measure is a nerd?
Years ago, I didn't know what "^H^H^H^H^H" meant. (It is, apparently, how one typed a backspace on a rather old type of computer). When I asked what it meant (as it had interested me) I was told by a few kind persons, but I was also chided about not knowing about an obscure computer that was popular before I was born.
Your nerdiness is not my nerdiness. I personally judge whether or not a story is good for Slashdot by the likelihood of seeing it on CNN (when it isn't related to a major event such as a natural disaster or a major product release). Would you see anything like this on the front page of Faux News or even a much more reputable outlet like the BBC? (According to my BBC RSS feed, the answer is firmly in the negative.)
Geek culture is a mysterious, ethereal thing that spans interests of many different types and complexities. Ignore a story about something that doesn't interest you, sure - I don't read 3/4 of the articles Slashdot posts - but please don't chastise them for actually posting something that's relevant to using technology (cheaply!) to do something cool that will actually help people. Strike that last - just using technology to do something cool.
Hey, at least it's not a story about Bitcoin or the latest Apple drivel.
Grey water can't be used for showers, washing dishes, or (obviously) drinking, but it can be safely used to flush your toilet. That's how it could hit home for the average person.
Did you guys hear that Windows 8 will have a Bitcoin mining application built into it? You can also refinance your mortgage and buy Uggs boots.
Why can't we kill two birds with one eco-friendly stone?
Invest - heavily - in more green technologies. Get LED lightbulbs down from the $50-$100 they are now. Get solar panels attached to boomboxes and cell phones. Create a cheap grey water reclamation system that can be installed in new homes.
You create more jobs and help the environment. Win/win.
That was something that always bothered me. You get popped in the nose by a bully, you get right back up and sock him in the face. Building anything less magnificent than what was already there is like crawling away crying while the bully kicks you.
Redesigned towers? Sure. But there should have been two of them, and they should have been bigger and better.
will probably still require the full shutdown we've come to know and loathe. :(
Oh noes, a whole minute! Maybe two on some computers!
In b4 low UID Slashdotters talking about computers they had to start with a crank shaft.