I'm all for paying the authors for their time and effort and insight into a subject. The problem is, how much are the authors actually getting?
We're trying to get a small book published for our physics classes here. No big deal, its like 100 pages, and more of a workbook type thing to supplement class and the laboratories, so it need not be specially bound or anything. So our options for printing? (1) university bookstore = make pathetic photocopies, sell it for 20000% what it cost to make the copies; they keep all profit, the authors and dept get nothing (university policy) (2) real publishers = pay $50 in printing fees, $20 contract fee, this fee, that fee, and let them negotiate with our bookstore for appropriate shipping fees - no one even bothered asked what type of book it was, what we were looking for in terms of royalties, they just expected us to meet all of their demands. book will easily be at least $50-100 for students, which is unacceptable.
We sought independent local publishing, that would have cost $5-10 for a bound color copy (including shipping), and it seemed like a great deal. Only to be told by the university and bookstore we weren't allowed to. Why? I still don't know; the people that were supposed to "get back to you with some options" never called us, and have been avoiding our messages and phone calls for a couple months now. Probably because they know unless we break regulations, we don't have any other choice but to go through them.
From what I've seen, most (if not all) of the price goes to publishers and your Neighborhood Evil Bookseller, NOT the authors. Prices need to come down. Publishers don't do creative work and I don't think deserve anywhere near what they're making.
Until then, we've put our book up on the class website as a free PDF download for students, both to spite the book publishers/sellers, and as a service to our students whom we know can't afford such high prices.... if any of you have published successfully and cheaply, how did you do it? It's a mess here. Maybe its just my university?
thanks for pointing that out! sure enough, it is there and easy to miss. I was in classic mode the whole time.
this made me curious though, so I went to my windows machine and opened up IE. It loaded the full version and... it almost looks exactly the same! I thought I had tried it once before, no wonder I never noticed the transition to classic mode! I don't see any practical difference. Maybe I just turned off the bling last time I used it though.
As an aside, I had to actually turn down the IE cookie protection from "high" in order for it to work. Makes me really proud of their security efforts. Glad hotmail is essentially my spam account these days.
As much as I hate anecdotal "evidence" for things, I can say that I just cleared my junk mail from a full Windows Live mail account (it was Hotmail until they forced me to move it over) just before I came to slashdot. In Firefox 3. No problems. I've never seen that message.
That being said, I also have SUSE, and it occurred to me perhaps there is some special deal going on there to allow it to work fine. But if not, I can't see any good reason to blame Mozilla or Microsoft; the bug was filed with Firefox 3 still in beta, perhaps it was an un-updated extension or the like interfering?
No kidding. I keep wondering if I missed some secret feature of the address bar in firefox < 3.0. As I recall, all it did was display previously-typed addresses. Now it displays previously-typed addresses AND bookmarked addresses in a little popup. How is that an absolutely stupid unnecessary change? I actually find it rather convenient, but maybe that's because I keep a lot of bookmarks.
If someone can explain what behavior I've been missing over the years that is now suddenly unusable, I'd really appreciate it; in fact, I'll join you in complaining. But until then, it just sounds like being afraid of any and all change.
If memory serves me back to a few years ago when I signed up for Gmail (back when it was invite only! haha. the good ol' days), the sign-up page had in big font something like "We do email differently!". So I'm not sure its fair to say they assume things too much and do what they want; from the beginning, they advertised the conversational email as a major feature that they were experimenting with (along with tagging and archiving instead of simply creating folders). Thus, you could fairly safely say that anyone that signed up for it was interested in the new interface. If you buy lots of cherry cola from a soft drink company, they're going to believe people like cherry cola and probably produce more. Same idea, at least to me, and I don't see how that's a wrong assumption to make.
That being said, it's popular enough now that there should probably be more customization options; but, maybe its a situation not often encountered? For instance, my Gmail is pretty good about sticking conversations together, so unless you tell them specifics on your problem, they may not even be aware it's a problem.
I definitely second that. Too much material is covered too quickly, with too much emphasis on memorizing lots of material instead of truly understanding a couple key concepts. Maybe the idea is that you'll have an introduction to lots of things so if you need a specific skill, you'll know where to look for more details.
But in practice, I find it hinders more than helps. If you don't have lots of practice with the few basics FIRST, all the other things you rush through later only get mixed up and confused with each other, making you waste time later unlearning things you thought you learned. Plus, memorizing lots of topics doesn't really allow the opportunity to apply basic concepts and stimulate creativity.
At least, that's how I felt. Even at the university, I always appreciated the professors that sacrificed a couple topics that were on the syllabus in order to spend more time solidifying important early concepts. That made it easy to go back and learn the things we skipped, and I felt confident the whole time. Meanwhile, I feel like the courses that rushed in order to cover everything listed in the syllabus/catalog are one big jumble that makes no sense and that I have very little handle on. Even if I understand it better than I think, that lack of confidence really hurts, and could easily have been alleviated with a little more in-class time.
You're right, it's mostly the program flow/control issues that are needed in programming. Most interesting problems in physics require computers to solve, and so a good understanding of LOGIC is needed; once you know how to iterate with loops and use if-thens, its somewhat trivial to do so in any language you see fit. After that, you can focus on numerical routines for integration, differentiation, etc. Once they understand the basics, helping them to learn to use libraries (GSL? keep with the open source!) to tackle more difficult problems may be the best for undergrads.
My university required an introductory software design course, which was one of those more theoretical things that covered the logic and design methods, and not so much a specific language. While not required, it was strongly suggested you then took introductory computational physics, which focused more on solving differential equations and setting up general problems, as well as little things to watch out for (preventing divide by zero, etc). Again, no specific language, and the professor even allowed you to use whatever language you wanted. FORTRAN (90/95) was the default, but if you had more C experience, that was ok too, for instance.
It was also required we get some UNIX/Linux experience (apparently most of the supercomputers they used ran Linux and so they felt it was nice for us to have some familiarity with alternate OSes), so we had a computer lab with some Red Hat machines we were required to compile code on and make scripts for. In fact, it was funny, we had to scp our programming code (= homework) to the prof's computer for review, so that was another skill we learned.
Those experiences and skills really come in handy a lot for me, and I'm glad we had that requirement. The numerical methods have come in handy for certain projects in my graduate courses. Somewhat off-topic, but that class was also my first experience with Linux, and after using it and seeing it wasn't hard to use, I got the itch to try it at home when Windows started flaking out. Also, colleagues of mine, when they got jobs at various research centers, were given laptops and said "Here, use ssh to get data", and so had we not had some experience, it may have been harder to start off and get used to.
We recently had a talk here with faculty at my university about better integrating this type of stuff into the curriculum, even starting with the very first mechanics course. There are interesting equations of motion for somewhat simple problems that are tough to solve by hand, so instead of simply finding Lagrangians and calling it quits, why not ask them to use numerical routines (integrate, invert a few matrices, etc.) to solve those equations and do some sort of animation of the motion? It was suggested we use Mathematica for this reason, apparently the new version 6.0 has nifty easy-to-use animation functions --- I haven't used it yet, but if that's the case, nothing is better for developing some intuition and understanding than seeing things happen real-time.
Besides Mathematica, other faculty use MATLAB and FORTRAN and C/C++ for their actual research, so if you had to choose some programming environment, those seem the most common to me, and thus probably the best choices. Even if Excel isn't a bad choice in principle, there are so many other environments that are more powerful that I can't really see a good reason to use it.
No kidding. I've installed Windows 3.1 -> Vista, and they're not that easy. Well, maybe once you get to the GUI section they're ok, but it first starts off with the DOS box with a terrible font and annoying blue background (I think even Vista had that if I recall!! WHY?!?!). The average person isn't going to know what any of that means, they'll just turn it off and call someone else to mess with it.
Also, I feel for the above poster for the driver issues, but the same happens on Windows, really. I just reinstalled on an older machine, and had to go one by one and find and install the proper drivers. Which isn't the easiest to do when Windows does not detect your mainstream NVIDIA/ATI card and you need to install drivers (the window to install the drivers is bigger than my resolution! who thought that was a good idea?). I realize I could have done slipstreaming and probably should have just done that this time (I've done it before), but will the average user know what that is or how to do it?
I think it's quite true that the only** thing preventing wide-spread Linux adoption at this point is lack of pre-installed Linux on mainstream computers (Dell, HP, whatever, although Dell just started so that's nice). Few manually install Windows or bothers with the drivers; you get a PC from a manufacturer that comes pre-installed with Windows with the correct drivers for all your devices... otherwise it would have many of the same problems a Linux install has. You get Linux pre-installed with the appropriate drivers, and it will be just as easy to use, or even easier.
**ok, so not only, but for 90% of computer users, its more than good enough.
I don't know that I'd call it boring though; it's the most exciting! The extremes are easy (well, maybe I should say "easy", or even better, "easier") to understand, but the middle ground is where the real action happens. The beautiful interplay between the two realms! I just went to a seminar today about new materials that exist in the... mesoscale I believe the term is? Anyway, in between large and small, and in that realm, there are a lot of crazy interactions that you can't simply neglect like you would in either extreme. It's a place that's full of life because of all those interactions, and I think will ultimately be a great way to help us choose the better models over the worse -- if a model still provides correct answers in these complex interactions, it must be much more on the right track. Anyway, I'm probably way off-topic but figured I'd put in my two cents.
From what I can tell with using KDE since 4.0.0, it appears KDE4 will be a nice balance once its fully implemented.
Icons and the taskbar and a "start menu" type thing will not go away, so if you prefer a more Windows-like interface, you still have it right there. There's also the work on a Mac-like bar, so people that don't want to change their habits from other OSes will still be able to use essentially the same interface as before.
However, the groundwork is being laid for departures from that; if you prefer, eventually you'll have a large library of Plasma apps to choose from, as well as many customization options. And that's just the desktop; I know KOffice was also experimenting with a new streamlined approach to documents, though I am unsure how much they're doing and how much they abandoned.
But that's the difference - you can now (or will, once it's finished and officially released) fully mess with the desktop, instead of only being able to change a few colors or behaviors of pretty much the same static desktop, as it was before. Keep the standard Windows model, or completely throw away the panel and start menu and set up little applets to do what you need, or anything in between; You choose. And I think that's a powerful thing, to give people that option - certainly a defining characteristic of free software.
Maybe the Windows GUI will eventually prove itself to still be the best; but depending on what people come up with in the next few years as Plasma matures, we may be discussing how we can't even imagine using a computer without a Plasma-esque GUI.:)
We had a secretary just a year ago or so that got a new laptop that only came with Works, so she would email out documents as Works files, which no one could open (even Office complains about it!).
Finally a few of us confronted her, saying we couldn't open her Works files, and we tried to get her OpenOffice to make it easier.
Her response was "Well, Works came with the computer, it's good enough and I don't want to go messing with it." As far as I know, she still uses it. UGH! At least she isn't secretary anymore.
That's a possibility, but I can say first-hand that text messages on mobile networks was how we all communicated after Hurricane Katrina, and that was an emergency if I ever saw one. Now maybe in a higher population city there may be problems...
To me, an XBox is the equivalent of an engineer's "work of art". I see nothing wrong with getting authors to sign their books (paper doesn't last forever), or artists to sign their paintings (the paint does all sorts of nasty things over time), musicians sign CDs (don't let CDs near small children, or leave in sunlight), so the development team signing their final product (which is quite a marvel technologically, even if it may not be functional for 100 years) seems reasonable to me.
Now, on the issue of whether he should have sent it or not, you're probably right in that he should have kept that one and bought a new one. But maybe he couldn't afford a new one at the moment and made an unwise decision.
Seriously. I went to a lecture series on evolution, and was rather disappointed upon leaving.
The speakers spent most of their time discussing why Intelligent Design is wrong, and getting into semi-religion-bashing. I heard nothing about any of the things that the summary to this article mentions, for instance, which was actually something I wanted to know more about. I'm not very familiar with all of the specific evidence myself (I'm not a biologist).
Now look -- as a scientist, I can completely respect and agree with the fact that ID is not science, for a multitude of reasons. But look at it from the point of view of someone "new" to science that was curious -- they showed up to an event, hoping to learn more about what evolution is and understand the "debate", and all they heard was how Creationism is wrong and how we need to fight religious groups and educate the people about the truth. "Educate with what?", that person will ask. "They haven't given any proof yet, and just seem to talk about how much they hate religion when they get together.". THAT is what the average person sees, and it doesn't really make scientists look good, and gives ammunition to the people that spread misinformation about evolution. Will that person ever go back to an evolution talk in order for us to clear up misconceptions? Probably not; forever, that person will now think "Wow, Evolutionists are crazy, I'm not going to that again.".
There's other issues of course, but the public image of an evolution scientist right now needs to be cleaned up before many will even bother to listen.
I had a chance to listen to talk by a guy involved in this just the other day. You're right about the first part; it is more about thinking. He said a big problem now is that, while they greatly appreciate being funded to build faster computers, there isn't enough storage space and especially *bandwidth* to deal with it!!! In other words, our networking infrastructure in the United States needs a massive upgrade, and so far no one seems to care. Congress will fund a new supercomputer every few years, but for some reason they don't see the need to invest in converting to fiber optics, for example. Part of the point of this project is to make people aware that we need to create infrastructure to handle all of this data flow if we want to progress.
I saw this on the firehose last night and it confused me then, it should have been edited.
The problem is not SP1, but rather an update for Windows Update/installation that is being installed in anticipation of SP1 next month. It's a required upgrade to run SP1, but it is not SP1 itself.
Your post (which by the way, I agree with) reminds me of another issue though that I have contemplated for some time and not been able to figure out -- the matter of information on making decisions.
While adults should be left to their own decisions for the most part, is it safe to assume that *everyone* has read all of the medical papers, scientific journals, safety instructions on a particular object? I do not see how this is possible, as I can barely keep up with all of the papers related to my field of research, let alone all of the other things being done on the planet. It's not a matter of I'm lazy or not willing to find it on my own, but simply that I *do not have the time* to wade through all of this research on whether or not a particular thing is a good idea for me to do or buy.
Thus comes my dilemma: do we assume everyone will find out about the results of this research and therefore have the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision, or do we push a bit harder for people to hear our message by forcing warning labels? I personally like the idea of a well-informed public (I know if chocolate pudding caused cancer, I would DEFINITELY want it reported immediately, which could potentially require government intervention as I imagine few pudding companies would want to put this on their box voluntarily), but I also realize this sort of thing has a huge potential for abuse (i.e., spreading misinformation and bias), and that perhaps some citizens will not care anyway or feel they are being picked on as a result.
You'd have to find a way of informing everyone in a clear unbiased manner (which removing bias from people is near impossible), while simultaneously not demonizing people for making what are ultimately personal decisions (which is also near impossible for many people). So yeah, I'm not sure how to balance that any better than the way we have right now -- which isn't always very balanced in itself.
I actually had made plans with a group of students at the university to go around my city to various high schools, giving physics demonstrations and talking about what sort of jobs are available in science. There was also talk of a mentoring sort of thing for students interested in science but that do not have the resources to learn more. It made me feel good, I was going to be volunteering to help my community! Exciting.
I inquired about how to contact teachers to do these demonstrations in science classes, and was told I could set up a meeting with this one outreach program representative. No big deal I thought. We made the appointment and I met with her. Well, I was given an hour-long meeting on how to fill out a stack of papers about who I was, what organization I was with, who authorized me, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to do it, what days of the week I proposed to give these presentations. It included authorizations for background checks at both the state and federal levels. Finally when I thought it was all over, she hands me a fingerprinting kit and says I have to go on my own time to a local company, get fingerprinted, and wait to get verified before I can finally start.
My group gave up our plans for demonstrations and meet a scientist day right after she left. That is completely ridiculous, a huge intrusion into our lives that doesn't need to exist. We work for the university physics department, you can verify that, what else do you really need to know? We wanted to come talk to a class during school hours about physics; it's not like I was planning "Physics Sleepover! No Parents Allowed!".
What I found more interesting than mathematical art was the music produced from differential equations and such.
I really wish I remember more details but a few years ago I saw a presentation by a mathematician in which he had a little program that solved some sort of equations. Grr, I'm going to hate myself now for not remembering. Well, regardless the details, it solved something and assigned the solution values specific notes/chords from a piano, so that whenever a value was obtained, the computer played that note. Thus, the time evolution gave a sequence of notes, and so he recorded this sequence.
He played a few excerpts, I tell you what, it sounded like Mozart or Beethoven. Well, certain parts you could pick up a very forced/electronic feel to it, but other parts glided so beautifully that it sounded like a master pianist was playing.
That was an incredible lecture. Perhaps anyone else knows what I speak of? I'd like to find out what program and equations were used, it was fascinating.
Still pictures are allowed as long as they do not show Olympic events Who copyrighted the Olympics?!? Why is it that I cannot take pictures of events and share them with friends if I am there? These freaking events have existed for centuries, how can you copyright that?!?!?!
Or is this a security issue? If it is, then they need to get over it. This is getting ridiculous.
Does the UK have the same curriculum as the rest of Europe? The states that make up the US have a pretty high amount of autonomy, so much that they are almost mini-countries (particularly Texas). It doesn't surprise me at all that the states wish to remain independent in this regard and set their own curricula.
I didn't mean to demand it; my point was more of a "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" attitude. Granted, my previous post probably did not come out as I intended, but that is what I meant.
Seeing all the tags of "don't give a fuck" and such just really upsets me and even scares me because of the lack of empathy. There's no reason to say things like that. Either be supportive or don't say anything. I'm sure you'll agree that supportive is at least better than "I don't care".
Sure I didn't know the guy, but what about the family? That's who *I* am sad for. My family has lost family members before and it doesn't matter how rich or poor, it's going to be painful for a while, and money won't cure that. Especially the will!! You're grieving and then have to jump through hoops to get the final arrangements taken care of. It's really not a fun time.
However, knowing others (even complete strangers!) sympathize and wish you the best *does* help a lot.
We need to support each other when times are tough. This doesn't mean you need to show up to the funeral and give a eulogy about him being awesome despite not knowing him, because that probably would be a bit creepy. But that doesn't mean you have the right to pretend like its not a big deal for some group of people out there. Show some respect.
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No, but I'm pretty sure it was proved that they are invariantly unequal under any Brand Name and Store You Buy Them At transformation. What a triumph!
I'm all for paying the authors for their time and effort and insight into a subject. The problem is, how much are the authors actually getting?
We're trying to get a small book published for our physics classes here. No big deal, its like 100 pages, and more of a workbook type thing to supplement class and the laboratories, so it need not be specially bound or anything. So our options for printing?
(1) university bookstore = make pathetic photocopies, sell it for 20000% what it cost to make the copies; they keep all profit, the authors and dept get nothing (university policy)
(2) real publishers = pay $50 in printing fees, $20 contract fee, this fee, that fee, and let them negotiate with our bookstore for appropriate shipping fees - no one even bothered asked what type of book it was, what we were looking for in terms of royalties, they just expected us to meet all of their demands. book will easily be at least $50-100 for students, which is unacceptable.
We sought independent local publishing, that would have cost $5-10 for a bound color copy (including shipping), and it seemed like a great deal. Only to be told by the university and bookstore we weren't allowed to. Why? I still don't know; the people that were supposed to "get back to you with some options" never called us, and have been avoiding our messages and phone calls for a couple months now. Probably because they know unless we break regulations, we don't have any other choice but to go through them.
From what I've seen, most (if not all) of the price goes to publishers and your Neighborhood Evil Bookseller, NOT the authors. Prices need to come down. Publishers don't do creative work and I don't think deserve anywhere near what they're making.
Until then, we've put our book up on the class website as a free PDF download for students, both to spite the book publishers/sellers, and as a service to our students whom we know can't afford such high prices. ... if any of you have published successfully and cheaply, how did you do it? It's a mess here. Maybe its just my university?
thanks for pointing that out! sure enough, it is there and easy to miss. I was in classic mode the whole time.
this made me curious though, so I went to my windows machine and opened up IE. It loaded the full version and... it almost looks exactly the same! I thought I had tried it once before, no wonder I never noticed the transition to classic mode! I don't see any practical difference. Maybe I just turned off the bling last time I used it though.
As an aside, I had to actually turn down the IE cookie protection from "high" in order for it to work. Makes me really proud of their security efforts. Glad hotmail is essentially my spam account these days.
As much as I hate anecdotal "evidence" for things, I can say that I just cleared my junk mail from a full Windows Live mail account (it was Hotmail until they forced me to move it over) just before I came to slashdot. In Firefox 3. No problems. I've never seen that message.
That being said, I also have SUSE, and it occurred to me perhaps there is some special deal going on there to allow it to work fine. But if not, I can't see any good reason to blame Mozilla or Microsoft; the bug was filed with Firefox 3 still in beta, perhaps it was an un-updated extension or the like interfering?
No kidding. I keep wondering if I missed some secret feature of the address bar in firefox < 3.0. As I recall, all it did was display previously-typed addresses. Now it displays previously-typed addresses AND bookmarked addresses in a little popup. How is that an absolutely stupid unnecessary change? I actually find it rather convenient, but maybe that's because I keep a lot of bookmarks.
If someone can explain what behavior I've been missing over the years that is now suddenly unusable, I'd really appreciate it; in fact, I'll join you in complaining. But until then, it just sounds like being afraid of any and all change.
If memory serves me back to a few years ago when I signed up for Gmail (back when it was invite only! haha. the good ol' days), the sign-up page had in big font something like "We do email differently!". So I'm not sure its fair to say they assume things too much and do what they want; from the beginning, they advertised the conversational email as a major feature that they were experimenting with (along with tagging and archiving instead of simply creating folders). Thus, you could fairly safely say that anyone that signed up for it was interested in the new interface. If you buy lots of cherry cola from a soft drink company, they're going to believe people like cherry cola and probably produce more. Same idea, at least to me, and I don't see how that's a wrong assumption to make.
That being said, it's popular enough now that there should probably be more customization options; but, maybe its a situation not often encountered? For instance, my Gmail is pretty good about sticking conversations together, so unless you tell them specifics on your problem, they may not even be aware it's a problem.
I definitely second that. Too much material is covered too quickly, with too much emphasis on memorizing lots of material instead of truly understanding a couple key concepts. Maybe the idea is that you'll have an introduction to lots of things so if you need a specific skill, you'll know where to look for more details.
But in practice, I find it hinders more than helps. If you don't have lots of practice with the few basics FIRST, all the other things you rush through later only get mixed up and confused with each other, making you waste time later unlearning things you thought you learned. Plus, memorizing lots of topics doesn't really allow the opportunity to apply basic concepts and stimulate creativity.
At least, that's how I felt. Even at the university, I always appreciated the professors that sacrificed a couple topics that were on the syllabus in order to spend more time solidifying important early concepts. That made it easy to go back and learn the things we skipped, and I felt confident the whole time. Meanwhile, I feel like the courses that rushed in order to cover everything listed in the syllabus/catalog are one big jumble that makes no sense and that I have very little handle on. Even if I understand it better than I think, that lack of confidence really hurts, and could easily have been alleviated with a little more in-class time.
You're right, it's mostly the program flow/control issues that are needed in programming. Most interesting problems in physics require computers to solve, and so a good understanding of LOGIC is needed; once you know how to iterate with loops and use if-thens, its somewhat trivial to do so in any language you see fit. After that, you can focus on numerical routines for integration, differentiation, etc. Once they understand the basics, helping them to learn to use libraries (GSL? keep with the open source!) to tackle more difficult problems may be the best for undergrads.
My university required an introductory software design course, which was one of those more theoretical things that covered the logic and design methods, and not so much a specific language. While not required, it was strongly suggested you then took introductory computational physics, which focused more on solving differential equations and setting up general problems, as well as little things to watch out for (preventing divide by zero, etc). Again, no specific language, and the professor even allowed you to use whatever language you wanted. FORTRAN (90/95) was the default, but if you had more C experience, that was ok too, for instance.
It was also required we get some UNIX/Linux experience (apparently most of the supercomputers they used ran Linux and so they felt it was nice for us to have some familiarity with alternate OSes), so we had a computer lab with some Red Hat machines we were required to compile code on and make scripts for. In fact, it was funny, we had to scp our programming code (= homework) to the prof's computer for review, so that was another skill we learned.
Those experiences and skills really come in handy a lot for me, and I'm glad we had that requirement. The numerical methods have come in handy for certain projects in my graduate courses. Somewhat off-topic, but that class was also my first experience with Linux, and after using it and seeing it wasn't hard to use, I got the itch to try it at home when Windows started flaking out. Also, colleagues of mine, when they got jobs at various research centers, were given laptops and said "Here, use ssh to get data", and so had we not had some experience, it may have been harder to start off and get used to.
We recently had a talk here with faculty at my university about better integrating this type of stuff into the curriculum, even starting with the very first mechanics course. There are interesting equations of motion for somewhat simple problems that are tough to solve by hand, so instead of simply finding Lagrangians and calling it quits, why not ask them to use numerical routines (integrate, invert a few matrices, etc.) to solve those equations and do some sort of animation of the motion? It was suggested we use Mathematica for this reason, apparently the new version 6.0 has nifty easy-to-use animation functions --- I haven't used it yet, but if that's the case, nothing is better for developing some intuition and understanding than seeing things happen real-time.
Besides Mathematica, other faculty use MATLAB and FORTRAN and C/C++ for their actual research, so if you had to choose some programming environment, those seem the most common to me, and thus probably the best choices. Even if Excel isn't a bad choice in principle, there are so many other environments that are more powerful that I can't really see a good reason to use it.
No kidding. I've installed Windows 3.1 -> Vista, and they're not that easy. Well, maybe once you get to the GUI section they're ok, but it first starts off with the DOS box with a terrible font and annoying blue background (I think even Vista had that if I recall!! WHY?!?!). The average person isn't going to know what any of that means, they'll just turn it off and call someone else to mess with it.
Also, I feel for the above poster for the driver issues, but the same happens on Windows, really. I just reinstalled on an older machine, and had to go one by one and find and install the proper drivers. Which isn't the easiest to do when Windows does not detect your mainstream NVIDIA/ATI card and you need to install drivers (the window to install the drivers is bigger than my resolution! who thought that was a good idea?). I realize I could have done slipstreaming and probably should have just done that this time (I've done it before), but will the average user know what that is or how to do it?
I think it's quite true that the only** thing preventing wide-spread Linux adoption at this point is lack of pre-installed Linux on mainstream computers (Dell, HP, whatever, although Dell just started so that's nice). Few manually install Windows or bothers with the drivers; you get a PC from a manufacturer that comes pre-installed with Windows with the correct drivers for all your devices... otherwise it would have many of the same problems a Linux install has. You get Linux pre-installed with the appropriate drivers, and it will be just as easy to use, or even easier.
**ok, so not only, but for 90% of computer users, its more than good enough.
I don't know that I'd call it boring though; it's the most exciting! The extremes are easy (well, maybe I should say "easy", or even better, "easier") to understand, but the middle ground is where the real action happens. The beautiful interplay between the two realms! I just went to a seminar today about new materials that exist in the ... mesoscale I believe the term is? Anyway, in between large and small, and in that realm, there are a lot of crazy interactions that you can't simply neglect like you would in either extreme. It's a place that's full of life because of all those interactions, and I think will ultimately be a great way to help us choose the better models over the worse -- if a model still provides correct answers in these complex interactions, it must be much more on the right track. Anyway, I'm probably way off-topic but figured I'd put in my two cents.
From what I can tell with using KDE since 4.0.0, it appears KDE4 will be a nice balance once its fully implemented.
:)
Icons and the taskbar and a "start menu" type thing will not go away, so if you prefer a more Windows-like interface, you still have it right there. There's also the work on a Mac-like bar, so people that don't want to change their habits from other OSes will still be able to use essentially the same interface as before.
However, the groundwork is being laid for departures from that; if you prefer, eventually you'll have a large library of Plasma apps to choose from, as well as many customization options. And that's just the desktop; I know KOffice was also experimenting with a new streamlined approach to documents, though I am unsure how much they're doing and how much they abandoned.
But that's the difference - you can now (or will, once it's finished and officially released) fully mess with the desktop, instead of only being able to change a few colors or behaviors of pretty much the same static desktop, as it was before. Keep the standard Windows model, or completely throw away the panel and start menu and set up little applets to do what you need, or anything in between; You choose. And I think that's a powerful thing, to give people that option - certainly a defining characteristic of free software.
Maybe the Windows GUI will eventually prove itself to still be the best; but depending on what people come up with in the next few years as Plasma matures, we may be discussing how we can't even imagine using a computer without a Plasma-esque GUI.
Not only that, but amazingly people still use it!
We had a secretary just a year ago or so that got a new laptop that only came with Works, so she would email out documents as Works files, which no one could open (even Office complains about it!).
Finally a few of us confronted her, saying we couldn't open her Works files, and we tried to get her OpenOffice to make it easier.
Her response was "Well, Works came with the computer, it's good enough and I don't want to go messing with it." As far as I know, she still uses it. UGH! At least she isn't secretary anymore.
That's a possibility, but I can say first-hand that text messages on mobile networks was how we all communicated after Hurricane Katrina, and that was an emergency if I ever saw one. Now maybe in a higher population city there may be problems...
I'm sure there were other prints, but only one was needed to prove the point -- that his fingerprints and therefore biometric security just got PWNED.
To me, an XBox is the equivalent of an engineer's "work of art". I see nothing wrong with getting authors to sign their books (paper doesn't last forever), or artists to sign their paintings (the paint does all sorts of nasty things over time), musicians sign CDs (don't let CDs near small children, or leave in sunlight), so the development team signing their final product (which is quite a marvel technologically, even if it may not be functional for 100 years) seems reasonable to me.
Now, on the issue of whether he should have sent it or not, you're probably right in that he should have kept that one and bought a new one. But maybe he couldn't afford a new one at the moment and made an unwise decision.
Seriously. I went to a lecture series on evolution, and was rather disappointed upon leaving.
The speakers spent most of their time discussing why Intelligent Design is wrong, and getting into semi-religion-bashing. I heard nothing about any of the things that the summary to this article mentions, for instance, which was actually something I wanted to know more about. I'm not very familiar with all of the specific evidence myself (I'm not a biologist).
Now look -- as a scientist, I can completely respect and agree with the fact that ID is not science, for a multitude of reasons. But look at it from the point of view of someone "new" to science that was curious -- they showed up to an event, hoping to learn more about what evolution is and understand the "debate", and all they heard was how Creationism is wrong and how we need to fight religious groups and educate the people about the truth. "Educate with what?", that person will ask. "They haven't given any proof yet, and just seem to talk about how much they hate religion when they get together.". THAT is what the average person sees, and it doesn't really make scientists look good, and gives ammunition to the people that spread misinformation about evolution. Will that person ever go back to an evolution talk in order for us to clear up misconceptions? Probably not; forever, that person will now think "Wow, Evolutionists are crazy, I'm not going to that again.".
There's other issues of course, but the public image of an evolution scientist right now needs to be cleaned up before many will even bother to listen.
I had a chance to listen to talk by a guy involved in this just the other day. You're right about the first part; it is more about thinking. He said a big problem now is that, while they greatly appreciate being funded to build faster computers, there isn't enough storage space and especially *bandwidth* to deal with it!!! In other words, our networking infrastructure in the United States needs a massive upgrade, and so far no one seems to care. Congress will fund a new supercomputer every few years, but for some reason they don't see the need to invest in converting to fiber optics, for example. Part of the point of this project is to make people aware that we need to create infrastructure to handle all of this data flow if we want to progress.
I saw this on the firehose last night and it confused me then, it should have been edited.
The problem is not SP1, but rather an update for Windows Update/installation that is being installed in anticipation of SP1 next month. It's a required upgrade to run SP1, but it is not SP1 itself.
Your post (which by the way, I agree with) reminds me of another issue though that I have contemplated for some time and not been able to figure out -- the matter of information on making decisions.
While adults should be left to their own decisions for the most part, is it safe to assume that *everyone* has read all of the medical papers, scientific journals, safety instructions on a particular object? I do not see how this is possible, as I can barely keep up with all of the papers related to my field of research, let alone all of the other things being done on the planet. It's not a matter of I'm lazy or not willing to find it on my own, but simply that I *do not have the time* to wade through all of this research on whether or not a particular thing is a good idea for me to do or buy.
Thus comes my dilemma: do we assume everyone will find out about the results of this research and therefore have the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision, or do we push a bit harder for people to hear our message by forcing warning labels? I personally like the idea of a well-informed public (I know if chocolate pudding caused cancer, I would DEFINITELY want it reported immediately, which could potentially require government intervention as I imagine few pudding companies would want to put this on their box voluntarily), but I also realize this sort of thing has a huge potential for abuse (i.e., spreading misinformation and bias), and that perhaps some citizens will not care anyway or feel they are being picked on as a result.
You'd have to find a way of informing everyone in a clear unbiased manner (which removing bias from people is near impossible), while simultaneously not demonizing people for making what are ultimately personal decisions (which is also near impossible for many people). So yeah, I'm not sure how to balance that any better than the way we have right now -- which isn't always very balanced in itself.
I actually had made plans with a group of students at the university to go around my city to various high schools, giving physics demonstrations and talking about what sort of jobs are available in science. There was also talk of a mentoring sort of thing for students interested in science but that do not have the resources to learn more. It made me feel good, I was going to be volunteering to help my community! Exciting.
I inquired about how to contact teachers to do these demonstrations in science classes, and was told I could set up a meeting with this one outreach program representative. No big deal I thought. We made the appointment and I met with her. Well, I was given an hour-long meeting on how to fill out a stack of papers about who I was, what organization I was with, who authorized me, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to do it, what days of the week I proposed to give these presentations. It included authorizations for background checks at both the state and federal levels. Finally when I thought it was all over, she hands me a fingerprinting kit and says I have to go on my own time to a local company, get fingerprinted, and wait to get verified before I can finally start.
My group gave up our plans for demonstrations and meet a scientist day right after she left. That is completely ridiculous, a huge intrusion into our lives that doesn't need to exist. We work for the university physics department, you can verify that, what else do you really need to know? We wanted to come talk to a class during school hours about physics; it's not like I was planning "Physics Sleepover! No Parents Allowed!".
What I found more interesting than mathematical art was the music produced from differential equations and such.
I really wish I remember more details but a few years ago I saw a presentation by a mathematician in which he had a little program that solved some sort of equations. Grr, I'm going to hate myself now for not remembering. Well, regardless the details, it solved something and assigned the solution values specific notes/chords from a piano, so that whenever a value was obtained, the computer played that note. Thus, the time evolution gave a sequence of notes, and so he recorded this sequence.
He played a few excerpts, I tell you what, it sounded like Mozart or Beethoven. Well, certain parts you could pick up a very forced/electronic feel to it, but other parts glided so beautifully that it sounded like a master pianist was playing.
That was an incredible lecture. Perhaps anyone else knows what I speak of? I'd like to find out what program and equations were used, it was fascinating.
Or is this a security issue? If it is, then they need to get over it. This is getting ridiculous.
Does the UK have the same curriculum as the rest of Europe? The states that make up the US have a pretty high amount of autonomy, so much that they are almost mini-countries (particularly Texas). It doesn't surprise me at all that the states wish to remain independent in this regard and set their own curricula.
I didn't mean to demand it; my point was more of a "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" attitude. Granted, my previous post probably did not come out as I intended, but that is what I meant.
Seeing all the tags of "don't give a fuck" and such just really upsets me and even scares me because of the lack of empathy. There's no reason to say things like that. Either be supportive or don't say anything. I'm sure you'll agree that supportive is at least better than "I don't care".
Sure I didn't know the guy, but what about the family? That's who *I* am sad for. My family has lost family members before and it doesn't matter how rich or poor, it's going to be painful for a while, and money won't cure that. Especially the will!! You're grieving and then have to jump through hoops to get the final arrangements taken care of. It's really not a fun time.
However, knowing others (even complete strangers!) sympathize and wish you the best *does* help a lot.
We need to support each other when times are tough. This doesn't mean you need to show up to the funeral and give a eulogy about him being awesome despite not knowing him, because that probably would be a bit creepy. But that doesn't mean you have the right to pretend like its not a big deal for some group of people out there. Show some respect.