Not to mention the bulkiness of coal means much more has to be mined and transported than uranium. Even at a low rate, mining and rail accidents add up.
Its a given that many students and even professionals with take shortcuts. Professors are somewhat lazy and just ask for the finished paper to be turned in at the end of the term crunch. They should request more immediate products such as outlines and reference lists at earlier times. Or have students critue a single source. Or have students re-write other student's papers. Of course, all these modified methods can be cheated, but a more energetic professor could keep one step ahead.
Another method picking of speed is called "active learning". Something as simple as pop-quiz questions in the middle of lectures and using audience voting gizmos fro Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Or more involved web-based learning. More students will pay attention in lectures if a significant fraction of the grade is the pop-quiz. Of course students will find ways to cheat on pop-quizes too.
MIT switched its freshman physics to an active learning format, mainly to help reduce the 12% failure rate in this required course. You had brains who could breeze through high school classes suddenly unable to cope with the discipline of a college course. It three years to figure out the best techniques of active learning and the new course is much more expensive to teach. However the flunk was cut by 2/3rds. Plus professors in advanced courses are more happy with the stronger physics foundation.
This is pretty common on slashdot to present old material as new. Many techies haven't studied much history- in general, or their own fields. As George Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
I think of Republicans as blue-bloods and Democrats as leftist reds.
A couple elections ago TV networks started using the opposite convention in their maps and the colors stuck. Now people use these map colors as a metaphore for national sentiment.
I read some comprehensive article on "transparent concrete", probably the NY Times Sunday Magazine, but cant locate the reference. There are several related articles on Google. Concrete is seeing a resurgence as a decorative material, i.e. wall and floor coverings. Theres many ways to modify it to have more attractive decorative properties if you willing to sacrifice some structural strength. Concrete is inexpensive and easy to manipulate.
A more accurate term is translucent concrete. One guy embeds perpendicular optical fibers so some external sunlight gets through. There are other techniques too.
Lots of scary things on the horizon that could have more of an effect than faster computers---
(1) Baby boomers become a drag on the economy after they retire, instead of a productive force: Imagine all of these boomers selling their retirement stocks to live rather than saving money. Europe and China had a postwar baby boom too.
(2) Cheap tech ends: You can only shrink circuits a few more times before hitting atoms. However, we've already had a preview of tech decline comparing the 2000's to the 1990's.
(3) Cheap energy ends: People think we'll run out of cheap petroleum sometime. It could be this year or twenty years from now. Then then stagfation of the 1970s may repeat.
(4) Escalation of the terror war: Perhaps they may succeed killing or maiming hundreds of thousands of Americans next time. This will drastically change laws and the economy.
(5) All of the above! I dont event want to think of it.
Ted could have used the "dont drive across bridges" list in 1969. Then he might have beat Nixon in 1972 and history would have been different. No Watergate followed by two timid presidents.
Disks in my area can be had for as little as 25 cents per gigabyte. Presuming a user actually uses the full two gigs, ad revenues would probably pay the $0.50 in a short time.
Google correctly predicted the opening IPO price range at $135. (It peaked at $142.) People and institutions flooded the auction with low ball offers and negative publicity. The IPO buyers who flipped immediately made a good profit. The Google employees will still make a good profit. The company Google gets screwed by only realizing 60% of the opening IPO price.
The hottest parts of rentry in both the Terran and Martian atmosphere happen when it is much thinner than at the Martian surface. This is partly due to that the craft id moving at orbital velocities 10-20 the speed of sound. The Martian probes all had entry heat shields.
You just open an account with a stockbroker on the web.
Low volume traders will have to pay a commission
of $20 - $30 per trade. Generally commissions are
the same whether buying one share to or an "even lot" of 100 shares. People tend to trade in 100s to minimize commissions.
High volume and/or high account balance traders can get commissions below $10 at some brokerages.
Probably the number one factor in succeeding in education is the expectation and interest of your parents; not your family wealth. Many immigrants were poor, but expect their children to graduate from high school and go to college or even professional school. One recent large ethnic group has a strong work ethic and expects kids to contribute to the family bottom as soon as they qualify for work. Hence they have a 40% dropout rate.
I remember many attempts in the USA to offer "less computer for less money". The most famous was the IBM PC Jr in the 1980s with the really crappy keyboard and minimal expandibility. One has to offer a computer with most of the capability of existing models. With prices halving every two years, this is not too hard to do. Thus we see the gradual ratcheting down of computer prices without much degradation of capability. Its the higher end computer that give more speed or storage for more bucks.
If the computer is perceived as a means to get ahead in the highly competative education market, many families will sacrifice then. I dont want to sound stereotypical, but many of the Asian cultures value education much more than Americans. People will pay a considewrable amount for private schools, Saturday schools, summer camps, etc.
IRODORI six-colorn display at SIGGRAPH
on
RGB to become RGBCMY
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Last week in the emerging technology section of SIGGRAPH a company or process called IRODORI was demoing a six-color projection system. (I could not find a reference on Google or www.siggraph.org.) When side-by-side with a conventional three-color you saw dramatic differences. Conventional is like looking at the world with wax-paper taped over your eyes. They claimed that conventional systems only covers about 55% of the CIE color chart, while they get over 90% color space. They bootstrap off of two conventional three-color projection systems. They put in different color filters and add special color separation software.
Most people "remember" only a tiny fraction of their sensations and thoughts. For example the famous saying "what did you eat for breakfast 30 days ago?
If we could figure out how mimic what we select to remember, then we could probably fit on terabytes of storage.
When I was a victim of check theft- the attempts were very crude and successful. For example, completely alein signatures, misspellings, riduculous check sequence numbers. The police and bank didnt care, but just ate the loss.
There is some debate about potential fusion accidents and radiactive byproducts in a fairly balanced article here.
I remember similar claims about "cheap and clean" fission energy in the 1950s which turned out to be neither in practice. I'm not a Luddite, but we do have to anticipate problems.
The claims that workable fusion is just around the corner have been made for the past 40 years. The experiements have become multi-billion dollars- too expension for any individual country. Lasers were supposed to be the breakthough technology.
In the Southern California Fry's ads, flash is going for $98 / gigabyte, while cheapest DRAM is $129 / gigabyte. DRAM seems to have been stuck in the $80 to $150 / gigabyte range the past three years, while flash has fallen 75%. Flash used to be four times the cost of DRAM, but is now slightly cheaper.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention the bulkiness of coal means much more has to be mined and transported than uranium. Even at a low rate, mining and rail accidents add up.
I've heard of people starting to do this in Asia, particularly since bandwidths have increased recently.
A penny or tenth of a cent would be unnoticeable to the average email user, but would break the spammer's bank.
Its a given that many students and even professionals with take shortcuts. Professors are somewhat lazy and just ask for the finished paper to be turned in at the end of the term crunch. They should request more immediate products such as outlines and reference lists at earlier times. Or have students critue a single source. Or have students re-write other student's papers. Of course, all these modified methods can be cheated, but a more energetic professor could keep one step ahead.
Another method picking of speed is called "active learning". Something as simple as pop-quiz questions in the middle of lectures and using audience voting gizmos fro Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Or more involved web-based learning. More students will pay attention in lectures if a significant fraction of the grade is the pop-quiz. Of course students will find ways to cheat on pop-quizes too.
MIT switched its freshman physics to an active learning format, mainly to help reduce the 12% failure rate in this required course. You had brains who could breeze through high school classes suddenly unable to cope with the discipline of a college course. It three years to figure out the best techniques of active learning and the new course is much more expensive to teach. However the flunk was cut by 2/3rds. Plus professors in advanced courses are more happy with the stronger physics foundation.
This is pretty common on slashdot to present old material as new. Many techies haven't studied much history- in general, or their own fields. As George Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
I think of Republicans as blue-bloods and Democrats as leftist reds.
A couple elections ago TV networks started using the opposite convention in their maps and the colors stuck. Now people use these map colors as a metaphore for national sentiment.
I read some comprehensive article on "transparent concrete", probably the NY Times Sunday Magazine, but cant locate the reference. There are several related articles on Google. Concrete is seeing a resurgence as a decorative material, i.e. wall and floor coverings. Theres many ways to modify it to have more attractive decorative properties if you willing to sacrifice some structural strength. Concrete is inexpensive and easy to manipulate.
A more accurate term is translucent concrete. One guy embeds perpendicular optical fibers so some external sunlight gets through. There are other techniques too.
Lots of scary things on the horizon that could have more of an effect than faster computers---
(1) Baby boomers become a drag on the economy after they retire, instead of a productive force: Imagine all of these boomers selling their retirement stocks to live rather than saving money. Europe and China had a postwar baby boom too.
(2) Cheap tech ends: You can only shrink circuits a few more times before hitting atoms. However, we've already had a preview of tech decline comparing the 2000's to the 1990's.
(3) Cheap energy ends: People think we'll run out of cheap petroleum sometime. It could be this year or twenty years from now. Then then stagfation of the 1970s may repeat.
(4) Escalation of the terror war: Perhaps they may succeed killing or maiming hundreds of thousands of Americans next time. This will drastically change laws and the economy.
(5) All of the above! I dont event want to think of it.
Ted could have used the "dont drive across bridges" list in 1969. Then he might have beat Nixon in 1972 and history would have been different. No Watergate followed by two timid presidents.
(Same week as first manned moon landing.)
This future sounds similar to the Jetsons, but with living in the air.
Disks in my area can be had for as little as 25 cents per gigabyte. Presuming a user actually uses the full two gigs, ad revenues would probably pay the $0.50 in a short time.
Google correctly predicted the opening IPO price range at $135. (It peaked at $142.) People and institutions flooded the auction with low ball offers and negative publicity. The IPO buyers who flipped immediately made a good profit. The Google employees will still make a good profit. The company Google gets screwed by only realizing 60% of the opening IPO price.
The hottest parts of rentry in both the Terran and Martian atmosphere happen when it is much thinner than at the Martian surface. This is partly due to that the craft id moving at orbital velocities 10-20 the speed of sound. The Martian probes all had entry heat shields.
If I attach ten thousand or so to a lawn chair, and fly into space twice, then maybe win the $10M X-Prize!
You just open an account with a stockbroker on the web. Low volume traders will have to pay a commission of $20 - $30 per trade. Generally commissions are the same whether buying one share to or an "even lot" of 100 shares. People tend to trade in 100s to minimize commissions. High volume and/or high account balance traders can get commissions below $10 at some brokerages.
Sounds like a market for a new product!
Probably the number one factor in succeeding in education is the expectation and interest of your parents; not your family wealth. Many immigrants were poor, but expect their children to graduate from high school and go to college or even professional school. One recent large ethnic group has a strong work ethic and expects kids to contribute to the family bottom as soon as they qualify for work. Hence they have a 40% dropout rate.
I remember many attempts in the USA to offer "less computer for less money". The most famous was the IBM PC Jr in the 1980s with the really crappy keyboard and minimal expandibility. One has to offer a computer with most of the capability of existing models. With prices halving every two years, this is not too hard to do. Thus we see the gradual ratcheting down of computer prices without much degradation of capability. Its the higher end computer that give more speed or storage for more bucks.
If the computer is perceived as a means to get ahead in the highly competative education market, many families will sacrifice then. I dont want to sound stereotypical, but many of the Asian cultures value education much more than Americans. People will pay a considewrable amount for private schools, Saturday schools, summer camps, etc.
Last week in the emerging technology section of SIGGRAPH a company or process called IRODORI was demoing a six-color projection system. (I could not find a reference on Google or www.siggraph.org.) When side-by-side with a conventional three-color you saw dramatic differences. Conventional is like looking at the world with wax-paper taped over your eyes. They claimed that conventional systems only covers about 55% of the CIE color chart, while they get over 90% color space. They bootstrap off of two conventional three-color projection systems. They put in different color filters and add special color separation software.
Most people "remember" only a tiny fraction of their sensations and thoughts. For example the famous saying "what did you eat for breakfast 30 days ago?
If we could figure out how mimic what we select to remember, then we could probably fit on terabytes of storage.
When I was a victim of check theft- the attempts were very crude and successful. For example, completely alein signatures, misspellings, riduculous check sequence numbers. The police and bank didnt care, but just ate the loss.
There is some debate about potential fusion accidents and radiactive byproducts in a fairly balanced article here. I remember similar claims about "cheap and clean" fission energy in the 1950s which turned out to be neither in practice. I'm not a Luddite, but we do have to anticipate problems.
The claims that workable fusion is just around the corner have been made for the past 40 years. The experiements have become multi-billion dollars- too expension for any individual country. Lasers were supposed to be the breakthough technology.
In the Southern California Fry's ads, flash is going for $98 / gigabyte, while cheapest DRAM is $129 / gigabyte. DRAM seems to have been stuck in the $80 to $150 / gigabyte range the past three years, while flash has fallen 75%. Flash used to be four times the cost of DRAM, but is now slightly cheaper.