I'm quite offended at your lopsided view of the America Public Education system! I (as I would assume most/. readers are) am a graduate of the public school system. And I believe I've turned out quite all right. I don't think there is anything in need of saving. We're do OK thank you.
Could we do better? Sure. Do many private schools turn out highly educated students? You bet. I sure as hell would prefer my children to learn "unsavory" things such as sex education and evolution than psuedo-science like "creationism" or be bored to sleep by demonstrably false religious indoctrination. As to test scores? Statistics lie! As far as unconstitutional? In Washington (state) just about the only thing the state government is required to fund (as per the state constitution) is education.
Please, please, please take your kids out of public education! I'm sure the rest of us will be glad to have them gone. I would like you to teach them about sex education though. Especially birth control. I'm sure we can all do without any more "Evolution" from your gene pool.
What people (i.e. the Authors guild) seem to forget is that it is not at all clear that they will be losing money here.
Take for instance one of the books they cite "Me Talk Pretty Someday". Lets say it costs $20 new. I won't buy it. If it were $10 i might. At $5 I'll bite. Now lets say Hemos would pay $17 for it. Well at $20 the author gets sqwat with out the secondary market. But with it he makes another sale. Hemos buys the book for $20 reads it and sells it to me for $5. Everyone is happy!
I remember having that same feeling when I first saw it (I was 7). But I've been watching it again on PBS recently. Segan does a great job of displaying his awe for the universe to the general public. It is hard to believe he was an atheist. It goes to show that science can evoke the kind of deep meaningful experiences many religons do.
In a related note Segan's "Deamon Haunted World", published a few years before his death, is wonderful. He does a great job of debunking psuedo-science through the ages. In my mind he makes a sucessful agruement as to why science is Superior (my words not his) to religion. Highly recommended!
I'd have to agree with the math and physics remarks. I feel you get a much better education in the pure sciences than in the engineering disciplines. Where I went to school (University of Washington and Stanford) if you majored in MIS (Biz school) or CS/CE (Engineering school) you missed out on taking many of the general education requirements. Foregin language, philosophy, economics, and real (i.e. upper division) science classes. At the time most people didn't think they we're always missing out, but in reality those requirements are there for a reason.
I always found the most intelligent people in the universitiy were found in the Physics and Math departments, but would also take humanities classes. These people always annoyed me because they were so dam smart! The engineers had no time to take these classes. (Note: I'm neither a physics or math major) Also the skills you learn won't become useless in 3 years. Some of the stuff will be useless before you learn it (general relativity, quantum elecrodynamics, fourier transformations) but much more interesting.
As someone who hires developers and managers from time to time I'd much prefer to see a physics degree than a CS degree!
Here's the thing. Technology is great. It pays my bills. And all things equal its fun. But in terms of intellectual challenge, writing software and in general most engineering disciplines really don't cut it. Physics, biology, physical chemistry and pure mathematics are for more interesting. And important!
I've been lucky. I've had the opportunity to get an amazing education and some of the best universities in the world. But the allure of $$$ in the valley we're too much for me. I now write code.
But watching the discovery channel and reading about people like Richard Feynman and Carl Segan reminds me that the current technology buzz are very ephemeral and in the long term unimportant.
You have the ability to raise an amazing individual. And if he wants to write code when he grows up, he will. But for now arm him with the basics. Math, physics, biology, philosophy, and foreign languages are my suggestions.
If he has the opportunity to study say fluid mechanics for 10 years before actually having to make a living he'll be in a position to make a HUGE impact on society. The world doesn't need a better OS. Linus will be a footnote in history. But if someone figures out the mathematics behind turbulence he we be remembered and studied for centuries!
I couldn't care less about the "open source community". When there is a useful piece of open souce code e.g. Apache, I'll build on top of it. When the best code is closed source i'll use that.
Why in hell should I feel compelled to contribute? Free labor is great as long as I'm getting paid. If people want to work for free let 'em, but why should I "give something back"?
This doesn't make sense. A proton is about 1800 times more massive than an electron. The collider can impart a specific amount of energy to a particle. Shouldn't this simply mean that the proton is traveling at a lower velocity than the electron and hence has the same energy (momentum?).
I wonder if anyone has thought about building infractructure for rendering a movie in a distributed manner. Perhaps only 5-10% or so. It would be a great marketing ploy too.
dT = (J/mass)/Cp
KE = 0.5*m*v^2
PE = m*g*h
Total = KE+PE
So a 70Kg person made of water could expect to have her body temp raised by 107degrees C If you ignore friction when jumpping out of a baloon at 165000 feet. Where as a person in geostationary obribt would have thier temparature raised by 5.4e4 or 54000 degrees! Ouch!
So i'm not a palentologist but I do have a bit of knowledge in this area. What I'm wondering is, how can anything really be that old. It would seem to me that molecular diffusion amoung other processes should significantly alter the chemistry of anything that sits around that long. Molecular diffusion is just one such process. I'm not sure of the exact rates involved, but it the salt was even partially saturated for say 1% of that time there should be a lot of contamination and/or mineralization of the living cells (i.e. fossilization). So could it be that the bacteria is really not as old?
I think water is the "right" guess for the cause of the channels. Water is really the only substance we have direct evidence (actually this is not true lava does the same) building channels on earth.
It should be pointed out that when it comes to geological process it is very rare that we have direct observation and/or good experimental evidence to explain the geomorphology of an area.
That being said we can to a pretty good job of explaining things like the grand canyon, even though we haven't been watching it for several million years.
Now I've never though terraforming of Mars will happen. But this scenario bodes poorly for the terraforming crowd.
If There is sufficient C02 to carve channels then shouldn't the "greehouse effect" should be in operation on Mars? Since this appears not to be the case (look at venus its HOT!) does this mean the Mars cannot sustain a significant atmosphere?
Not so. Have you ever been to the University of Washington? They have a new EE building (largely fuinded by Micoro$oft). There is a new "Mary Gates Hall" (named after Bill's mom). I think Bill gave $12,000,000 to establish a new Genetics lab. How about Stanford? Gates hall is right next to Allen hall (Gates hall is just a bit bigger.
I wonder if you could build a "perfect", by spinning some other molten metal (steel, aluminum, tungsten), then flash freezing it. Would the parabolic surface remain? Then you could coat the surface with a rightly relefctive matierial a few atoms thick!
But you need an Up, and Down! The parabolic curvature comes from the balancing of centrifugal and gravitational forces.
One of these on the moon would be cool though! No air currents, earthquakes, railroads etc. to disturb the mercury.
It seems to me that code is very explicitly "purely expressive". The who point of a comptuer language is to allow a developer to describe an idea (algorithm). Code frequentky is the MOST expressive way to do this. By analogy the MOST expressive way to state the equivalence of mass and energy is not a guy standing on a street corner yelling it, it is the written equation E=mc^2.
More important than the DVD issue which will all be obsolete a couple of years from now. What about the issue of making it illegal to link to the source.
This is not like the Ticketmaster case where deep linking to a corporate site was to be dissallow w/o permission. Here it is illegal to link is a site that is allow (begging?) you to link to it.
There are serious first amendmeny issues here! Or am I missing something?
It seems like using the analogy of copying a book in a language you can't read emvodies this idea.
I can copy by hand a book written in German, but I can't read it.
It sounds like clock speed is the issue. Mose web/db servers do not need the massive floating point performance something like altavec provides.
If removing the altavec unit allows them to increase clock speed, integrer performance should go up linearly.
Thus an altavec-less chip might allow OS X servers to compete with intel/AMD/Sun/Compaq processors
I don't understand the US Government's position on crypto.
Strong crypto is not all that hard in theory. Commericalization may be hard, but writing a program with a 10000 byte key is not all that hard for a well read C developer with a BS in math.
So what I want to know is, why does the government think they can just pass a law requireng key escrow any all thier worries will go away?
I remember a quote with respect to guns "If you outlaws guns only outlaws will have guns." I think this could be re-writen "If you outlaw crypto, only outlaws will have crypto."
Interesting idea. Most of the music I listen to are "Jam Bands" (Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic . . ). They all have for years actively supported the free distribution of tapes of thier shows. These days thier are tons of sites posting thier shows like this one Sugarmegs.org.
The interesting this is, that they all make tons of $$$$ touring! I have gigs of thier shows and plenty of CDs to boot. I attend thier shows.
So in the end I give lots of money to the bands (tickets are expensive) lots of money to the Big companies (I buy all the new CDs) and I get MUCH MORE variety via MP3.
The only think uncommon about this scenario is that there is a huge infrastructure behind trading of these particular bands and it has a long (~20 year) history.
What record company wouldnt'd want to sign the next Phish? No promotion costs and HUGH profits!
I seem to recall (from an environmental engineering class) that the bioreactors used in sewage treatment have reaction rates at least an order of magnitude higher than nature.
Combine that with directed evolution and/or genetic engineering and it is very realistic to assume we'll get a 10 to 100 fold increase in H2 production rate.
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I'm quite offended at your lopsided view of the America Public Education system! I (as I would assume most /. readers are) am a graduate of the public school system. And I believe I've turned out quite all right. I don't think there is anything in need of saving. We're do OK thank you.
Could we do better? Sure. Do many private schools turn out highly educated students? You bet. I sure as hell would prefer my children to learn "unsavory" things such as sex education and evolution than psuedo-science like "creationism" or be bored to sleep by demonstrably false religious indoctrination. As to test scores? Statistics lie! As far as unconstitutional? In Washington (state) just about the only thing the state government is required to fund (as per the state constitution) is education.
Please, please, please take your kids out of public education! I'm sure the rest of us will be glad to have them gone. I would like you to teach them about sex education though. Especially birth control. I'm sure we can all do without any more "Evolution" from your gene pool.
What people (i.e. the Authors guild) seem to forget is that it is not at all clear that they will be losing money here.
Take for instance one of the books they cite "Me Talk Pretty Someday". Lets say it costs $20 new. I won't buy it. If it were $10 i might. At $5 I'll bite. Now lets say Hemos would pay $17 for it. Well at $20 the author gets sqwat with out the secondary market. But with it he makes another sale. Hemos buys the book for $20 reads it and sells it to me for $5. Everyone is happy!
I remember having that same feeling when I first saw it (I was 7). But I've been watching it again on PBS recently. Segan does a great job of displaying his awe for the universe to the general public. It is hard to believe he was an atheist. It goes to show that science can evoke the kind of deep meaningful experiences many religons do.
In a related note Segan's "Deamon Haunted World", published a few years before his death, is wonderful. He does a great job of debunking psuedo-science through the ages. In my mind he makes a sucessful agruement as to why science is Superior (my words not his) to religion. Highly recommended!
I'd have to agree with the math and physics remarks. I feel you get a much better education in the pure sciences than in the engineering disciplines. Where I went to school (University of Washington and Stanford) if you majored in MIS (Biz school) or CS/CE (Engineering school) you missed out on taking many of the general education requirements. Foregin language, philosophy, economics, and real (i.e. upper division) science classes. At the time most people didn't think they we're always missing out, but in reality those requirements are there for a reason.
I always found the most intelligent people in the universitiy were found in the Physics and Math departments, but would also take humanities classes. These people always annoyed me because they were so dam smart! The engineers had no time to take these classes. (Note: I'm neither a physics or math major) Also the skills you learn won't become useless in 3 years. Some of the stuff will be useless before you learn it (general relativity, quantum elecrodynamics, fourier transformations) but much more interesting.
As someone who hires developers and managers from time to time I'd much prefer to see a physics degree than a CS degree!
Here's the thing. Technology is great. It pays my bills. And all things equal its fun. But in terms of intellectual challenge, writing software and in general most engineering disciplines really don't cut it. Physics, biology, physical chemistry and pure mathematics are for more interesting. And important!
I've been lucky. I've had the opportunity to get an amazing education and some of the best universities in the world. But the allure of $$$ in the valley we're too much for me. I now write code.
But watching the discovery channel and reading about people like Richard Feynman and Carl Segan reminds me that the current technology buzz are very ephemeral and in the long term unimportant.
You have the ability to raise an amazing individual. And if he wants to write code when he grows up, he will. But for now arm him with the basics. Math, physics, biology, philosophy, and foreign languages are my suggestions.
If he has the opportunity to study say fluid mechanics for 10 years before actually having to make a living he'll be in a position to make a HUGE impact on society. The world doesn't need a better OS. Linus will be a footnote in history. But if someone figures out the mathematics behind turbulence he we be remembered and studied for centuries!
But why?
I couldn't care less about the "open source community". When there is a useful piece of open souce code e.g. Apache, I'll build on top of it. When the best code is closed source i'll use that.
Why in hell should I feel compelled to contribute? Free labor is great as long as I'm getting paid. If people want to work for free let 'em, but why should I "give something back"?
This doesn't make sense. A proton is about 1800 times more massive than an electron. The collider can impart a specific amount of energy to a particle. Shouldn't this simply mean that the proton is traveling at a lower velocity than the electron and hence has the same energy (momentum?).
Just because you are using a non MS product browser doesn't mean the errors are Microsoft's fault. Try the following links to see who is compliant
Netscape
Microsoft
; Red Hat
Oracle
IBM
Apache
I wonder if anyone has thought about building infractructure for rendering a movie in a distributed manner. Perhaps only 5-10% or so. It would be a great marketing ploy too.
This thing is that in orbit you have tremendous angular momentum.
A quick (probably way off) calculation.
orbit baloon
height(m) 2.5E+07 5.1E+04
angular v(m/s) 1.8E+03 0.0E+00
PE(joules) 1.7E+10 3.5E+07
KE(joules) 1.2E+08 0.0E+00
Total(joules) 1.7E+10 3.5E+07
dT (C) 5.9E+04 1.2E+02
mass(kg) 7.0E+01
CPH2)(J/(Kg*C)) 4.2E+03
dT = (J/mass)/Cp
KE = 0.5*m*v^2
PE = m*g*h
Total = KE+PE
So a 70Kg person made of water could expect to have her body temp raised by 107degrees C If you ignore friction when jumpping out of a baloon at 165000 feet. Where as a person in geostationary obribt would have thier temparature raised by 5.4e4 or 54000 degrees! Ouch!
Anyone care to correct my math?
So i'm not a palentologist but I do have a bit of knowledge in this area. What I'm wondering is, how can anything really be that old. It would seem to me that molecular diffusion amoung other processes should significantly alter the chemistry of anything that sits around that long. Molecular diffusion is just one such process. I'm not sure of the exact rates involved, but it the salt was even partially saturated for say 1% of that time there should be a lot of contamination and/or mineralization of the living cells (i.e. fossilization). So could it be that the bacteria is really not as old?
I think water is the "right" guess for the cause of the channels. Water is really the only substance we have direct evidence (actually this is not true lava does the same) building channels on earth.
It should be pointed out that when it comes to geological process it is very rare that we have direct observation and/or good experimental evidence to explain the geomorphology of an area.
That being said we can to a pretty good job of explaining things like the grand canyon, even though we haven't been watching it for several million years.
Now I've never though terraforming of Mars will happen. But this scenario bodes poorly for the terraforming crowd.
If There is sufficient C02 to carve channels then shouldn't the "greehouse effect" should be in operation on Mars? Since this appears not to be the case (look at venus its HOT!) does this mean the Mars cannot sustain a significant atmosphere?
Not so. Have you ever been to the University of Washington? They have a new EE building (largely fuinded by Micoro$oft). There is a new "Mary Gates Hall" (named after Bill's mom). I think Bill gave $12,000,000 to establish a new Genetics lab. How about Stanford? Gates hall is right next to Allen hall (Gates hall is just a bit bigger.
I wonder if you could build a "perfect", by spinning some other molten metal (steel, aluminum, tungsten), then flash freezing it. Would the parabolic surface remain? Then you could coat the surface with a rightly relefctive matierial a few atoms thick!
But you need an Up, and Down! The parabolic curvature comes from the balancing of centrifugal and gravitational forces. One of these on the moon would be cool though! No air currents, earthquakes, railroads etc. to disturb the mercury.
I just did a test of Hotmail, bCentral, webTV and MSN.
If you do an HTTP GET from each of the sites you can see the OS an part of the server header in the HTTP response.
Now granted MSFT is smart enough to spoof the header if they want to but here is what I found:MSN: 100% Micsoft-IIS/5.0
Hotmail: 100% Micsoft-IIS/5.0
MSN: 100% Micsoft-IIS/5.0
WebTV: 20% Micsoft-IIS/5.0 and 80% Somthing else (probably some *nix)
Now I know many of these sites were all BSD/*nix based at one point, but the fact is that they are not today.
It seems to me that code is very explicitly "purely expressive". The who point of a comptuer language is to allow a developer to describe an idea (algorithm). Code frequentky is the MOST expressive way to do this. By analogy the MOST expressive way to state the equivalence of mass and energy is not a guy standing on a street corner yelling it, it is the written equation E=mc^2.
More important than the DVD issue which will all be obsolete a couple of years from now. What about the issue of making it illegal to link to the source.
This is not like the Ticketmaster case where deep linking to a corporate site was to be dissallow w/o permission. Here it is illegal to link is a site that is allow (begging?) you to link to it.
There are serious first amendmeny issues here! Or am I missing something?
It seems like using the analogy of copying a book in a language you can't read emvodies this idea. I can copy by hand a book written in German, but I can't read it.
It sounds like clock speed is the issue. Mose web/db servers do not need the massive floating point performance something like altavec provides. If removing the altavec unit allows them to increase clock speed, integrer performance should go up linearly. Thus an altavec-less chip might allow OS X servers to compete with intel/AMD/Sun/Compaq processors
I don't understand the US Government's position on crypto.
Strong crypto is not all that hard in theory. Commericalization may be hard, but writing a program with a 10000 byte key is not all that hard for a well read C developer with a BS in math.
So what I want to know is, why does the government think they can just pass a law requireng key escrow any all thier worries will go away?
I remember a quote with respect to guns "If you outlaws guns only outlaws will have guns." I think this could be re-writen "If you outlaw crypto, only outlaws will have crypto."
Not that anyone does, but you can build COM objects on Unix . . .look here
Interesting idea. Most of the music I listen to are "Jam Bands" (Grateful Dead, Phish, Widespread Panic . . ). They all have for years actively supported the free distribution of tapes of thier shows. These days thier are tons of sites posting thier shows like this one Sugarmegs.org.
The interesting this is, that they all make tons of $$$$ touring! I have gigs of thier shows and plenty of CDs to boot. I attend thier shows.
So in the end I give lots of money to the bands (tickets are expensive) lots of money to the Big companies (I buy all the new CDs) and I get MUCH MORE variety via MP3.
The only think uncommon about this scenario is that there is a huge infrastructure behind trading of these particular bands and it has a long (~20 year) history.
What record company wouldnt'd want to sign the next Phish? No promotion costs and HUGH profits!
I seem to recall (from an environmental engineering class) that the bioreactors used in sewage treatment have reaction rates at least an order of magnitude higher than nature.
Combine that with directed evolution and/or genetic engineering and it is very realistic to assume we'll get a 10 to 100 fold increase in H2 production rate.