It's not like you're going for a liberal arts degree there - grades and standardized testing scores are what matter at MIT. What you wrote in an essay's hardly going to influence what you do in a technical environment like that.
Save that space for things that are important - research abstracts, statements of interest, letters of recommendation, etc. Don't bitch around with the admission committees' time with a stupid creative essay.
This isn't quite true. Entropy (S) is defined as k*ln(omega) where omega is the number of possible configurations of a given macrostate (ie. fixed pressure, chemical potential, etc.). However, the Gibb's free energy of a system (G) which typically defines whether a system will spontaneously relax to a given macrostate is given by H - TS. That said, a system will relax to that macrostate if the change in free energy (dG = dH - SdT) is negative.
Raising S by transforming to some given macrostate does not necessarily mean a lower G. You see this all the time in many solid-state mixtures. Mixing two elements will cause an increase in entropy, but also may increase in internally stored energy (endothermic mixing) so dH is positive as well as SdT. The result is that you get complex phase diagrams like this atoms dissociate into different phases withing the system lowering entropy but even further lowering enthalpy to reach a minimum G. Of course, when you raise temperature, S dominates so eventually we reach a monophase liquid system.
So to fix what you said, an increase in entropy is always an increase in 'disorder' (more possible microstates in a given macrostate) but this does not always guarantee that the system will spontaneously fall to that state.
This is what you get for being obstinate with technology. They could get someone to mirror it + md5 sum to make sure that customers are downloading a legitimate copy. Or they could use Bittorrent. There are tons of ways that they could distribute it digitally - but they can't because they want to cling to the old ways of doing things so they don't have to adapt/face change. Sure it's not free, but if you're open-minded enough to use new technologies, you could lower costs significantly.
Well no one says that they have to exclusively offer either downloadable or DVD-based installs. Either way, when you activate the system you register it online with your key, so it makes no difference how you got the installer.
In particular because a lot of the money that they use to put up the lines (for their business) comes from public tax dollars. And also because they have a near monopoly in many areas. The courts have already decided that cable companies don't have to share their lines (I assume that this translates to Verizon too if they're not exactly specified by the ruling) so they have a public obligation to provide full services if it's on the public's tab.
It's okay that we live in a country where our government gives so much to business - but not that the businesses give nothing back.
A patent can only protect you for so long in industry before someone comes up with some alternative idea that makes yours irrelevant except on purely 'intellectual' value. Researchers are constantly searching for multiple methods of finding some sort of technological solution; for example, there are multiple ways that people are investigating implementing nanoscale semiconductor particles (rods or dots) to enhance quantum efficiency in solid state organic photovoltaics, even though there are other methods that are far more efficient and promising. Why? cause it just sucks to have one way of doing things. Patents are just one reason, apart from others like feasibility, cost, etc. That's the value of researching for things that can be accomplished in multiple ways.
Just as a suggestion, I wonder if we'll see solar panels on the cars for constant charging (well, at least in the daytime). Sure there are tons of logistical problems, but it would be convenient and useful.
Ionic materials can be polarized to interact with electromagnetic waves to block signal transmission. They have a number of absorptive mechanisms. The highest frequency absorption mechanism is where electrons around the nucleus resonate, roughly at 10^17 Hz. Then there's atomic vibrations where the nuclei themselves vibrate (10^14 Hz I think). Not sure what they are for the material used in particular though, but ionic materials can resonate. It doesn't seem that they're in the range used for this application
You should theoretically have enhanced signal quality if you're keeping it within the walls. All that radiated power that would have gone outside will remain inside, so there must be some sort of net increase in power radiated to your computer antenna.
A conductive metal has free electrons which will block and reflect any waves below its plasma frequency. However, an ionic solid does not have free electrons - instead, it has just a few resonant other mechanisms with limited range so it will block a more specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum than a metal would. The frequency of wifi signals happens to be in the range of one of these mechanisms for the paint used.
The worst part of American education is that there is so little appreciation for schooling form all sides: parents, students, even teachers sometimes. They're all part of the problem - the students don't want to learn, the teachers don't feel like teaching students that don't care, the parents see their angst and don't want them to stay there anymore... it's a vicious cycle.
What if instead of fixed curricula, we had a program where students could challenge themselves and learn what they want with the oversight of enthusiastic mentors? If a student wants to learn something, their mentor can show it to them and guide them - after all, you do best what you put your heart into most.....
This probably sounds like a silly proposition, but something of the like is necessary, where students can learn what they want (or at least have the impression that they're learning what they want) so they can get more enthused by learning. Or maybe there are other ways to accomplish this end. But when you start every school year and you see that you have the same boring schedule, English, Science, History, Foreign Language, Math - you're not going to accomplish anything. These are all possible alternatives to improvement, rather than just throwing more money and time at the problem which is probably more detrimental than helpful....
I agree - I'll share a personal story to back this point. Skip next paragraph if you're bored by long-winded personal anecdotes.
My junior high school (through age 14) taught me nothing in math. We spent our entire first year and part of the second learning how to solve simple first order algebraic equations (eg. 4 + 3x + 9 = 2 + 7x). Then we spent our entire 3rd year learning about lines and slope. When I went into a private secondary school, I went into the top level math class (fast algebra review, then geometry - not because I did well on the placement exam but because I got straight A+ in my last year of junior high) and what I learned served me for about a week, and then I was completely lost as we learned how to simplify equations, factor, solve quadratic equations, etc. I finished with the worst grade for that quarter that I have ever gotten in a class (B- - and I'm in a first-tier US engineering school where half my classes are scaled to C/C+). Not only that, but that was the first quarter - when we reached the second quarter, learning still algebra concepts that weren't exactly review, I averaged >95. Ultimately, I graduated first in my class in my secondary school in math.
The point? I was perfectly smart enough to handle these concepts in my junior high school, but because the curriculum was so slow (the kids in that class were so damn stupid), I got nailed doing simple intro algebra. Think of what would have happened if I stayed at the local high school and took math there - I would have gone absolutely nowhere and probably wouldn't even be in college right now. And think of how many students this legitimately happens to - I was lucky that my parents were able to afford >$10,000 for high school education. I'm sure that there are plenty of other students that are lost this way, and I was damn lucky to escape it.
So we see that grouping talented students together with all the others in these areas just doesn't get the job done. High schools should be taking great efforts to make sure that students who can go above the regular curriculum get a chance to. Something is seriously wrong with a program where gifted students are kept at a normal level getting straight A+'s. It's just not a challenge and honestly, it's more of a waste of potential.
Don't worry, Google's in charge of it - the same group that reads our emails for advertisements and publishes our documents in search results. I'm sure they'll come up with a way.
Hm, I think the general trend is that Japanese products have a long lifetime and American products are built to break. You know this Planned Obsolescence?
The ironic thing here is that if you ask any lawyer with a background in copyright law
What the hell is this copyright law you speak of? You mean the one that's blatantly unconstitutional, completely senseless and meant to do nothing but back a defunct business model, right? The ones that a.) are there for no reason and b.) prevent a victimless crime?
America has completely lost it as far as copyright law is concerned. Why are they still enforcing these stupid laws when they're so utterly broken and unjust.
So the fact is that many laws are based out of moral beliefs. The US Constitution is purported to promote equality for all (maybe it's not in the exact wording of the document, but we can take ti for granted), yet how do we define equality for all? To what extent can we really say that some policy is equal?
Let's consider sex offenders. Does keeping a centralized directory of people that have committed sex crimes promote equality for offenders? For other civilians? Where do we draw the lines? There is no way we can expect to draw these lines simply through objective factual guidelines - there is always some moral interpretation.
Now apply this to the MAFIA: is it really sensible to say that the 'intellectual rights' to someone's artwork can be bought and sold for, and enforce it through an act like DMCA? There is no factual way to confront this issue and no way that we can have any directive in public schools on this matter. For schools to have open discussion on the matter is probably good and encouraged - but this program is nothing of the sort. It's unidirectional straight-out telling the kids that we should be propping up an industry on an outdated business model backed by a corporate entity that improves the lives of no one but themselves. This does not belong in schools. Discussion, yes. Directive, no.
Check out the web. Search the college website for Linux, look in the IT departments for Linux. I found information on connecting to the WPA-secured wireless network in the darkest corner of the IT website for mine. Life isn't as easy as it is for Windows users (you'll have to edit text- based config files instead of having an automatic, friendly GUI), but it's still usable if you try hard enough, and for those tasks that are impossible, just use a computer lab. If she takes computer courses in say Matlab, then she may have problems. You should also find out if intro CS professors are familiar with students that run Linux too if she's going to take those types of classes.
Some universities (like Boston University) even produce their own Linux distro. So just do research on the website instead of asking people who aren't supposed to know
Most large screen LCD tvs have a lot of digital processing before you get to see the output. For most applications, this is fine, but for important ones (like playing Melee*), it makes the TV unusable. In these cases, you usually have to dig through the menus to find a game mode option and turn it on. It doesn't fix the whole problem though, the best way is to go with a CRT.
*Yes, my priorities are a bit unconventional and possibly screwed up.
Finally a company gets it! We want a phone we can hack LEGALLY, that doesn't have Steve Jobs giant head staring at us 24x7 telling us what we can and cannot do with it. If they can really keep the carriers from imposing idiotic restrictions of their own, this will be the phone to beat.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not like you're going for a liberal arts degree there - grades and standardized testing scores are what matter at MIT. What you wrote in an essay's hardly going to influence what you do in a technical environment like that.
Save that space for things that are important - research abstracts, statements of interest, letters of recommendation, etc. Don't bitch around with the admission committees' time with a stupid creative essay.
This isn't quite true. Entropy (S) is defined as k*ln(omega) where omega is the number of possible configurations of a given macrostate (ie. fixed pressure, chemical potential, etc.). However, the Gibb's free energy of a system (G) which typically defines whether a system will spontaneously relax to a given macrostate is given by H - TS. That said, a system will relax to that macrostate if the change in free energy (dG = dH - SdT) is negative.
Raising S by transforming to some given macrostate does not necessarily mean a lower G. You see this all the time in many solid-state mixtures. Mixing two elements will cause an increase in entropy, but also may increase in internally stored energy (endothermic mixing) so dH is positive as well as SdT. The result is that you get complex phase diagrams like this atoms dissociate into different phases withing the system lowering entropy but even further lowering enthalpy to reach a minimum G. Of course, when you raise temperature, S dominates so eventually we reach a monophase liquid system.
So to fix what you said, an increase in entropy is always an increase in 'disorder' (more possible microstates in a given macrostate) but this does not always guarantee that the system will spontaneously fall to that state.
This is what you get for being obstinate with technology. They could get someone to mirror it + md5 sum to make sure that customers are downloading a legitimate copy. Or they could use Bittorrent. There are tons of ways that they could distribute it digitally - but they can't because they want to cling to the old ways of doing things so they don't have to adapt/face change. Sure it's not free, but if you're open-minded enough to use new technologies, you could lower costs significantly.
Well no one says that they have to exclusively offer either downloadable or DVD-based installs. Either way, when you activate the system you register it online with your key, so it makes no difference how you got the installer.
Exactly.
In particular because a lot of the money that they use to put up the lines (for their business) comes from public tax dollars. And also because they have a near monopoly in many areas. The courts have already decided that cable companies don't have to share their lines (I assume that this translates to Verizon too if they're not exactly specified by the ruling) so they have a public obligation to provide full services if it's on the public's tab.
It's okay that we live in a country where our government gives so much to business - but not that the businesses give nothing back.
A patent can only protect you for so long in industry before someone comes up with some alternative idea that makes yours irrelevant except on purely 'intellectual' value. Researchers are constantly searching for multiple methods of finding some sort of technological solution; for example, there are multiple ways that people are investigating implementing nanoscale semiconductor particles (rods or dots) to enhance quantum efficiency in solid state organic photovoltaics, even though there are other methods that are far more efficient and promising. Why? cause it just sucks to have one way of doing things. Patents are just one reason, apart from others like feasibility, cost, etc. That's the value of researching for things that can be accomplished in multiple ways.
Just as a suggestion, I wonder if we'll see solar panels on the cars for constant charging (well, at least in the daytime). Sure there are tons of logistical problems, but it would be convenient and useful.
Ionic materials can be polarized to interact with electromagnetic waves to block signal transmission. They have a number of absorptive mechanisms. The highest frequency absorption mechanism is where electrons around the nucleus resonate, roughly at 10^17 Hz. Then there's atomic vibrations where the nuclei themselves vibrate (10^14 Hz I think). Not sure what they are for the material used in particular though, but ionic materials can resonate. It doesn't seem that they're in the range used for this application
You should theoretically have enhanced signal quality if you're keeping it within the walls. All that radiated power that would have gone outside will remain inside, so there must be some sort of net increase in power radiated to your computer antenna.
A conductive metal has free electrons which will block and reflect any waves below its plasma frequency. However, an ionic solid does not have free electrons - instead, it has just a few resonant other mechanisms with limited range so it will block a more specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum than a metal would. The frequency of wifi signals happens to be in the range of one of these mechanisms for the paint used.
Or even better - teach them to value education.
The worst part of American education is that there is so little appreciation for schooling form all sides: parents, students, even teachers sometimes. They're all part of the problem - the students don't want to learn, the teachers don't feel like teaching students that don't care, the parents see their angst and don't want them to stay there anymore... it's a vicious cycle.
What if instead of fixed curricula, we had a program where students could challenge themselves and learn what they want with the oversight of enthusiastic mentors? If a student wants to learn something, their mentor can show it to them and guide them - after all, you do best what you put your heart into most.....
This probably sounds like a silly proposition, but something of the like is necessary, where students can learn what they want (or at least have the impression that they're learning what they want) so they can get more enthused by learning. Or maybe there are other ways to accomplish this end. But when you start every school year and you see that you have the same boring schedule, English, Science, History, Foreign Language, Math - you're not going to accomplish anything. These are all possible alternatives to improvement, rather than just throwing more money and time at the problem which is probably more detrimental than helpful....
I agree - I'll share a personal story to back this point. Skip next paragraph if you're bored by long-winded personal anecdotes.
My junior high school (through age 14) taught me nothing in math. We spent our entire first year and part of the second learning how to solve simple first order algebraic equations (eg. 4 + 3x + 9 = 2 + 7x). Then we spent our entire 3rd year learning about lines and slope. When I went into a private secondary school, I went into the top level math class (fast algebra review, then geometry - not because I did well on the placement exam but because I got straight A+ in my last year of junior high) and what I learned served me for about a week, and then I was completely lost as we learned how to simplify equations, factor, solve quadratic equations, etc. I finished with the worst grade for that quarter that I have ever gotten in a class (B- - and I'm in a first-tier US engineering school where half my classes are scaled to C/C+). Not only that, but that was the first quarter - when we reached the second quarter, learning still algebra concepts that weren't exactly review, I averaged >95. Ultimately, I graduated first in my class in my secondary school in math.
The point? I was perfectly smart enough to handle these concepts in my junior high school, but because the curriculum was so slow (the kids in that class were so damn stupid), I got nailed doing simple intro algebra. Think of what would have happened if I stayed at the local high school and took math there - I would have gone absolutely nowhere and probably wouldn't even be in college right now. And think of how many students this legitimately happens to - I was lucky that my parents were able to afford >$10,000 for high school education. I'm sure that there are plenty of other students that are lost this way, and I was damn lucky to escape it.
So we see that grouping talented students together with all the others in these areas just doesn't get the job done. High schools should be taking great efforts to make sure that students who can go above the regular curriculum get a chance to. Something is seriously wrong with a program where gifted students are kept at a normal level getting straight A+'s. It's just not a challenge and honestly, it's more of a waste of potential.
I can see the next row of complaints at the IT office... "It's all black porn! No Asians! No Gays! No midgets! And something for the ladies please?"
Now I have one decent reason to get that rock band guitar....
Don't worry, Google's in charge of it - the same group that reads our emails for advertisements and publishes our documents in search results. I'm sure they'll come up with a way.
Hm, I think the general trend is that Japanese products have a long lifetime and American products are built to break. You know this Planned Obsolescence?
The ironic thing here is that if you ask any lawyer with a background in copyright law
What the hell is this copyright law you speak of? You mean the one that's blatantly unconstitutional, completely senseless and meant to do nothing but back a defunct business model, right? The ones that a.) are there for no reason and b.) prevent a victimless crime?
America has completely lost it as far as copyright law is concerned. Why are they still enforcing these stupid laws when they're so utterly broken and unjust.
So the fact is that many laws are based out of moral beliefs. The US Constitution is purported to promote equality for all (maybe it's not in the exact wording of the document, but we can take ti for granted), yet how do we define equality for all? To what extent can we really say that some policy is equal?
Let's consider sex offenders. Does keeping a centralized directory of people that have committed sex crimes promote equality for offenders? For other civilians? Where do we draw the lines? There is no way we can expect to draw these lines simply through objective factual guidelines - there is always some moral interpretation.
Now apply this to the MAFIA: is it really sensible to say that the 'intellectual rights' to someone's artwork can be bought and sold for, and enforce it through an act like DMCA? There is no factual way to confront this issue and no way that we can have any directive in public schools on this matter. For schools to have open discussion on the matter is probably good and encouraged - but this program is nothing of the sort. It's unidirectional straight-out telling the kids that we should be propping up an industry on an outdated business model backed by a corporate entity that improves the lives of no one but themselves. This does not belong in schools. Discussion, yes. Directive, no.
In English please?
It's the Year of the Linux Botnet!
You know, because those things never worked well in WINE.
Check out the web. Search the college website for Linux, look in the IT departments for Linux. I found information on connecting to the WPA-secured wireless network in the darkest corner of the IT website for mine. Life isn't as easy as it is for Windows users (you'll have to edit text- based config files instead of having an automatic, friendly GUI), but it's still usable if you try hard enough, and for those tasks that are impossible, just use a computer lab. If she takes computer courses in say Matlab, then she may have problems. You should also find out if intro CS professors are familiar with students that run Linux too if she's going to take those types of classes.
Some universities (like Boston University) even produce their own Linux distro. So just do research on the website instead of asking people who aren't supposed to know
Consider it more of an exclusive bargaining agreement, except it's not quite bargaining
Most large screen LCD tvs have a lot of digital processing before you get to see the output. For most applications, this is fine, but for important ones (like playing Melee*), it makes the TV unusable. In these cases, you usually have to dig through the menus to find a game mode option and turn it on. It doesn't fix the whole problem though, the best way is to go with a CRT.
*Yes, my priorities are a bit unconventional and possibly screwed up.
Finally a company gets it! We want a phone we can hack LEGALLY, that doesn't have Steve Jobs giant head staring at us 24x7 telling us what we can and cannot do with it. If they can really keep the carriers from imposing idiotic restrictions of their own, this will be the phone to beat.
Now vote with your dollar and buy it
Maybe they should have thought twice about taking the beta label off!
So will end users see it as "Google Chrome" or "Browse the internet"?