Saw one at the air show in Rhode Island last year. The first thing you notice is how damn loud the thing is. Compared to an F-15, F-16 or F/A-18's I've seen at shows, it was just painful, not uncomfortable. Even good earplugs didn't really help - you really need substantial ear protection, and even then you're likely to feel it in your skull. Aside from that, the big thing I noticed was how rapidly it could change speed and its maneuverability. Compared to the older aircraft it's like watching a superball bounce around. If you had no idea that the plane existed and you saw it at night in the sky at a distance, you'd never believe it was an aircraft. The thrust vectoring looked really effective. You don't have to know a lot about aircraft to see the difference, either - you can watch an F-22 after seeing another demonstration and the difference is obvious.
After a massive, high-pressure project, isn't a certain amount of turnover expected? No matter what the outcome, I'd think. Some folks burn out, or just get tired of it. Maybe they feel like they took too much of the blame (or someone else the credit), or now that the project is over the new day-to-day tasks (or new projects) don't interest them the same way. Also, they've added to their resume, and might be very desirable to other employers.
If you talked to CIOs at schools and IT staff, they've hated Blackboard for years. The software was often junk. Early versions of 6 had significant gradebook problems, and there were a handful of security problems that were just mind-blowing. Of course, they mark their release notes with the list of fixes "proprietary and confidential", which never wins you friends. No, in addition to the scummy salespeople (an especially weasel-like variety) and ridiculous, ever-increasing prices (often mid-year, but late enough to make it hard to jump ship), the support was just terrible. Really, really bad. They didn't really know the software, didn't know the platforms. Expected you to actually build multiple test environments to replicate the problem (if the problem was between even point releases) for them to remotely connect to - they didn't have internal access to test system (this was in the 6.x timeframe). Also, they'd come out with minor (or not-so-minor) releases in mid-semester and tell you that they were required updates to get support. You can't upgrade an LMS in mid-semester at most institutions. Point releases that makes major changes to the database schema and structure are less than attractive, either.
A number of small and medium sized schools are going to Moodle and customizing it for their environment (for example, incorporating home-grown services into it, etc). Moodle's been growing by leaps and bounds the last year or two, and I expect it's going to keep growing. Sakai's harder to implement, unless you have a herd of Java developers at your disposal. Faculty always want significant local customization.
Not this year, they're pretty far off - a month or so? Perhaps a result of this year's Hebrew calender having an extra month to prevent drift? So, essentially, yeah, but it seems like the early Church felt the need to create their own calculation so it didn't look like they were just copying the Jews. Awkward . . .
Wow. So how long before it's illegal to turn your TV off? Max Headroom is starting to look creepily accurate in some ways. Cable execs will know if you're "stealing" the shows by getting up to get food during the commercials. Maybe they can bill us. On the flip side is ratings - they can tell if there's someone in front of the TV or nobody watching. Overall, the networks and cable channels aren't going to like that . . . Hey, and once this is widespread, we can all be required to sit for our daily government "information" programming! Wow! And if they know thie distance, they might even be able to figure out details like approximate weight!
Yeah - basically, as worried as anyone was about fascism and sympathizers in the UK in the years leading up to WWII or the dislike of Thatcher among many, it seems like it's going to end up being the supposedly leftist Labor party along with the bureaucrats who are going to really move the police state forward. Remember, folks, they're just protecting you, the Queen's loyal Subjects. And before anyone claims that "police state" is harsh, remember that tailoring a society to the needs of the police is, in fact, a police state.
I can assume that it generally assumes that correlation implies causation and often connects completely dissimilar ideas, just because it hears about them both relatively close together, time-wise? So, basically, it works as well as any other AI so far.
Push email is huge. And until you've used "real" push email, it's kind of hard to appreciate just how cool it actually is. RIM's integration with corporate IM clients is pretty slick as well, as is the direct device-to-device Blackberry messaging (based on device PIN). The latter is good with folks outside your organization, or in the organization if your Blackberry Enterprise Server (or internal network, or organization's internet connection) is down for some reason.
Sure, encrypted connection, but no mention of on-device encryption, which RIM supports and your administrator can require through policy. So that's not going to be a big plus for corporate and government. Then there's the fact that on contract pricing, an organization can get a Blackberry Curve with BES support (some of the discounted consumer units don't support the Blackberry Enterprise Server) for under $100. Are they going to support central logging of IM client messages to/from the device? Again, something RIM supports with a BES - along with corporate IM client integration. Useful if you have a regulatory requirement to log messages.
Because you don't have to change, or have two sets, of business signs, train tables, bus schedules, etc? Seriously, do you expect everyone to do a "ok, now we're going to change when we open" rather than changing (on one day) how we account for what time it is? It's actually easier to change the clocks. Remembering that TV schedules are now shifted off by an hour seems unlikely as well. Also, while daylight savings can be mandated by law, telling everyone to open an hour earlier via legislation would be pretty difficult to do. What makes it more reasonable is the real-world inconvenience of having to change every bit of printed material, all the signs, websites, phone greetings, etc.
Or, I know, we can just tell everyone to piss off entirely and use UTC for schedules, opening and closing times, etc.
Now, having been on the former "attraction", I'd quibble about how attractive it really was. It actually sucked. Sort of like the Disney version of "The Wind in the Willows" sucked. Luckily, in those pre-video days, I actually hadn't seen the lousy movie. So I went on the ride, spending the whole time wondering "what does this have to do with the book?" And, having to use a C ticket or whatever it was to sit in a stupid car and see devils and other junk painted on plywood flats was pretty lousy. Even in 1975.
Yeah, partially because it's kind of a reach - refining design with a goal in mind isn't the same as the random outcome of selective pressures on organisms causing genetic traits to be selected for or against in a population over time. There's no notion of progress in the idea of evolution through natural selection. On the other hand, humans refining canoe design actually IS intelligent design. It's not random. And people are lazy, in a good way. Why change something that works, especially something you need for survival? The only reason stuff changes as much as it does in the west now is that modern consumer culture is driving it.
You can change your behavior, you can't change your genetic makeup. That's why culture, language and the technology that goes along with it gives humans such an advantage.
One reason this sort of thing makes people uncomfortable is that it's hard do this sort of work without reminding people of folks like Herbert Spencer and his (pre-Darwin) attempt to explain how complex systems evolved. TSpencer thought there was a notion of universal progress and a scientific basis for morality, and thought humanitarians merely interfered with the struggle between (or within) societies.
No, I got it. It would be hard not to - I think I've heard a "hot air in Washington DC" joke about, oh, four or five times a week for the past 35 years. But the power situation in the DC area is particularly bad, so I figured I'd point out that it's a lousy place to try build a data center.
If only - there's a huge energy capacity problem in the DC area, including surrounding parts of Maryland and Virginia. They're having trouble providing enough electricity for the NSA, among others.
The discounts aren't as good. If you're an educational institution, you can usually negotiate an equivalent machine from Lenovo (or IBM in the past) for substantially less (hundreds of dollars) than you can from Apple, including warranty cost. But that's not a "public" sale price. Apple's more on the "standard discount" side of things - they don't even like discounting for volume. Also, Thinkpad Protection kicks the Apple warranty's rear. Four years, accidental damage (including screen), and it's an international warranty, so you can get the thing fixed overseas. Great for a student on a semester abroad.
I always had good luck with the Wico ball joystick. It was easy to cradle a bit in your non-controlling hand, and with a button on top, you didn't need to use the big, red button on the base. With the ball, it was easy to actually invert your hand, use a lot less pressure, and use your thumb for the "fire" button on the ball. Also, the wico joystick bases were solid enough that you could usually keep them flat on a table without too much effort.
The Lenovo sales guys apparently want a version of this using a standard hard drive - they think it'll appeal to educational customers, among others. Should be interesting to see if they actually do it.
It should be. Other recent Lenovo Thinkpads or tablets have been fine. We've bought a bunch. And don't forget the Thinkpad has an easily-replaceable battery, and there's an option to put a second battery in the unit, in place of the optical drive, I think (that might've changed - I saw the details in a briefing last November / December).
Because with this, you can just put them on the roof! Under the solar panels! Oh . . . wait, no. On top of the solar panels! No, that won't work either . . .
Seriously, though, if it actually worked, it might be an alternative in a spot that gets enough rain / regular cloud cover to reduce the attractiveness of solar. I guess.
Actually, it isn't clear it's genetic. Might be partially developmental - possibly prenatal, but not entirely genetic. A lot of the high-profile studies claiming to have found something concrete don't seem to have held up well.
In terms of why we should stick around, have you ever seen how a workplace consisting of entirely women can get really unpleasant? A lot of women hate it. My wife's worked at a couple of places like that, and she comments that it's like they never left high school - cliques, gossip, backstabbing, etc. Instead of just doing their jobs, there's a tendency to try to intrude into everyone else's personal business, etc. It drives her nuts. Anyone who thinks that men are the source of all problems ought to take a look at a large group of women will treat each other, given the chance. Trust me, there's never going to be an all-female utopia. Anyone who thinks that isn't giving women enough credit for being human - they're just as flawed as men.
If not actually protected. There have been situations where sites critical of the Russian government have had some pretty major DoS attacks launched against them. Why have the government do it when a gang you're ignoring will do it for you with the merest hint from some official? They do seem to care about plausible undeniability, at least to spare the sensibilities of Western Europe.
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Saw one at the air show in Rhode Island last year. The first thing you notice is how damn loud the thing is. Compared to an F-15, F-16 or F/A-18's I've seen at shows, it was just painful, not uncomfortable. Even good earplugs didn't really help - you really need substantial ear protection, and even then you're likely to feel it in your skull. Aside from that, the big thing I noticed was how rapidly it could change speed and its maneuverability. Compared to the older aircraft it's like watching a superball bounce around. If you had no idea that the plane existed and you saw it at night in the sky at a distance, you'd never believe it was an aircraft. The thrust vectoring looked really effective. You don't have to know a lot about aircraft to see the difference, either - you can watch an F-22 after seeing another demonstration and the difference is obvious.
After a massive, high-pressure project, isn't a certain amount of turnover expected? No matter what the outcome, I'd think. Some folks burn out, or just get tired of it. Maybe they feel like they took too much of the blame (or someone else the credit), or now that the project is over the new day-to-day tasks (or new projects) don't interest them the same way. Also, they've added to their resume, and might be very desirable to other employers.
Geez, and here I was thinking it was 10 with just a little bit extra.
Happens there . . .
A number of small and medium sized schools are going to Moodle and customizing it for their environment (for example, incorporating home-grown services into it, etc). Moodle's been growing by leaps and bounds the last year or two, and I expect it's going to keep growing. Sakai's harder to implement, unless you have a herd of Java developers at your disposal. Faculty always want significant local customization.
Not this year, they're pretty far off - a month or so? Perhaps a result of this year's Hebrew calender having an extra month to prevent drift? So, essentially, yeah, but it seems like the early Church felt the need to create their own calculation so it didn't look like they were just copying the Jews. Awkward . . .
Wow. So how long before it's illegal to turn your TV off? Max Headroom is starting to look creepily accurate in some ways. Cable execs will know if you're "stealing" the shows by getting up to get food during the commercials. Maybe they can bill us. On the flip side is ratings - they can tell if there's someone in front of the TV or nobody watching. Overall, the networks and cable channels aren't going to like that . . . Hey, and once this is widespread, we can all be required to sit for our daily government "information" programming! Wow! And if they know thie distance, they might even be able to figure out details like approximate weight!
Yeah - basically, as worried as anyone was about fascism and sympathizers in the UK in the years leading up to WWII or the dislike of Thatcher among many, it seems like it's going to end up being the supposedly leftist Labor party along with the bureaucrats who are going to really move the police state forward. Remember, folks, they're just protecting you, the Queen's loyal Subjects. And before anyone claims that "police state" is harsh, remember that tailoring a society to the needs of the police is, in fact, a police state.
I can assume that it generally assumes that correlation implies causation and often connects completely dissimilar ideas, just because it hears about them both relatively close together, time-wise? So, basically, it works as well as any other AI so far.
Push email is huge. And until you've used "real" push email, it's kind of hard to appreciate just how cool it actually is. RIM's integration with corporate IM clients is pretty slick as well, as is the direct device-to-device Blackberry messaging (based on device PIN). The latter is good with folks outside your organization, or in the organization if your Blackberry Enterprise Server (or internal network, or organization's internet connection) is down for some reason.
Sure, encrypted connection, but no mention of on-device encryption, which RIM supports and your administrator can require through policy. So that's not going to be a big plus for corporate and government. Then there's the fact that on contract pricing, an organization can get a Blackberry Curve with BES support (some of the discounted consumer units don't support the Blackberry Enterprise Server) for under $100. Are they going to support central logging of IM client messages to/from the device? Again, something RIM supports with a BES - along with corporate IM client integration. Useful if you have a regulatory requirement to log messages.
Or, I know, we can just tell everyone to piss off entirely and use UTC for schedules, opening and closing times, etc.
Now, having been on the former "attraction", I'd quibble about how attractive it really was. It actually sucked. Sort of like the Disney version of "The Wind in the Willows" sucked. Luckily, in those pre-video days, I actually hadn't seen the lousy movie. So I went on the ride, spending the whole time wondering "what does this have to do with the book?" And, having to use a C ticket or whatever it was to sit in a stupid car and see devils and other junk painted on plywood flats was pretty lousy. Even in 1975.
when you get sued by a toothpick in a purple doily.
You can change your behavior, you can't change your genetic makeup. That's why culture, language and the technology that goes along with it gives humans such an advantage.
One reason this sort of thing makes people uncomfortable is that it's hard do this sort of work without reminding people of folks like Herbert Spencer and his (pre-Darwin) attempt to explain how complex systems evolved. TSpencer thought there was a notion of universal progress and a scientific basis for morality, and thought humanitarians merely interfered with the struggle between (or within) societies.
No, I got it. It would be hard not to - I think I've heard a "hot air in Washington DC" joke about, oh, four or five times a week for the past 35 years. But the power situation in the DC area is particularly bad, so I figured I'd point out that it's a lousy place to try build a data center.
If only - there's a huge energy capacity problem in the DC area, including surrounding parts of Maryland and Virginia. They're having trouble providing enough electricity for the NSA, among others.
The discounts aren't as good. If you're an educational institution, you can usually negotiate an equivalent machine from Lenovo (or IBM in the past) for substantially less (hundreds of dollars) than you can from Apple, including warranty cost. But that's not a "public" sale price. Apple's more on the "standard discount" side of things - they don't even like discounting for volume. Also, Thinkpad Protection kicks the Apple warranty's rear. Four years, accidental damage (including screen), and it's an international warranty, so you can get the thing fixed overseas. Great for a student on a semester abroad.
I always had good luck with the Wico ball joystick. It was easy to cradle a bit in your non-controlling hand, and with a button on top, you didn't need to use the big, red button on the base. With the ball, it was easy to actually invert your hand, use a lot less pressure, and use your thumb for the "fire" button on the ball. Also, the wico joystick bases were solid enough that you could usually keep them flat on a table without too much effort.
The Lenovo sales guys apparently want a version of this using a standard hard drive - they think it'll appeal to educational customers, among others. Should be interesting to see if they actually do it.
It should be. Other recent Lenovo Thinkpads or tablets have been fine. We've bought a bunch. And don't forget the Thinkpad has an easily-replaceable battery, and there's an option to put a second battery in the unit, in place of the optical drive, I think (that might've changed - I saw the details in a briefing last November / December).
And built it just off-site. That way, they could have included something like an Orgasmatron without actually making anyone angry at Disney.
Seriously, though, if it actually worked, it might be an alternative in a spot that gets enough rain / regular cloud cover to reduce the attractiveness of solar. I guess.
In terms of why we should stick around, have you ever seen how a workplace consisting of entirely women can get really unpleasant? A lot of women hate it. My wife's worked at a couple of places like that, and she comments that it's like they never left high school - cliques, gossip, backstabbing, etc. Instead of just doing their jobs, there's a tendency to try to intrude into everyone else's personal business, etc. It drives her nuts. Anyone who thinks that men are the source of all problems ought to take a look at a large group of women will treat each other, given the chance. Trust me, there's never going to be an all-female utopia. Anyone who thinks that isn't giving women enough credit for being human - they're just as flawed as men.
If not actually protected. There have been situations where sites critical of the Russian government have had some pretty major DoS attacks launched against them. Why have the government do it when a gang you're ignoring will do it for you with the merest hint from some official? They do seem to care about plausible undeniability, at least to spare the sensibilities of Western Europe.