Enthusiasts have been looking for low light low noise performance and largely ignoring resolution since about 2003. Higher resolution is sometimes nice, but the actual resolvable feature hasn't been growing nearly as well as the number of detected pixels, thanks to optics, an generally 6 megapixel images have been enough to be indistinguishable from higher resolutions for the vast majority of compositions.
And for those referencing Gates claim of 640k being enough for anybody, you know that statement is a myth, right?
From the "I thought feminism meant female equality with males" file and the interesting part was the bottom 'recommendation':
"The authors recommended that universities and companies create options for women with math talents who want to pursue math-intensive careers. These could include deferred start-up of tenure-track positions and part-time work that segues to full-time tenure-track work for women who are raising children, and courtesy appointments for women unable to work full time but who would benefit from use of university resources (e-mail, library resources, grant support) to continue their research from home."
Ah, so when feminists talk about 'equality' what they really mean is, "we want special treatment so that we get equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity based on the same starting point". Silly me, and to think that I thought feminism was all about equality with males in regards to the same starting point and a meritocratic system where skills and knowledge are the basis of advancement forward rather than the old boys network.
People wonder why I given feminists as much credibility has hearing Saudi Arabia preach about human rights, tolerance and respect.
I see your point, but it's a bit more complicated than that. The system itself is designed around the lives of men, so it's possible that there are areas where there can't be equality without some changes.
Whacky metaphor time. Humans find friendly aliens on another planet that's a lot like Earth but covered in methane. Together they decide to launch a colonization mission to a new star system that has methane and oxygen/nitrogen covered planets. The methane breathers build the colony ship, and naturally they fill it with methane. Humans are supposed to be an equal partner on the mission with equal rights and responsibilities, but to work they need to wear space suits which make them slow and cumbersome. Then someone gets the idea to pressurize some parts of the ship with oxygen when humans have a shift there, and methane when the Methaliens have a shift there. Suddenly productivity goes up and everyone wins.
I think Obama has found a lot about how much power other people have in Washington in the past couple of months. He seems sincere about his desire to change things but change isn't going to come from one person.
I voted for Obama. I think he's a good person in a lot of ways. But I don't think that he can possibly live up to the "he'll change everything that I personally object to" idea that so many people had. Obama shares my (and your) views in some ways but not in others. Likely in a lot of cases, for instance copyright violations, he doesn't care much one way or another so he's not going to change anything.
If you want to get things changed you should use one of the lessons taught by Obama's campaign - get widespread support for your ideas via the internet, and then LEVERAGE that support into a more visible medium.
Brilliant post, Wembley. So few people understand what's wrong with NCLB, and I'm disappointed to see that Obama doesn't get it either. His comments a few days ago seemed to support "NCLB + more funding." This may be better than the current NCLB, but I wouldn't bet on it working. It does nothing to address the problem of performance tests not relating to meaningful education. Here in Michigan, NCLB meant that research papers were dropped from the curricula of most high schools. Trying to teach advanced classes in most fields to the college kids who grew up without ever learning to write a research paper is maddening. My aunt the high school teacher says that the public school administrators here focus on the trivia-based preparation for standardized tests because they're desperate to keep their funding. Some schools keep research papers and drop other topics in order to add more test preparation, but research papers or other forms of independent thought are generally tossed in favor of rote learning.
The solution is to either drop NCLB or find tests that actually measure meaningful learning. AP or IB exams might do the trick for some students, but they're probably over the heads of most students. On second thought, I don't think anyone is going to find working tests, and for that matter testing would need to be done periodically so that the rate of change could be tracked for individual students. Otherwise students who start out below average for whatever reason will have their schools' budgets cut, leading to further degradation.
My post is just a minor addendum to yours, though. I salute you.
What exactly doesn't work? The two (three?) most-common brands (Intel, Broadcom, Maxwell) have open-source drivers (with a firmware blob in the case of broadcom)
Is it an external card, by USB or something?
My very common internal Broadcom card didn't work in 8.04 a couple months ago until I spent an evening on the internet finding and trying a few different sets of command line fixes. The problem was that most of them that were in Ubuntu help pages included a typo (or more than one) somewhere that didn't let me just copy/paste each line. I did manage to get it to work, but a few days later I stopped using Ubuntu because my laptop was too sluggish with it.
What are the best open ebook reader options out there?
None in the form factor of the Kindle, but that's beside the point. No "open" ebook reader will display DRMed files. The Kindle displays all non-DRMed files by default. It also displays all Amazon DRMed files. The controversy here is about Amazon DMCAing a script that would let you use another ebook seller's DRMed files. Compared to our theoretical "open" device, with or without this script the Kindle shows more.
However, the Kindle is very expensive, to the point that it will probably save money for only a very small minority (I don't think saving money is the point of the device, though - it's portability).
For example a small craft to grab and safely drop items (lower their speeds at the right time ) could take down items that are 30 CM and bigger.
Harder than you'd think. To deorbit a fragment like this you need to:
Change your orbit to match that of the fragment
Rendezvous with fragment, then grab it
Change your orbit to intersect the atmosphere, then let go of the fragment
Change your orbit so that you don't deorbit
So that's three major orbital manoeuvres, per fragment. And that sort of stuff is really expensive: in order to move from a circular orbit around the equator to a circular orbit around the pole, you need twice the delta-V that you used to get into orbit in the first place!
So it would probably be cheaper to use a single disposable vehicle that you launch to a specific debris cloud, and then it collects as much crap as it can and then deorbits. But even that's going to be a major project --- and much of the debris up there right now is on the order of paint flecks, which are damn hard to pick up (or even find).
So this sort of thing isn't nearly as simple as it first sounds...
All new satellites need passive deorbiting features. I read a journal article a couple years ago which stated that a few pounds of very thin, very long metal cable that would release and trail out behind a satellite for something like many hundreds of meters would produce enough drag to take down things in low Earth orbit in the few months to few years time frame.
Obviously greatness in art is subjective. But this guy did a masterful job of weaving together completely unrelated material into a damn fine musical piece and video. He shows incredible skill and artistry in arranging this musical piece. This was mashed by a creative and savvy musician with a fine ear.
Or maybe he did a lackluster job comparable to what typical teenagers do in an evening. Maybe it was completely derivative and musically obtuse. My assertions are as well backed up as yours.
One player Baker won't identify 'offered a blank check to replace Google,' she says.
Looking at the ocean of limping or necro-corps, there seemeth to be only one company that has the pocket to stomach carte blanche...
Could you imagine Live! Search being the default search engine of Firefox? Hiss! The thought near gives me the willies.
These comments always surprise me. Why is it that people on slashdot have such a vested interest in the default behavior of various programs? Don't all of us know how to customize everything we use to suit our needs?
Go to the options menu and turn off javascript. Problem solved.
*Sigh* This isn't true. Some versions of the exploit used Javascript for the heap spray, but Javascript isn't required at all to exploit this issue.
Wow, in that case I guess I'll just remove the association between pdf and any reader in my browser. Most web pdfs can be viewed as a pdf through search engines, anyway.
I meant as an html, but now that I think of it that may be insufficient as well. I guess I'll relegate pdf readers to inside of a VM from now on.
Go to the options menu and turn off javascript. Problem solved.
*Sigh* This isn't true. Some versions of the exploit used Javascript for the heap spray, but Javascript isn't required at all to exploit this issue.
Wow, in that case I guess I'll just remove the association between pdf and any reader in my browser. Most web pdfs can be viewed as a pdf through search engines, anyway.
What's the deal with this statement in the summary?
"Sadly, the voicemail didn't integrate very nicely w/ my phone back in the day, so I guess I should give it a shot."
What's different between that and, "Sadly, Windows didn't work well for me in 2002, so I guess I should try Windows 7?" Or "Sadly, I hated my Nissan Altima from 2004, so my next purchase should be an Altima from 2009?"
I'm not saying your shouldn't try it out, but that sentence reads like a big fat non sequitur.
As I noted, the only MASSLESS way would be photons, which electrons, etc aren't. New paragraph, new idea. I mentioned the others since there are already great gobs of them flying around every time the sun decides to burp. They would quickly be channeled toward the poles by the Earth's magnetic field and be quickly eliminated as a hazard.
I didn't notice your "as well," and you're correct. Honestly, though, any water sent into orbit would sublime in minutes to days, depending on the size of the droplets/chunks. Also, the water required for this is essentially zero, so it's not colossal waste of water. It would cost a massive amount of energy, though, which is the real downside of the idea.
Not only would lofting water into space be a colossal waste of energy and water, it would only exacerbate the problem!
IMHO the only 'clean' way to deorbit debris is to add energy to the debris in the retrograde direction without using additional mass, which means photons. Laser pulses could do it either by radiation pressure directly (huge laser), or by pulses that ablate the debris slightly (creates tiny beads of additional debris).
Electron/proton beams would work as well, as would alpha particles, but they'd pose a risk to humans in space. In fact, using charged particles might induce a charge on the debris that would then help direct the debris toward it's doom (debris vector, Earth's magnetic field, right hand rule....whatever).
You do know that electrons/protons/alpha particles have mass, right?
Since space is a "near" vacuum wouldn't the water flash to steam instantly and be useless?
The enthalpy of vaporization for water is very large. On exposure to vacuum, immediately the water will begin to boil. This will very rapidly cool the water so that most of it ends up freezing (the enthalpy of fusion is comparatively much lower). Not only does this make mathematical sense, but it's witnessed daily on vacuum lines in labs.
Tivo recording numbers is why they would do this. I've recently read an article about this, and it is clearly a good decision. Shows like Sarah Connor Chronicles (bleh) have small but dedicated followings, and the Tivo recording numbers (also kept and recording by Nielsen) are considerably higher than live-showing numbers. Hence, schedule is irrelevant, since the people who watch these shows will continue watching them regardless of the schedule.
Except Fox has been doing this in exactly the same way since long before Tivo existed. Also, Tivo recording numbers aren't nearly as high as live-viewing numbers for tv in general - that's only true for shows that get tossed around to different terrible time slots. The tivo users don't really mind, but the live-viewers largely lose it and stop watching, dooming the show.
This has all happened before, and it will happen again.
Moreover, Microsoft reiterated that the beta of Windows 7 that is now available is already feature-complete, although its final release to business customers isn't expected until November.
Between now and then, Apple will likely have released OS X 10.6, and there will have been two new release of Ubuntu.
I wonder what's moving faster: Microsoft, or the goal posts?
Like most new OS releases, those are likely to only move the goal posts side-to-side. For the most part I imagine the same may be true of 7, but my point is that real meaningful advances in new OS releases are rare.
The 3 app limit will only be for the starter edition, which is being aimed at "developing markets." Expect African, Asian, and South American users to be dissatisfied and perhaps unwilling to use Windows 7 when they're targeted.
Honestly though, what other choice do you have in most situations? Even many of the high end products now are made in third world countries. Many parts for American cars are built in other countries, even many of the cars are assembled in Mexico now. Japanese cars are often made here, but are assembled using parts made in a foreign country. It's the same situation for almost all electronics.
In a lot of cases, with research, you can actually choose where your goods are made. Sometimes it means they're of much higher quality, too. Other times (LCD televisions, for example) it means you get a mid-range product instead of the more fully featured version made in Korea.
Slashdot Mirror
It's "safe to drive in Denver now"? Red light cameras have been shown to increase the number of accidents at intersections.
And unsubstantiated AC claims have been shown to be very unreliable.
Enthusiasts have been looking for low light low noise performance and largely ignoring resolution since about 2003. Higher resolution is sometimes nice, but the actual resolvable feature hasn't been growing nearly as well as the number of detected pixels, thanks to optics, an generally 6 megapixel images have been enough to be indistinguishable from higher resolutions for the vast majority of compositions.
And for those referencing Gates claim of 640k being enough for anybody, you know that statement is a myth, right?
Once I can recharge my battery in 4.5 seconds will it matter?
Nope.
That won't be happening anytime soon, and yes, I know about the article you're basing this on. Expect 10-20 years before that's a possibility.
From the "I thought feminism meant female equality with males" file and the interesting part was the bottom 'recommendation':
"The authors recommended that universities and companies create options for women with math talents who want to pursue math-intensive careers. These could include deferred start-up of tenure-track positions and part-time work that segues to full-time tenure-track work for women who are raising children, and courtesy appointments for women unable to work full time but who would benefit from use of university resources (e-mail, library resources, grant support) to continue their research from home."
Ah, so when feminists talk about 'equality' what they really mean is, "we want special treatment so that we get equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity based on the same starting point". Silly me, and to think that I thought feminism was all about equality with males in regards to the same starting point and a meritocratic system where skills and knowledge are the basis of advancement forward rather than the old boys network.
People wonder why I given feminists as much credibility has hearing Saudi Arabia preach about human rights, tolerance and respect.
I see your point, but it's a bit more complicated than that. The system itself is designed around the lives of men, so it's possible that there are areas where there can't be equality without some changes.
Whacky metaphor time. Humans find friendly aliens on another planet that's a lot like Earth but covered in methane. Together they decide to launch a colonization mission to a new star system that has methane and oxygen/nitrogen covered planets. The methane breathers build the colony ship, and naturally they fill it with methane. Humans are supposed to be an equal partner on the mission with equal rights and responsibilities, but to work they need to wear space suits which make them slow and cumbersome. Then someone gets the idea to pressurize some parts of the ship with oxygen when humans have a shift there, and methane when the Methaliens have a shift there. Suddenly productivity goes up and everyone wins.
is WAY too real.
You prefer imaginary portraits...?
I think Obama has found a lot about how much power other people have in Washington in the past couple of months. He seems sincere about his desire to change things but change isn't going to come from one person.
I voted for Obama. I think he's a good person in a lot of ways. But I don't think that he can possibly live up to the "he'll change everything that I personally object to" idea that so many people had. Obama shares my (and your) views in some ways but not in others. Likely in a lot of cases, for instance copyright violations, he doesn't care much one way or another so he's not going to change anything.
If you want to get things changed you should use one of the lessons taught by Obama's campaign - get widespread support for your ideas via the internet, and then LEVERAGE that support into a more visible medium.
Brilliant post, Wembley. So few people understand what's wrong with NCLB, and I'm disappointed to see that Obama doesn't get it either. His comments a few days ago seemed to support "NCLB + more funding." This may be better than the current NCLB, but I wouldn't bet on it working. It does nothing to address the problem of performance tests not relating to meaningful education. Here in Michigan, NCLB meant that research papers were dropped from the curricula of most high schools. Trying to teach advanced classes in most fields to the college kids who grew up without ever learning to write a research paper is maddening. My aunt the high school teacher says that the public school administrators here focus on the trivia-based preparation for standardized tests because they're desperate to keep their funding. Some schools keep research papers and drop other topics in order to add more test preparation, but research papers or other forms of independent thought are generally tossed in favor of rote learning.
The solution is to either drop NCLB or find tests that actually measure meaningful learning. AP or IB exams might do the trick for some students, but they're probably over the heads of most students. On second thought, I don't think anyone is going to find working tests, and for that matter testing would need to be done periodically so that the rate of change could be tracked for individual students. Otherwise students who start out below average for whatever reason will have their schools' budgets cut, leading to further degradation.
My post is just a minor addendum to yours, though. I salute you.
What exactly doesn't work? The two (three?) most-common brands (Intel, Broadcom, Maxwell) have open-source drivers (with a firmware blob in the case of broadcom)
Is it an external card, by USB or something?
My very common internal Broadcom card didn't work in 8.04 a couple months ago until I spent an evening on the internet finding and trying a few different sets of command line fixes. The problem was that most of them that were in Ubuntu help pages included a typo (or more than one) somewhere that didn't let me just copy/paste each line. I did manage to get it to work, but a few days later I stopped using Ubuntu because my laptop was too sluggish with it.
What are the best open ebook reader options out there?
None in the form factor of the Kindle, but that's beside the point. No "open" ebook reader will display DRMed files. The Kindle displays all non-DRMed files by default. It also displays all Amazon DRMed files. The controversy here is about Amazon DMCAing a script that would let you use another ebook seller's DRMed files. Compared to our theoretical "open" device, with or without this script the Kindle shows more.
However, the Kindle is very expensive, to the point that it will probably save money for only a very small minority (I don't think saving money is the point of the device, though - it's portability).
Harder than you'd think. To deorbit a fragment like this you need to:
So that's three major orbital manoeuvres, per fragment. And that sort of stuff is really expensive: in order to move from a circular orbit around the equator to a circular orbit around the pole, you need twice the delta-V that you used to get into orbit in the first place!
So it would probably be cheaper to use a single disposable vehicle that you launch to a specific debris cloud, and then it collects as much crap as it can and then deorbits. But even that's going to be a major project --- and much of the debris up there right now is on the order of paint flecks, which are damn hard to pick up (or even find).
So this sort of thing isn't nearly as simple as it first sounds...
All new satellites need passive deorbiting features. I read a journal article a couple years ago which stated that a few pounds of very thin, very long metal cable that would release and trail out behind a satellite for something like many hundreds of meters would produce enough drag to take down things in low Earth orbit in the few months to few years time frame.
> judge it purely as music - it isn't that great.
Obviously greatness in art is subjective. But this guy did a masterful job of weaving together completely unrelated material into a damn fine musical piece and video. He shows incredible skill and artistry in arranging this musical piece. This was mashed by a creative and savvy musician with a fine ear.
Or maybe he did a lackluster job comparable to what typical teenagers do in an evening. Maybe it was completely derivative and musically obtuse. My assertions are as well backed up as yours.
One player Baker won't identify 'offered a blank check to replace Google,' she says.
Looking at the ocean of limping or necro-corps, there seemeth to be only one company that has the pocket to stomach carte blanche...
Could you imagine Live! Search being the default search engine of Firefox? Hiss! The thought near gives me the willies.
These comments always surprise me. Why is it that people on slashdot have such a vested interest in the default behavior of various programs? Don't all of us know how to customize everything we use to suit our needs?
And what do we do if we're not on the drugs necessary to think this is any good at all?
Oh wait, I think I'm doing it right now...
*Sigh* This isn't true. Some versions of the exploit used Javascript for the heap spray, but Javascript isn't required at all to exploit this issue.
Wow, in that case I guess I'll just remove the association between pdf and any reader in my browser. Most web pdfs can be viewed as a pdf through search engines, anyway.
I meant as an html, but now that I think of it that may be insufficient as well. I guess I'll relegate pdf readers to inside of a VM from now on.
*Sigh* This isn't true. Some versions of the exploit used Javascript for the heap spray, but Javascript isn't required at all to exploit this issue.
Wow, in that case I guess I'll just remove the association between pdf and any reader in my browser. Most web pdfs can be viewed as a pdf through search engines, anyway.
What's the deal with this statement in the summary?
"Sadly, the voicemail didn't integrate very nicely w/ my phone back in the day, so I guess I should give it a shot."
What's different between that and, "Sadly, Windows didn't work well for me in 2002, so I guess I should try Windows 7?" Or "Sadly, I hated my Nissan Altima from 2004, so my next purchase should be an Altima from 2009?"
I'm not saying your shouldn't try it out, but that sentence reads like a big fat non sequitur.
As I noted, the only MASSLESS way would be photons, which electrons, etc aren't. New paragraph, new idea. I mentioned the others since there are already great gobs of them flying around every time the sun decides to burp. They would quickly be channeled toward the poles by the Earth's magnetic field and be quickly eliminated as a hazard.
I didn't notice your "as well," and you're correct. Honestly, though, any water sent into orbit would sublime in minutes to days, depending on the size of the droplets/chunks. Also, the water required for this is essentially zero, so it's not colossal waste of water. It would cost a massive amount of energy, though, which is the real downside of the idea.
Go to the options menu and turn off javascript. Problem solved.
Not only would lofting water into space be a colossal waste of energy and water, it would only exacerbate the problem!
IMHO the only 'clean' way to deorbit debris is to add energy to the debris in the retrograde direction without using additional mass, which means photons. Laser pulses could do it either by radiation pressure directly (huge laser), or by pulses that ablate the debris slightly (creates tiny beads of additional debris).
Electron/proton beams would work as well, as would alpha particles, but they'd pose a risk to humans in space. In fact, using charged particles might induce a charge on the debris that would then help direct the debris toward it's doom (debris vector, Earth's magnetic field, right hand rule....whatever).
You do know that electrons/protons/alpha particles have mass, right?
Since space is a "near" vacuum wouldn't the water flash to steam instantly and be useless?
The enthalpy of vaporization for water is very large. On exposure to vacuum, immediately the water will begin to boil. This will very rapidly cool the water so that most of it ends up freezing (the enthalpy of fusion is comparatively much lower). Not only does this make mathematical sense, but it's witnessed daily on vacuum lines in labs.
Tivo recording numbers is why they would do this. I've recently read an article about this, and it is clearly a good decision. Shows like Sarah Connor Chronicles (bleh) have small but dedicated followings, and the Tivo recording numbers (also kept and recording by Nielsen) are considerably higher than live-showing numbers. Hence, schedule is irrelevant, since the people who watch these shows will continue watching them regardless of the schedule.
Except Fox has been doing this in exactly the same way since long before Tivo existed. Also, Tivo recording numbers aren't nearly as high as live-viewing numbers for tv in general - that's only true for shows that get tossed around to different terrible time slots. The tivo users don't really mind, but the live-viewers largely lose it and stop watching, dooming the show.
This has all happened before, and it will happen again.
Between now and then, Apple will likely have released OS X 10.6, and there will have been two new release of Ubuntu.
I wonder what's moving faster: Microsoft, or the goal posts?
Like most new OS releases, those are likely to only move the goal posts side-to-side. For the most part I imagine the same may be true of 7, but my point is that real meaningful advances in new OS releases are rare.
We have talked about W7 performance on netbooks which will only allow to run 3 apps. Perfect for an antivirus, a firewall, an antispyware, the WGA... oh crap!
The 3 app limit will only be for the starter edition, which is being aimed at "developing markets." Expect African, Asian, and South American users to be dissatisfied and perhaps unwilling to use Windows 7 when they're targeted.
Honestly though, what other choice do you have in most situations? Even many of the high end products now are made in third world countries. Many parts for American cars are built in other countries, even many of the cars are assembled in Mexico now. Japanese cars are often made here, but are assembled using parts made in a foreign country. It's the same situation for almost all electronics.
In a lot of cases, with research, you can actually choose where your goods are made. Sometimes it means they're of much higher quality, too. Other times (LCD televisions, for example) it means you get a mid-range product instead of the more fully featured version made in Korea.
And torrents tend to be of much higher quality than iTunes tracks.