This reminds me of what happened to Steve Wozniak.
Apparently, he always wanted a phone number with all the same digit, like 444-4444. After he got one, he discovered the horrible truth... he got tons of calls followed by hang-ups. As the story goes, he couldn't figure out what it was, until one day he heard someone yell in the background, "Jimmy - you hang that up!" (or something like that). He was getting little kids! Of course, they grab the phone and press the same number over and over.
I used to get really frustrated about those cheater types when I was doing my degree. Of course, now they're making $15 an hour in data entry while I'm pulling $110k in design...
(And you young whippersnappers who think $15 an hour is good - think some more.)
It's really interesting. Ramanujan was doing all this brilliant number theory on his own in India, and he decided to start sending his ideas around. He contacted several brilliant mathematicians, none of whom could figure out what he was talking about, largely because Ramanujan had some peculiar ways of expressing things. Finally Ramanujan contacted G. H. Hardy (at Cambridge), who saw his potential. Hardy invited Ramanujan to come to Cambridge right away, but couldn't get him to come because Ramanujan was a devout Hindu, and felt that he would be permanently "polluted" were he to leave India. Eventually, Ramanujan came to an agreement with his mother and went to spend time with Hardy, who spent a great deal of time helping Ramanujan convert his raw ideas into a more traditional, presentable form for maths journals. Ramanujan had a tough time in Cambridge, because he really didn't fit in. Eventually, he became very sick (tuberculosis, I think), and died. My understanding is that serious mathematicians are continuing to gather many new ideas in number theory from Ramanujan's notebooks, which are published by Springer-Verlag.
Astroturfing is when you plant fake testimonials for your product in public places.
The term is a spoof of the term grassroots. Grassroots support for a product springs naturally from the public - astroturf is made to look like real grassroots, but it's fake.
Speaking of people overreacting to D&D, did you ever
see the movie "Mazes and Monsters" starring Tom Hanks (no, I'm not kidding)? It was made in 1982, and Hanks played a D&D obsessed kid who ends up killing his friend because he thinks he's a gnome (or something like that).
Blue Power-on LEDs and Smoke Alarms
on
The Blues for LEDs
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Like the guy says, having a bright blue LED power-on indicator on your monitor is incredibly annoying, especially since it's so obvious when the monitor is powered off.
It's kind of like having a smoke alarm that beeps _unless_ it smells smoke, isn't it?
BTW - a bunch of people have suggested putting several layers of masking tape over LEDs. It's easier (and tidier) to just put a little dot of tinfoil and a piece of transparent tape.
Re:The age old question...
on
SQL Fundamentals
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Dear Slash-Dotters,
I can't believe how clueless you guys are. Everybody knows it's Structured QUERy Language, or SQUERL, which is properly pronounced _SQUIRREL_.
Sincerely, Steve
Filthy Critic already reviewed it anyway.
on
Review: U-571
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There is an original Dalek in the museum at
the British Film Institute in London (under the south end of Waterloo Bridge).
The best part is you can get inside it, and it has a synthesizer/microphone so you can say, "exterminate, Exterminate, EXTERMINATE!!!" and you
sound like the real thing.
It's really interesting (and no, it's not a dirty story). It's about how porn sites have to be coded really well to cope with high loads, including tons of images, and with very high reliability since they are pay sites.
Do you grok? Maybe you can work for the porn industry!
Moravec's approach is a classic example of the SMPA (sense-model-plan-act) approach to mobile robotics. A lot of people think this is a dead end - not least among them Rodney Brooks, who advocates what is called the behavior-based approach. Behavior-based robotics basically relies on integrating several independently operating reflexes into a robot, which is much more lifelike. A nifty intermediate approach is taken by
Ronald Arkin, who seems a little more pragmatic (and less dogmatic).
You can read some superficial information about all of these guys (and others) in the book Robo sapiens.
Slashdot Mirror
"Cell Companies" is to "Improve Linux" as "Gang of Escaped Lobotomy Patients" is to "Improve MIT".
This reminds me of what happened to Steve Wozniak.
Apparently, he always wanted a phone number with all the same digit, like 444-4444. After he got one, he discovered the horrible truth... he got tons of calls followed by hang-ups. As the story goes, he couldn't figure out what it was, until one day he heard someone yell in the background, "Jimmy - you hang that up!" (or something like that). He was getting little kids! Of course, they grab the phone and press the same number over and over.
I used to get really frustrated about those cheater types when I was doing my degree. Of course, now they're making $15 an hour in data entry while I'm pulling $110k in design...
(And you young whippersnappers who think $15 an hour is good - think some more.)
The only car that can't crash is one locked in a concrete room with no doors and no internet connection...
I guess this means I won't be able to sell Intel that copy I "borrowed" from the library this morning...
A wonderful biography of Ramanujan is, "The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan", by Robert Kanigel
It's really interesting. Ramanujan was doing all this brilliant number theory on his own in India, and he decided to start sending his ideas around. He contacted several brilliant mathematicians, none of whom could figure out what he was talking about, largely because Ramanujan had some peculiar ways of expressing things. Finally Ramanujan contacted G. H. Hardy (at Cambridge), who saw his potential. Hardy invited Ramanujan to come to Cambridge right away, but couldn't get him to come because Ramanujan was a devout Hindu, and felt that he would be permanently "polluted" were he to leave India. Eventually, Ramanujan came to an agreement with his mother and went to spend time with Hardy, who spent a great deal of time helping Ramanujan convert his raw ideas into a more traditional, presentable form for maths journals. Ramanujan had a tough time in Cambridge, because he really didn't fit in. Eventually, he became very sick (tuberculosis, I think), and died. My understanding is that serious mathematicians are continuing to gather many new ideas in number theory from Ramanujan's notebooks, which are published by Springer-Verlag.
I've tried this software. It's awesome. It read every stripe I threw at it - even the brown stripe in my jockeys!!!
I'm sure Stevie Case would agree with you. She says as much in her Playboy interview.
Cold is fine for the CPU, but what about the power supply, motherboard, etc?
Astroturfing is when you plant fake testimonials for your product in public places.
The term is a spoof of the term grassroots. Grassroots support for a product springs naturally from the public - astroturf is made to look like real grassroots, but it's fake.
Speaking of people overreacting to D&D, did you ever see the movie "Mazes and Monsters" starring Tom Hanks (no, I'm not kidding)? It was made in 1982, and Hanks played a D&D obsessed kid who ends up killing his friend because he thinks he's a gnome (or something like that).
Check out the imdb listing here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314
Like the guy says, having a bright blue LED power-on indicator on your monitor is incredibly annoying, especially since it's so obvious when the monitor is powered off.
It's kind of like having a smoke alarm that beeps _unless_ it smells smoke, isn't it?
BTW - a bunch of people have suggested putting several layers of masking tape over LEDs. It's easier (and tidier) to just put a little dot of tinfoil and a piece of transparent tape.
Dear Slash-Dotters,
I can't believe how clueless you guys are. Everybody knows it's Structured QUERy Language, or
SQUERL, which is properly pronounced _SQUIRREL_.
Sincerely,
Steve
This guy sounds like a less-cynical version of the Filthy Critic.
Filthy has a much better (and filthier) review here: http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/u571.html.
LejOS (http://lejos.sourceforge.net) is an open source Java API for RCX.
LejOS is great, although it does have the usual Java problems: large memory footprint, slow (virtual machine), etc...
I like to use both legOS and lejOS, depending on the project.
Also, I've been working on RCXComm, which is fun if you grok RCX bytecodes.
It's not "Wacka wacka", it's "Wocka Wocka".
There is an original Dalek in the museum at the British Film Institute in London (under the south end of Waterloo Bridge).
The best part is you can get inside it, and it has a synthesizer/microphone so you can say, "exterminate, Exterminate, EXTERMINATE!!!" and you sound like the real thing.
Check it out, it only costs 10 quid to get in.
There are some open source Java drivers for CueCat at:
http://www.popbeads.org/Software/CCScan
Rotten.com had their own run-around with Mastercard over a tasteless parody. They didn't cave:
Perverted Priceless Jokes (with accompanying pornographic pictures) are at http://vagina.rotten.com/priceless
Details on rotten.com's legal problem are at http://www.rotten.com/legal/desist-mastercard.htm
This article on working for porn sites was on http://freshmeat.net a while back.
It's really interesting (and no, it's not a dirty story). It's about how porn sites have to be coded really well to cope with high loads, including tons of images, and with very high reliability since they are pay sites.
Do you grok? Maybe you can work for the porn industry!
Geez. We've been doing it all wrong.
I had the monitor, he had the keyboard!
It took us three hours to code "Hello World!".
Moravec's approach is a classic example of the SMPA (sense-model-plan-act) approach to mobile robotics. A lot of people think this is a dead end - not least among them Rodney Brooks, who advocates what is called the behavior-based approach. Behavior-based robotics basically relies on integrating several independently operating reflexes into a robot, which is much more lifelike. A nifty intermediate approach is taken by Ronald Arkin, who seems a little more pragmatic (and less dogmatic).
You can read some superficial information about all of these guys (and others) in the book Robo sapiens.
A review of Robo sapiens can be found here.
Remember the hacked Actimates Barney and Barbie?
If not, check out: http://www.geekchic.com/~jpd/barney
The perfect combo would be a hacked Road-Rage Barney screaming profanities out of the GI Joe Jeep.
It looks like Dr. Dobb's is slashdotted already.
There's another movie on Papanikolopoulos's homepage: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~npapas
If you look at the last page of the syllabus, the professor appears to have had students actually sign a pledge not to use outside code.