School is not boring because of the lack of technology. School is boring because the only people who benefit from the one-size-fits-all schooling are the ones that are just average. Everyone else finds school boring and thus many drop out. Technology can only be used as an aid - its not going to bring anyone in to learning.
I'll address both topics here, starting with the boring aspect. American schools teaching to the average student. The student who will plod along in life getting OK grades, is mildly interested in the material, and needs a lot of help to get through it. However, there are plenty of people who are either way too advanced for this method of teaching or are interested in something completely different - be it art, music, or manual labor. You're not going to capture someone's attention by letting them use an iPod or a Wii in class. In fact, plenty of people will not learn a thing from the new technology. The only way for students to be excited about school is to be given the opportunity to do what they want. That means offering advanced classes for advanced students and letting people who want to paint or build cars or stage plays do that instead of boring them with classes that they don't want to take. I found college interesting because I took what I wanted to take. My girlfriend took only the courses she was interested in. And we both enjoyed our time there, even though our academic interests to mesh for the most part. The same thing needs to happen in high school if you don't want most people bored.
Regarding technology, the goal of education is an information transfer from one person to another person. What one has to answer before just throwing technology at students is "What does this technology do to help the student learn?" And the answer is probably very little for most technology. Just look at how much we all love Powerpoint compared to blackboards. I don't see how an iPod is going to help me learn history or physics, and I definitely don't see how the Wii will help. Maybe for a visual arts type class, but not for anything else.
In summary, 200 year old technology that works is better than today's technology that doesn't work. Technology doesn't do much when the system is fundamentally flawed.
I just got a new laptop about two months ago. After looking at all the brands, I decided it was either Lenovo or Apple. Both seemed to have excellent build quality and good support. I didn't really care about OS X - it has cool features, but I don't like some of the ways it does things. This is just a personal preference - I've spent a bunch of time with OS X and I simply don't like it (just like I don't like Windows).
So, having narrowed down my choices, I went to an apple store. First I played with the Macbook Pro. It felt solid and well designed. Then I played with the Macbook. It felt like cheap plastic which could break at any point. I would have gotten the Pro, except that the Pro costs $2000 + service contract + any upgrades I wanted. The T61 that I got has almost all the features of the low end pro but cost me $600 less. Its build quality is top notch and I'm very happy.
So yes, Macbook Pro's are built well. Unfortunately, when you compare a Pro to a T61, you're comparing laptops with similar features but vastly different prices.
Anandtech has a pretty good article about these releases and also about the price cuts. This is looking great for me when I build a new computer in a few months (on which I'm planning to spend $150 chip from two years ago look pathetic. Oh well.
Of course, I'll need to figure out AMD vs. Intel. I just wish Intel had a better bus design. AMD has a good bus (HT) and Intel has the best chips right now. Maybe if they merged...
Perhaps universities should implement mandatory counseling for high pressure students. At the university I graduated from (top engineering Ivy), the engineers have some of the hardest majors on campus. Although I majored in physics, I was exposed to a lot of this as well. At one point I remember waiting to talk to a professor while he was talking to a student who did nothing but play video games and code. The student had no friends or interests. And this isn't uncommon from what I've seen. I was on the edge of this sort of behavior myself. It's not surprising that these kinds of people, who are completely removed from society, could easily crack. I've seen enough problems like that.
I once joked with one person I know that maybe everyone should be assigned a counselor when they first start at a university such as this. Normally I'd say the professors/teachers should notice this, and while that may work in a high school, I know how little most professors care about their students. I know it wouldn't go over well, but maybe mandatory counseling is something that's necessary. Granted, it won't catch everything, but maybe requiring a 15 minute long meeting with a counselor every few months could stop people from going over the edge and either killing themselves or going on a rampage like this. Especially for the people in stressful majors. Even though counselors at universities often aren't the best, I'm sure its not too hard to figure out someone needs extra help. Who knows, maybe it won't do anything. But on the other hand, maybe doing this will save 30 people, and that's worth it.
It's even worse in most American universities. While Canadian graduate students are being taught to protect their IP, graduate students at most American universities have to sign a waiver of their rights to anything they discover just to be able to go to graduate school. So, if you are a graduate student in an American university, then yes you certainly should sit on something truly inventive that you discover until after you graduate. Also, make sure you get rid of anything traceable to University equipment and recreate it after you leave. I don't see the problem with this. I'm starting grad school this Fall, and I'm getting paid to do research. Why should I be allowed to keep anything I discover if I'm being paid to do the research by someone else? I don't know what you've had to sign, but my waiver basically said the following things:
1. Since you're a student, if you're not being paid to do research and don't use university equipment, you keep whatever you discover. 2. If you are being paid, you're treated like an employee. Employees must sign all patents to the University. The University then decides if it wants to market the patent. If the patent is successfully licensed to someone and a profit is made, the profit is split between the inventor and the university (either 50-50 or 25-75 depending on the circumstances). Otherwise, the patent is returned to you.
I actually like this idea. I want to do research. If I discover something along the way, I don't have to deal with any bureaucracy and still get a nice bonus if my invention is successful.
75% is p2p? It's much higher than that. My (rather large research) university began charging for data transfers few years ago (I graduated last year). Each user was given 2 GB free/month. This number, according to them, was more than almost every student was using. At first, it seemed small to me, but after monitoring my own usage monthly, it turned out that I was coming in at way under 2 GB usually. That's with a lot of web surfing, AIM, and a lot of transfer to my off campus servers. I only ran over a few times (after the first year, the rate for data over 2 GB/month was actually lowered because there was so little demand for it).
Your claims are BS and have no basis. The vast majority of users who do not run p2p apps do not use much data. Note that this doesn't mean I agree with Verizon's policy, but I frankly consider 5 GB/month for a mobile product to be very reasonable for 99% of users.
Yes, your $1000 digital camera is not going to have a perfect CCD. There is no such thing as a perfect CCD. And I don't understand why you care unless you're trying to do science work with it. Look at it this way, no one is ever going to look at your picture and say its horrible because one pixel is slightly different than the one next to it. You look at the content of the whole photograph, not three pixels.
If you are trying to do science, then a DSLR is not what you need. DSLRs use Bayer interpolation to create a color image. This inherently kills your accuracy since not every pixel in the image is actually a pixel on the camera. CCDs used for astronomy (which cost more than your whole camera) do not do this and they still suffer from the effects you mentioned. Every exposure used for scientific work goes through a whole data reduction process that tries to remove as much noise as possible. Others have mentioned most of the process (bias frames, dark frames, and flat fields), but most astronomical CCDs also have an overscan region which is part of the CCD that is not exposed to light and is used to record the thermal noise on the CCD. This changes from exposure to exposure and from temperature to temperature (and yes I am a researcher in astronomy).
In short, there's no reason for you to care about this, and there's no chance of fixing this completely (CCDs are not digital - they're analog). There's also no way of applying the same solution to every photograph (and CCDs can change over time). Don't worry about pixel-to-pixel variations and just take photographs for their content. If you're really interested in how CCDs work, read the Handbook of CCD Astronomy by Steve Howell. Its a great introduction to CCDs and how to use them for astronomy.
I see everyone screaming about the prices going up. I'm not happy about it either, and Verisign will definitely rake in the cash if it increases its prices by 7% 4 times, but its not as bad as everyone out there thinks. We're used to prices in computing going down. But my guess is that Verisign's current prices are needed to maintain the registry servers and staff. I'm sure they make a healthy profit out of it, but that's the goal of any business, and I doubt anyone else could beat them by much.
In terms of the 7% increases, look at it in terms of inflation. In 6 years, assuming 3% inflation, one would need about $1.20 for each dollar they have today. If Verisign increases rates by 7% four times, That's equivalent to a 30% increase in price. So what we really have is a 10% increase in the price of service, which looks a lot better. Also consider the fact that 6 years is a long time in the Internet/computer world. They may need that extra cash if something comes along that requires massive infrastructure changes.
Now, I'm not defending Verisign and I'm not saying its right for them to automatically raise prices by 30% over 6 years. I hope they'll show restraint and I personally wish the registrar contract selection was more competitive. But at the same time, I don't think this is a necessarily horrible deal assuming Verisign shows restraint, and its in their best interest not to be seen as a horrible company for the next time that their contract comes up for renewal.
I disagree that most people should buy digital SLRs. I have a Nikon D70, two lenses for it, a flash, and a backup to carry it all in. Plus the tripod. All this (plus filters and the like) cost me about $2000. Is it worth it to me? Yes. Do most people need this? Definitely not.
The big benefit of DSLRs is that they let you get pictures that you can't get with normal cameras (whether it be because of better high ISO, lens, or other reasons). On my trip to Costa Rica over the summer, I was able to get amazing rainforest pictures only because of the long lens I have (450 mm equivalent) and the powerful flash I have. Could I have done this with a small digicam? Absolutely not. My girlfriend definitely couldn't with her point and shoot camera. But we're talking about dark rainforests with small animals that I could barely catch with my camera. Are most people going to need to do this? Do they want to lug around 10 pounds of camera equipment just to get that extra quality?
Most people just want to shoot pictures of their kids at the beach or inside. They don't care that their pictures come out imperfectly and they don't care that the flash is always used. Professional quality photographs are what you get in a studio, not at home. I really doubt anyone (including me) really enjoys trying to get perfect lighting in every situation.
I actually just ran into this exact question when choosing a camera for my dad. He was thinking that he would get a DSLR at some point soon, but instead my sister and I got him a Canon SD700 as a present. The SD700 has IS (lets you use longer exposure times since it optically stabilizes the image) that on a D80 would cost at least $800 for a lens. Plus his camera has a bright screen, is fast, and has a great zoom range. And best of all, the camera fits in his pocket and weighs nothing. He loves it.
One thing I've realized (and that I've read in a lot of places) is that the most important thing about photography - more important than lighting or equipment or composition - is having your camera there. Without a camera, you can't photograph. Most people (including me) don't want to haul around an SLR all the time. I wish I had the energy to do that, but I don't. And I know I miss photo opportunities because of it, but for me bringing my camera everywhere I go is a pain in the neck. Digicams are wonderful for this reason - they're small, reasonable good, and easy to use. And unless you need the extra capabilities of a DSLR (which most people don't), there's no reason to get one.
After reading the article, I felt like I had a similar sort of high school experience as him (though not as crazy as him). I came to college with 48 AP credits, plus 8 from college courses. Technically speaking, I could've graduated in a year or two. But there's no point.
First, the physics/mathematics combination is not hard to do. At least where I went to school a physics major only needed a few more classes to get a math degree (because so much was required for physics). Second, I don't think one can truly appreciate physics by doing it all in one year. I doubt he took very many advanced courses. I learned a lot in intro physics (I had AP credit, but declined it to take an honors intro course) that I never learned in high school. And it always takes me a while to truly appreciate a subject. Not just one year. Plus I doubt he got much research experience in.
I'm sure he's a smart person and talented, but there are plenty of people like that out there. If he had tried doing that at a place like Caltech or MIT, I doubt it would've worked. Plus I actually enjoyed taking distribution classes because they gave me an interesting perspective I hadn't known before. In fact, I wish I had taken more of them.
Regardless, if you're thinking of doing this, don't. If you're that smart, go to a better school, spend the money, and be really challenged like this guy never was.
>FTL is not bunk because gawd/allah/odin/yahweh/ram said so. FTL is bunk because it ameaningless state in a classical timelike metric. I won't burn you at the stake for trying to work on FTL. However, I will write a sternly worded letter to the NSF recommending that they don't give you any money for it.
I wouldn't bet on your statement. Look at the Alcubierre metric. The Alcubierre metric essentially warps spacetime around a ship so that while the ship is not traveling at a velocity greater than the speed of light locally, it is traveling at a speed greather than that of light to someone outside the spacetime (i.e. you on Earth).
I don't claim to be someone who understands general relativity well and so don't knwo if this is valid- I'm only an undergrad physics major who's taken a GR course (although a pretty advanced one). But I quote from Hartle's GR book (p. 145):
Alas, spacetimes such as the Alcubierre warp-drive are excluded in known classical physics...they require matter or fields with negative local energy densities. Quantum mechanics allows negative energy densities, but physics is far from understanding whether the could be harnessed in this way.
Thus, as the energy density is negative, 'one needs exotic matter to travel faster than the speed of light' (Alcubierre, 1994). The existence of exotic matter is not theoretically ruled out and the Casimir effect lends support to the proposed existence of such matter; however, generating enough exotic matter and sustaining it to perform feats such as faster-than-light travel (and also to keep open the 'throat' of a wormhole) is thought to be impractical. Low (1999) has shown that within the context of general relativity, it is impossible to construct a warp drive in the absence of exotic matter. It is generally believed that a consistent theory of quantum gravity will resolve such issues once and for all.
Now granted, we don't have FTL travel yet. But I think there's a good chance we'll figure it out eventually. It might take us a few thousand more years, or another ten years, but I think we'll find it. Look at how far we've come in just the last few centuries. Of course, you might be right. But physics hasn't said no so far.
In two senses of the word, the Internet will no longer be free if the UN takes over. Not free as in laws passed regarding spam:
Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable." China: "We feel that the public policy issue of Internet should be solved jointly by the sovereign states in the U.N. framework...For instance, spam, network security and cyberspace--we should look for an appropriate specialized agency of the United Nations as a competent body."
So now Syria and China (I'm not even going to mention their human rights records or the like) want to make sure there is no spam and there is network security. Part of the reason the Internet has been so popular is that it was free to essentially govern itself. The spam laws currently on the books do very little, and while I hate spam as much as anyone else, I don't want any laws banning it because none of them will work and will only stop remove some of the freedom of the Internet. Now to the next definition of free - the developing countries want us to pay for their Internet access:
Other suggested responsibilities for this new organization include Internet surveillance, "consumer protection," and perhaps even the power to tax domain names to pay for "universal access."
So now they want us to pay for their Internet access because they can't afford it. This is not being done to make the Internet a freer place. This is being done so that other countries get a new tax base and yet another place to govern. To all of you who support this, wait until this happens, and then when your site is censored for being politically incorrect or something because you disagree with the Chinese government, you'll understand why this was a bad idea.
You obviously don't know what's going on. First of all, most of the data has not been received yet. Its still being transmitted to NASA from the probe. Right now we're only getting low res pictures because that's all that's been sent. The priority right now is data gathering, not data transmittal. Second, automated image enhancement is pointless. As an amateur photographer, I know that each picture needs to be optimized manually, and using automatic settings often works, but not always. You'll get good pictures, but not 12 hours after impact. Plus I'm sure much of what they received wasn't good anyway and had to be thrown out. Third, you obviously don't know the complexity of these projects. Most of the public doesn't really care about the low resolution pictures - they'll see the high res pictures when they're broadcast by the media. Which means that there's no point for NASA to deal with the 0.1% of the public who think they deserve to get access to those pictures. Fourth, I'm really rather insulted by your pompous attitude regarding the people at NASA. No, I don't work at NASA. Nor can I call myself a scientist yet. But I'm an undergraduate physics major and so far my plans are to go on to grad school. Right now I'm spending the summer at the biggest NSF-funded project (not hard to figure out which one it is) and I will tell you that the people who run the project are brilliant and have no time to deal with whiners like you. If you really wanted to work on these kinds of missions, why didn't you dedicate your life to science instead of just whining about how you don't have access to all the data. Because I doubt you can figure out much from the data, and I find your arrogance to be purely insulting.
The one major problem with this that I see is that it actively slows you down. What happens if I need to go faster due to road conditions? What if going slower is actually less safe? What if I'm passing an 18-wheeler in the left lane, and suddenly he starts moving into my lane? With this system I don't have the option of accelerating to the speed I need to avoid the collision. Granted, the article did say that there's a hazard button on it. But frankly, if I'm in that kind of situation, I don't want to think about 20 different buttons to press. I just want to step on the accelerator and go 70 mph instead of 60 mph. If you really want to stop speeding, increase the speed limit to say 90 mph on major highways, maybe 70 or 80 on minor ones. Basically, as fast as any reasonable person would attempt to travel on those roads. Personally, I wouldn't go 90 mph on any road unless it was basically straight and I had a good car. And I wouldn't break the 90 mph speed limit. Then, instead of having the police hide out with their radar guns, get them to find the people who are interfering with traffic and making problems. Every time I see a police car, I hit the breaks automatically. Even if I'm going the speed limit. It's just a natural reaction now. That causes the car behind me to hit the breaks, and every car behind that one. This creates a hazard. If I didn't have to worry about the police, and the police stopped people who drive aggressively instead of people who stay in one lane and just go 70 instead of 60, you wouldn't have this kind of situation anymore. Also, they'd need to stop the idiots who go slower in the left lane than those the right lane is moving. But in general, instead of causing accidents they'd prevent them. With regards to the argument made by those who appose this idea - that foolish drivers will abuse this trust - that's what the police are there for. Instead of stopping people who are just driving at their comfortable speed, they can be stopping idiots who aren't paying attention to the road or don't know how to drive well.
I think the most important part here is that the Air Force is interested in anti-matter research. If the government starts pouring money into the research, then maybe we will get cheap anti-matter. Anti-matter is only expensive now and there may be ways to get it cheaply. That, I think, is the most important part of this development.
Not in all cases. I got strep throat a year ago, and the idiot doctor at my college's health service couldn't figure out it was strep throat although I was fairly sure it was (I suppose they screwed up the tests). I got put on some general antibiotic that made me feel better but didn't kill of the bacteria. Two days after the antibiotics were done the strep throat returned and my personal doctor was able to determine it easily and prescribe the antibiotics that I needed. And no, this was not unnecessary treatment. I had a fever of >103 and had finals in a day or two. But I do blame that idiot doctor for screwing up the prescription.
If you don't want something like the Soekris routers (very small with little expansion), look at Via's mini-itx computers. You can (or at least could) get a fanless computer with an external DC power supply that supported a CD and hard drive. I'm using one right now as a firewall/VPN/DNS server to connect to a different computer, and it runs very well (though I don't use a hard drive, instead I use a CF card mounted as read-only). The newer ones support up to two extra PCI cards and are really nice.
Up to this past weekend I was using only bogofilter (which is a pure bayesian filter). I seem to get about 200 spam a day on my main account. Until about a month or two ago bogofilter was amazing - I'd get maybe 1 or 2 spam a day, if that many. Then recently I suddenly started getting hit with 20 spam messages a day, and I noticed most of those were using lots of common words to bypass bogofilter. Most spam was still being removed by bogofilter, but enough to make me annoyed. This past weekend I also enabled spamassassin (without its bayes filter though), and its cut down the number of spam to maybe 5 a day, but its still too much for me. I'm hoping we have the next breakthrough in spam filtering technology soon (akin to bayesian filtering) because it seems that every new technique we use to filter the spam is eventually targeted by the spammers and bypassed.
The problem here is money. The only reason right now why anyone would go into a scientific career (in academia) is because they love the subject they're in. I'm currently an physics major at a big research university (ivy league). The majority of my friends who are physics majors don't plan on going on to graduate school and working in research. Part of the reason (I think) is the money. Why should I stay in school for an extra 5 years (at least) making barely anything and then have to deal with the low salaries professors get? Even doctors have something to look forward to. I often ask myself why I'm not just studying computer science (which I'm quite good at) so that I can get a job after (maybe) staying an extra year to get a masters and getting a good salary. For me its because I really enjoy physics. But a lot of people would just go with the more practical route. What do I propose? The only way to get more people interested here is to increase funding. Make science an important part of government funding. Give students incentives to go to graduate school. Pay professors a good salary. Then I think more people would be interested in research.
When I was in 11th grade (3-4 years ago) my Physics teacher decided to buy the CD version the textbook. It was absolutely horrible. It was slow and the book that I checked out from the library was ten times better, simply because I didn't have to stare at a screen to learn material. Online material is often very helpful, but I always print out the material. Reading a screen is much more tiresome for me. I remember reading some old books on my computer a couple of years ago because it was impossible to get them in print, and after an hours worth of reading a text file I couldn't look at the computer any longer. I'll also mention that having a computer is a huge distraction. Granted, sometimes its nice to not be completely bored, but often times you just stop paying attention if you're surfing the internet or playing a game. The only positive thing about that CD (and the fact that my teacher couldn't teach at all) was that it actually made me study physics and discover that I wanted to continue studying it.
No, that's not how it ends. I actually did this. I bought a very quiet hard drive (Seagate Barracuda IV), and a quiet power supply (Antec Trupower 330). But then the video card fan made too much noise, so I bought a replacement. But then the power supply was two loud, so out went the standard "loud" fan and in went a super-quiet pc power & cooling fan. Then the CPU fan and the case fans became too loud, so I replaced them all with the same fans as the power supply. But then the PS fan was still too loud, so I put in rubber spacers and undervolted the thing. But then the case fans were too loud and I undervolted them. But then the PS fan was too loud, and I undervolted it. Except that then my PS started overheating from the heat rising from my CPU. So I built a duct from the CPU directly to the outside of the case (which works fairly well). It's still too loud, and I don't really know what else to do except possibly undervolting the fan on my cpu. But if I start with that again, I'll probably never stop.
I really hate these phones that use a touch screen to let you dial. I'm sure it lets them save space, but there's no way I can dial on that without looking at the keypad. It really nice to be able to call someone when its freezing outside and not worry about getting frostbite. I'd really like a Phone/PDA/MP3 player (or at least two of those things), but not until I can actually use it as a phone rather than a pda that has a phone app.
I think one of the big advantages of building a base on the moon first is just to build up the space industry. The moon is a lot more accessible than Mars - it's only 3 days away and we have all the technology to get there already. Why is this important? The majority of space exploration is currently done by the government. But what happens if the US opens a base on the moon, provides landing/launching facilities and invites companies to make it a tourist attraction. Suddenly we have not only the government spending money on the moon but also individual companies. The government can charge them taxes on the moon and this way finance further expansion on the moon and beyond.
What does this give us? A bunch of companies dedicated to building space vessels and a new generation of people who expect to be able to get into space. If the US spends the initial money to get to the moon, 10 years afterwards we might have a thriving colony on the moon. Not only will commercialization decrease costs, it'll also make space travel a reality for more people, who will then demand more opportunities and before you know it we'll have colonies established on mars and beyond.
I was wathing the keynote today, and I can't figure out why no one has done anything like iLife with linux. I mean, KDE seems better than ever before, and mozilla is great and everything seems nice, but I keep looking at apple and wanting to get a powerbook just for the applications. If I need to transfer photos from my camera to my desktop, why can't there be a kPhoto or whatever that when I plug in my camera, will start up, load the images from the camera, and let me categorize them? Why does everyone seem to be playing catch up with Apple instead of leapfrogging them?
In terms of ease of use, I don't think KDE is much harder to use than mac os x. But the applications aren't there. Why hasn't someone designed a suite like iLife that could bring people over from Windows? I'm sure a lot of people want apples, but don't want to get a brand new computer. I see a perfect opportunity for Linux to get onto the desktop by releasing a iLife like suite - even without DVD/music/movie. Just kTunes and kPhoto and maybe something else would do, but it would give people an incentive to easily switch over to Linux instead of thinking about how nice apples are.
Personally, I'm really dissapointed with the mini ipod. The only thing that's selling it right now is its size (and the colors, I guess). I was ready to buy a $150 ipod that had 2GB of storage. But $250 is too much for me. If I'm planning to spend $250, I'd rather spend $300 and buy a full 15 GB ipod. It's only $50 more, and you get almost 4 times the storage. I don't think apple will get many new customers with this, and i hope they introduce a $150 model very soon, because that would be a hit, while I doubt this one will be very successful.
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School is not boring because of the lack of technology. School is boring because the only people who benefit from the one-size-fits-all schooling are the ones that are just average. Everyone else finds school boring and thus many drop out. Technology can only be used as an aid - its not going to bring anyone in to learning.
I'll address both topics here, starting with the boring aspect. American schools teaching to the average student. The student who will plod along in life getting OK grades, is mildly interested in the material, and needs a lot of help to get through it. However, there are plenty of people who are either way too advanced for this method of teaching or are interested in something completely different - be it art, music, or manual labor. You're not going to capture someone's attention by letting them use an iPod or a Wii in class. In fact, plenty of people will not learn a thing from the new technology. The only way for students to be excited about school is to be given the opportunity to do what they want. That means offering advanced classes for advanced students and letting people who want to paint or build cars or stage plays do that instead of boring them with classes that they don't want to take. I found college interesting because I took what I wanted to take. My girlfriend took only the courses she was interested in. And we both enjoyed our time there, even though our academic interests to mesh for the most part. The same thing needs to happen in high school if you don't want most people bored.
Regarding technology, the goal of education is an information transfer from one person to another person. What one has to answer before just throwing technology at students is "What does this technology do to help the student learn?" And the answer is probably very little for most technology. Just look at how much we all love Powerpoint compared to blackboards. I don't see how an iPod is going to help me learn history or physics, and I definitely don't see how the Wii will help. Maybe for a visual arts type class, but not for anything else.
In summary, 200 year old technology that works is better than today's technology that doesn't work. Technology doesn't do much when the system is fundamentally flawed.
I just got a new laptop about two months ago. After looking at all the brands, I decided it was either Lenovo or Apple. Both seemed to have excellent build quality and good support. I didn't really care about OS X - it has cool features, but I don't like some of the ways it does things. This is just a personal preference - I've spent a bunch of time with OS X and I simply don't like it (just like I don't like Windows).
So, having narrowed down my choices, I went to an apple store. First I played with the Macbook Pro. It felt solid and well designed. Then I played with the Macbook. It felt like cheap plastic which could break at any point. I would have gotten the Pro, except that the Pro costs $2000 + service contract + any upgrades I wanted. The T61 that I got has almost all the features of the low end pro but cost me $600 less. Its build quality is top notch and I'm very happy.
So yes, Macbook Pro's are built well. Unfortunately, when you compare a Pro to a T61, you're comparing laptops with similar features but vastly different prices.
Anandtech has a pretty good article about these releases and also about the price cuts. This is looking great for me when I build a new computer in a few months (on which I'm planning to spend $150 chip from two years ago look pathetic. Oh well.
Of course, I'll need to figure out AMD vs. Intel. I just wish Intel had a better bus design. AMD has a good bus (HT) and Intel has the best chips right now. Maybe if they merged...
Perhaps universities should implement mandatory counseling for high pressure students. At the university I graduated from (top engineering Ivy), the engineers have some of the hardest majors on campus. Although I majored in physics, I was exposed to a lot of this as well. At one point I remember waiting to talk to a professor while he was talking to a student who did nothing but play video games and code. The student had no friends or interests. And this isn't uncommon from what I've seen. I was on the edge of this sort of behavior myself. It's not surprising that these kinds of people, who are completely removed from society, could easily crack. I've seen enough problems like that.
I once joked with one person I know that maybe everyone should be assigned a counselor when they first start at a university such as this. Normally I'd say the professors/teachers should notice this, and while that may work in a high school, I know how little most professors care about their students. I know it wouldn't go over well, but maybe mandatory counseling is something that's necessary. Granted, it won't catch everything, but maybe requiring a 15 minute long meeting with a counselor every few months could stop people from going over the edge and either killing themselves or going on a rampage like this. Especially for the people in stressful majors. Even though counselors at universities often aren't the best, I'm sure its not too hard to figure out someone needs extra help. Who knows, maybe it won't do anything. But on the other hand, maybe doing this will save 30 people, and that's worth it.
1. Since you're a student, if you're not being paid to do research and don't use university equipment, you keep whatever you discover.
2. If you are being paid, you're treated like an employee. Employees must sign all patents to the University. The University then decides if it wants to market the patent. If the patent is successfully licensed to someone and a profit is made, the profit is split between the inventor and the university (either 50-50 or 25-75 depending on the circumstances). Otherwise, the patent is returned to you.
I actually like this idea. I want to do research. If I discover something along the way, I don't have to deal with any bureaucracy and still get a nice bonus if my invention is successful.
75% is p2p? It's much higher than that. My (rather large research) university began charging for data transfers few years ago (I graduated last year). Each user was given 2 GB free/month. This number, according to them, was more than almost every student was using. At first, it seemed small to me, but after monitoring my own usage monthly, it turned out that I was coming in at way under 2 GB usually. That's with a lot of web surfing, AIM, and a lot of transfer to my off campus servers. I only ran over a few times (after the first year, the rate for data over 2 GB/month was actually lowered because there was so little demand for it).
Your claims are BS and have no basis. The vast majority of users who do not run p2p apps do not use much data. Note that this doesn't mean I agree with Verizon's policy, but I frankly consider 5 GB/month for a mobile product to be very reasonable for 99% of users.
Yes, your $1000 digital camera is not going to have a perfect CCD. There is no such thing as a perfect CCD. And I don't understand why you care unless you're trying to do science work with it. Look at it this way, no one is ever going to look at your picture and say its horrible because one pixel is slightly different than the one next to it. You look at the content of the whole photograph, not three pixels.
If you are trying to do science, then a DSLR is not what you need. DSLRs use Bayer interpolation to create a color image. This inherently kills your accuracy since not every pixel in the image is actually a pixel on the camera. CCDs used for astronomy (which cost more than your whole camera) do not do this and they still suffer from the effects you mentioned. Every exposure used for scientific work goes through a whole data reduction process that tries to remove as much noise as possible. Others have mentioned most of the process (bias frames, dark frames, and flat fields), but most astronomical CCDs also have an overscan region which is part of the CCD that is not exposed to light and is used to record the thermal noise on the CCD. This changes from exposure to exposure and from temperature to temperature (and yes I am a researcher in astronomy).
In short, there's no reason for you to care about this, and there's no chance of fixing this completely (CCDs are not digital - they're analog). There's also no way of applying the same solution to every photograph (and CCDs can change over time). Don't worry about pixel-to-pixel variations and just take photographs for their content. If you're really interested in how CCDs work, read the Handbook of CCD Astronomy by Steve Howell. Its a great introduction to CCDs and how to use them for astronomy.
I see everyone screaming about the prices going up. I'm not happy about it either, and Verisign will definitely rake in the cash if it increases its prices by 7% 4 times, but its not as bad as everyone out there thinks. We're used to prices in computing going down. But my guess is that Verisign's current prices are needed to maintain the registry servers and staff. I'm sure they make a healthy profit out of it, but that's the goal of any business, and I doubt anyone else could beat them by much.
In terms of the 7% increases, look at it in terms of inflation. In 6 years, assuming 3% inflation, one would need about $1.20 for each dollar they have today. If Verisign increases rates by 7% four times, That's equivalent to a 30% increase in price. So what we really have is a 10% increase in the price of service, which looks a lot better. Also consider the fact that 6 years is a long time in the Internet/computer world. They may need that extra cash if something comes along that requires massive infrastructure changes.
Now, I'm not defending Verisign and I'm not saying its right for them to automatically raise prices by 30% over 6 years. I hope they'll show restraint and I personally wish the registrar contract selection was more competitive. But at the same time, I don't think this is a necessarily horrible deal assuming Verisign shows restraint, and its in their best interest not to be seen as a horrible company for the next time that their contract comes up for renewal.
I disagree that most people should buy digital SLRs. I have a Nikon D70, two lenses for it, a flash, and a backup to carry it all in. Plus the tripod. All this (plus filters and the like) cost me about $2000. Is it worth it to me? Yes. Do most people need this? Definitely not.
The big benefit of DSLRs is that they let you get pictures that you can't get with normal cameras (whether it be because of better high ISO, lens, or other reasons). On my trip to Costa Rica over the summer, I was able to get amazing rainforest pictures only because of the long lens I have (450 mm equivalent) and the powerful flash I have. Could I have done this with a small digicam? Absolutely not. My girlfriend definitely couldn't with her point and shoot camera. But we're talking about dark rainforests with small animals that I could barely catch with my camera. Are most people going to need to do this? Do they want to lug around 10 pounds of camera equipment just to get that extra quality?
Most people just want to shoot pictures of their kids at the beach or inside. They don't care that their pictures come out imperfectly and they don't care that the flash is always used. Professional quality photographs are what you get in a studio, not at home. I really doubt anyone (including me) really enjoys trying to get perfect lighting in every situation.
I actually just ran into this exact question when choosing a camera for my dad. He was thinking that he would get a DSLR at some point soon, but instead my sister and I got him a Canon SD700 as a present. The SD700 has IS (lets you use longer exposure times since it optically stabilizes the image) that on a D80 would cost at least $800 for a lens. Plus his camera has a bright screen, is fast, and has a great zoom range. And best of all, the camera fits in his pocket and weighs nothing. He loves it.
One thing I've realized (and that I've read in a lot of places) is that the most important thing about photography - more important than lighting or equipment or composition - is having your camera there. Without a camera, you can't photograph. Most people (including me) don't want to haul around an SLR all the time. I wish I had the energy to do that, but I don't. And I know I miss photo opportunities because of it, but for me bringing my camera everywhere I go is a pain in the neck. Digicams are wonderful for this reason - they're small, reasonable good, and easy to use. And unless you need the extra capabilities of a DSLR (which most people don't), there's no reason to get one.
After reading the article, I felt like I had a similar sort of high school experience as him (though not as crazy as him). I came to college with 48 AP credits, plus 8 from college courses. Technically speaking, I could've graduated in a year or two. But there's no point.
First, the physics/mathematics combination is not hard to do. At least where I went to school a physics major only needed a few more classes to get a math degree (because so much was required for physics). Second, I don't think one can truly appreciate physics by doing it all in one year. I doubt he took very many advanced courses. I learned a lot in intro physics (I had AP credit, but declined it to take an honors intro course) that I never learned in high school. And it always takes me a while to truly appreciate a subject. Not just one year. Plus I doubt he got much research experience in.
I'm sure he's a smart person and talented, but there are plenty of people like that out there. If he had tried doing that at a place like Caltech or MIT, I doubt it would've worked. Plus I actually enjoyed taking distribution classes because they gave me an interesting perspective I hadn't known before. In fact, I wish I had taken more of them.
Regardless, if you're thinking of doing this, don't. If you're that smart, go to a better school, spend the money, and be really challenged like this guy never was.
I wouldn't bet on your statement. Look at the Alcubierre metric. The Alcubierre metric essentially warps spacetime around a ship so that while the ship is not traveling at a velocity greater than the speed of light locally, it is traveling at a speed greather than that of light to someone outside the spacetime (i.e. you on Earth).
I don't claim to be someone who understands general relativity well and so don't knwo if this is valid- I'm only an undergrad physics major who's taken a GR course (although a pretty advanced one). But I quote from Hartle's GR book (p. 145):
and from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_Drive):
Now granted, we don't have FTL travel yet. But I think there's a good chance we'll figure it out eventually. It might take us a few thousand more years, or another ten years, but I think we'll find it. Look at how far we've come in just the last few centuries. Of course, you might be right. But physics hasn't said no so far.
So now Syria and China (I'm not even going to mention their human rights records or the like) want to make sure there is no spam and there is network security. Part of the reason the Internet has been so popular is that it was free to essentially govern itself. The spam laws currently on the books do very little, and while I hate spam as much as anyone else, I don't want any laws banning it because none of them will work and will only stop remove some of the freedom of the Internet.
Now to the next definition of free - the developing countries want us to pay for their Internet access:
So now they want us to pay for their Internet access because they can't afford it.
This is not being done to make the Internet a freer place. This is being done so that other countries get a new tax base and yet another place to govern. To all of you who support this, wait until this happens, and then when your site is censored for being politically incorrect or something because you disagree with the Chinese government, you'll understand why this was a bad idea.
You obviously don't know what's going on. First of all, most of the data has not been received yet. Its still being transmitted to NASA from the probe. Right now we're only getting low res pictures because that's all that's been sent. The priority right now is data gathering, not data transmittal.
Second, automated image enhancement is pointless. As an amateur photographer, I know that each picture needs to be optimized manually, and using automatic settings often works, but not always. You'll get good pictures, but not 12 hours after impact. Plus I'm sure much of what they received wasn't good anyway and had to be thrown out.
Third, you obviously don't know the complexity of these projects. Most of the public doesn't really care about the low resolution pictures - they'll see the high res pictures when they're broadcast by the media. Which means that there's no point for NASA to deal with the 0.1% of the public who think they deserve to get access to those pictures.
Fourth, I'm really rather insulted by your pompous attitude regarding the people at NASA. No, I don't work at NASA. Nor can I call myself a scientist yet. But I'm an undergraduate physics major and so far my plans are to go on to grad school. Right now I'm spending the summer at the biggest NSF-funded project (not hard to figure out which one it is) and I will tell you that the people who run the project are brilliant and have no time to deal with whiners like you. If you really wanted to work on these kinds of missions, why didn't you dedicate your life to science instead of just whining about how you don't have access to all the data. Because I doubt you can figure out much from the data, and I find your arrogance to be purely insulting.
The one major problem with this that I see is that it actively slows you down. What happens if I need to go faster due to road conditions? What if going slower is actually less safe? What if I'm passing an 18-wheeler in the left lane, and suddenly he starts moving into my lane? With this system I don't have the option of accelerating to the speed I need to avoid the collision. Granted, the article did say that there's a hazard button on it. But frankly, if I'm in that kind of situation, I don't want to think about 20 different buttons to press. I just want to step on the accelerator and go 70 mph instead of 60 mph.
If you really want to stop speeding, increase the speed limit to say 90 mph on major highways, maybe 70 or 80 on minor ones. Basically, as fast as any reasonable person would attempt to travel on those roads. Personally, I wouldn't go 90 mph on any road unless it was basically straight and I had a good car. And I wouldn't break the 90 mph speed limit. Then, instead of having the police hide out with their radar guns, get them to find the people who are interfering with traffic and making problems.
Every time I see a police car, I hit the breaks automatically. Even if I'm going the speed limit. It's just a natural reaction now. That causes the car behind me to hit the breaks, and every car behind that one. This creates a hazard. If I didn't have to worry about the police, and the police stopped people who drive aggressively instead of people who stay in one lane and just go 70 instead of 60, you wouldn't have this kind of situation anymore. Also, they'd need to stop the idiots who go slower in the left lane than those the right lane is moving. But in general, instead of causing accidents they'd prevent them.
With regards to the argument made by those who appose this idea - that foolish drivers will abuse this trust - that's what the police are there for. Instead of stopping people who are just driving at their comfortable speed, they can be stopping idiots who aren't paying attention to the road or don't know how to drive well.
I think the most important part here is that the Air Force is interested in anti-matter research. If the government starts pouring money into the research, then maybe we will get cheap anti-matter. Anti-matter is only expensive now and there may be ways to get it cheaply. That, I think, is the most important part of this development.
Not in all cases. I got strep throat a year ago, and the idiot doctor at my college's health service couldn't figure out it was strep throat although I was fairly sure it was (I suppose they screwed up the tests). I got put on some general antibiotic that made me feel better but didn't kill of the bacteria. Two days after the antibiotics were done the strep throat returned and my personal doctor was able to determine it easily and prescribe the antibiotics that I needed. And no, this was not unnecessary treatment. I had a fever of >103 and had finals in a day or two. But I do blame that idiot doctor for screwing up the prescription.
If you don't want something like the Soekris routers (very small with little expansion), look at Via's mini-itx computers. You can (or at least could) get a fanless computer with an external DC power supply that supported a CD and hard drive. I'm using one right now as a firewall/VPN/DNS server to connect to a different computer, and it runs very well (though I don't use a hard drive, instead I use a CF card mounted as read-only). The newer ones support up to two extra PCI cards and are really nice.
Up to this past weekend I was using only bogofilter (which is a pure bayesian filter). I seem to get about 200 spam a day on my main account. Until about a month or two ago bogofilter was amazing - I'd get maybe 1 or 2 spam a day, if that many. Then recently I suddenly started getting hit with 20 spam messages a day, and I noticed most of those were using lots of common words to bypass bogofilter. Most spam was still being removed by bogofilter, but enough to make me annoyed. This past weekend I also enabled spamassassin (without its bayes filter though), and its cut down the number of spam to maybe 5 a day, but its still too much for me. I'm hoping we have the next breakthrough in spam filtering technology soon (akin to bayesian filtering) because it seems that every new technique we use to filter the spam is eventually targeted by the spammers and bypassed.
The problem here is money. The only reason right now why anyone would go into a scientific career (in academia) is because they love the subject they're in. I'm currently an physics major at a big research university (ivy league). The majority of my friends who are physics majors don't plan on going on to graduate school and working in research. Part of the reason (I think) is the money. Why should I stay in school for an extra 5 years (at least) making barely anything and then have to deal with the low salaries professors get? Even doctors have something to look forward to. I often ask myself why I'm not just studying computer science (which I'm quite good at) so that I can get a job after (maybe) staying an extra year to get a masters and getting a good salary. For me its because I really enjoy physics. But a lot of people would just go with the more practical route.
What do I propose? The only way to get more people interested here is to increase funding. Make science an important part of government funding. Give students incentives to go to graduate school. Pay professors a good salary. Then I think more people would be interested in research.
When I was in 11th grade (3-4 years ago) my Physics teacher decided to buy the CD version the textbook. It was absolutely horrible. It was slow and the book that I checked out from the library was ten times better, simply because I didn't have to stare at a screen to learn material.
Online material is often very helpful, but I always print out the material. Reading a screen is much more tiresome for me. I remember reading some old books on my computer a couple of years ago because it was impossible to get them in print, and after an hours worth of reading a text file I couldn't look at the computer any longer.
I'll also mention that having a computer is a huge distraction. Granted, sometimes its nice to not be completely bored, but often times you just stop paying attention if you're surfing the internet or playing a game.
The only positive thing about that CD (and the fact that my teacher couldn't teach at all) was that it actually made me study physics and discover that I wanted to continue studying it.
No, that's not how it ends. I actually did this. I bought a very quiet hard drive (Seagate Barracuda IV), and a quiet power supply (Antec Trupower 330). But then the video card fan made too much noise, so I bought a replacement. But then the power supply was two loud, so out went the standard "loud" fan and in went a super-quiet pc power & cooling fan. Then the CPU fan and the case fans became too loud, so I replaced them all with the same fans as the power supply. But then the PS fan was still too loud, so I put in rubber spacers and undervolted the thing. But then the case fans were too loud and I undervolted them. But then the PS fan was too loud, and I undervolted it. Except that then my PS started overheating from the heat rising from my CPU. So I built a duct from the CPU directly to the outside of the case (which works fairly well). It's still too loud, and I don't really know what else to do except possibly undervolting the fan on my cpu. But if I start with that again, I'll probably never stop.
I really hate these phones that use a touch screen to let you dial. I'm sure it lets them save space, but there's no way I can dial on that without looking at the keypad. It really nice to be able to call someone when its freezing outside and not worry about getting frostbite. I'd really like a Phone/PDA/MP3 player (or at least two of those things), but not until I can actually use it as a phone rather than a pda that has a phone app.
I think one of the big advantages of building a base on the moon first is just to build up the space industry. The moon is a lot more accessible than Mars - it's only 3 days away and we have all the technology to get there already. Why is this important? The majority of space exploration is currently done by the government. But what happens if the US opens a base on the moon, provides landing/launching facilities and invites companies to make it a tourist attraction. Suddenly we have not only the government spending money on the moon but also individual companies. The government can charge them taxes on the moon and this way finance further expansion on the moon and beyond.
What does this give us? A bunch of companies dedicated to building space vessels and a new generation of people who expect to be able to get into space. If the US spends the initial money to get to the moon, 10 years afterwards we might have a thriving colony on the moon. Not only will commercialization decrease costs, it'll also make space travel a reality for more people, who will then demand more opportunities and before you know it we'll have colonies established on mars and beyond.
In terms of ease of use, I don't think KDE is much harder to use than mac os x. But the applications aren't there. Why hasn't someone designed a suite like iLife that could bring people over from Windows? I'm sure a lot of people want apples, but don't want to get a brand new computer. I see a perfect opportunity for Linux to get onto the desktop by releasing a iLife like suite - even without DVD/music/movie. Just kTunes and kPhoto and maybe something else would do, but it would give people an incentive to easily switch over to Linux instead of thinking about how nice apples are.
Personally, I'm really dissapointed with the mini ipod. The only thing that's selling it right now is its size (and the colors, I guess). I was ready to buy a $150 ipod that had 2GB of storage. But $250 is too much for me. If I'm planning to spend $250, I'd rather spend $300 and buy a full 15 GB ipod. It's only $50 more, and you get almost 4 times the storage. I don't think apple will get many new customers with this, and i hope they introduce a $150 model very soon, because that would be a hit, while I doubt this one will be very successful.