I actually met Prof. Franklin a few years back when she came to lecture in one of my courses. She has an absolutely amazing grasp of the different ways that technology impacts our lives. That lecture and reading her book have definitely changed the way I perceive the technological world we live in.
As a side note, The Real World of Technology was re-released this year with 3-4 new chapters on the impacts of information technology. You can also listen to the original lectures in RealAudio here.
I must say that the fact that a Canadian company is such a leading edge networking power is a great source of pride. But there is an interesting article in the Globe and Mail today and apparently Nortel now drives one-fifth of our stock market. That's big.
Is there anything these guys can't genetically engineer:
Now Monsanto is considering technologies that turn engineered genes on and off in plants after they are sprayed with a chemical.
So they bow to pressure on the terminator seed issue, but they already seem to have an end run planned. Is it just me or is it somewhat chilling that their bag of genetically modified tricks is seemingly bottomless?
Another big plus of a material like this would be the life-cycle costs. When I looked into such things years ago in university, it was eye opening to see the hazardous materials invloved in conventional solar panels and in solar panel manufacture. Heavy metals, etc. We were looking at ideas like if x percent energy is legislated to come from solar, what would be the environmental impact? And the hazardous material disposal takes on some nasty proportions. (Even more worrying is large scale electric car use, but that is another discussion.)
A material like this with a carbon backbone and basically bio-molecule characteristics would be pretty benign to dispose of. Of course, as is mentioned in many other posts, how this energy could be harnessed is a complete unknown at this point. But to my mind this seems to be a good step towards lower cradle to grave impact. Which makes it a great selling point with an infinitessimally small portion of the population, but a guy can dream can't he?
What I would sincerely love to see is an AGP port or at least an external monitor port. As I doubt they will ever have a 17" monitor in this form factor, it would be great to plop a 19" Trinitron next to the iMac for games, Photoshop, etc.
Do any of our U.K./.'ers know when this will be on specifically? I'll be touring around the U.K. this fall (or autumn, whatever) and would love to see this. Besides, it could take years to cross the pond to CBC or PBS.
I used to work on a PLC control system that was half Siemens and half Bailey. You could work on the Bailey system through a DOS machine we had, but the Siemens system had it's own terminal with an alphabetic keyboard and it ran CP/M.
I still shudder when I think of wheeling a chair from one to the other all night and having my brain absolutely freeze up each time I switched systems.
Indeed, with all the Yank shows we do get in Canada, you'd think that one of the myriad new cable stations we have (Space, Comedy Channel) would pick up MST3K re-runs.
Odd that this topic came up this weekend, I just rented MST3K:The Movie last night (For the nth time.) Other than that, all I've ever seen are videos from friends in Vancouver lucky enough to get it out there.
Anyhow, this whole "portal" strategy doesn't sound like a big winner, especially if that's their front door. At a first glance, it looks marginally more useful to those looking for "HOWTOS" etc. than Linux.com or org's which are "news and views" oriented.
Funny thing is, I went to Red Hat this morning looking for particular HOWTO (built my first Linux box on the weekend, YAY) and the link to the HOWTO within their mirror was broken. I like site updates which improve the looks of the site (and at first glance RH's isn't bad) but I hate when they make the front page look all pretty and don't fix the links deeper down. Grr.
Indeed, a port to Power2 would be incredibly useful. I've been offered an old 365 with AIX 3.2.5 for the cost of shipping. I'd love to have it, but AIX 3.2.5 isn't terribly useful to me, and may be even less so after Dec 31st.
Actually, can anyone confirm the rumour I've heard that 3.2.5 has some Y2K issues?
Indeed, a couple of hours of heavy mouse usage kills me far beyone typing all day.
What is working against me is that the vendors of the software I use all day, every day (high end chemical process simulation) keep taking more and more keyboard shortcuts out of each new release. The only way now to do many things is through the mouse, there is no keyboard equivalent.
It seems I use the mouse more now than when I was doing drawing with AutoCAD for a living. It was amazing how many keyboard shortcuts you could use (and AutoCAD was smart enough to keep them.)
I'm thinking of switching to a trackball (prolly Logitech), has anyone's wrists felt noticably better after such a switch?
According to Samuel Florman in The Civilized Engineer, all of the managers at MT who told NASA what they wanted to hear the night before the launch had a technical background of some sort. I thnk at least one was an engineer. They were told directly to take off their engineer hats and put on their management hats and make the decision.
I find it utterly disgusting when an engineer cuts the legs out from under what should be a technical decision in the name of management.
Contrary to numerous cheesy Hollywood movies, people do not explode in a vacuum.
I saw an interview with Chris Hadwell (sp?), a Canadian astronaut, where they asked him what does happen when an astronaut is exposed to a vacuum. (This was in the context of a space suit leaking on a space walk) He described that all of those wonderful dissolved gases we have in our blood would come out of solution like opening a bottle of soda and you would foam to death.
This discussion brings to mind an interesting anecdote from a camping trip I took a couple of weeks back. A bunch of folks from the engineering company I work for went out to the mountains for a little whitewater rafting and a little relaxing in the Rockies.
Around the campfire one night, a few of us got to talking about OS's, with myself and another Linux dabbler trying to shed some light on Linux to a couple members of our IT group (we are a hardcore NT/95 shop). The conversation was very calm, well reasoned, and informative for both sides. The M$ guys admitted that there was things they liked about Linux, like development tools etc., but pointed out the barriers to it being accepted on desktops. Which was a point fairly well taken. The whole discussion was a great exchange of views and information for both sides.
And then I mentioned I was (and to some extent still am) a Mac user and advocate. And the mood immediately changed. The M$ guys became actually quite hostile, dragging out every possible argument against Mac OS and Mac users in general. They became argumentative and unwilling to listen to any of my points. At the time I was extremely annoyed, but in retrospect I see their attitude as a result of years of exposure to Mac evangelism. I have to admit that over the years, I have ran into an awful lot of Mac zealots exhibiting the exact behaviour the author is warning against.
I guess my point is that if you jump down peoples throats for long enough, eventually they are going to get defensive and ignore you. But if you try to have calm and well reasoned discussions, maybe both sides can learn something. And maybe, just maybe, you can subvert a few folks without them even knowing it.
Let me preface by saying I've kind of followed Be from the start (being a Mac guy from way back) and have found it to be an intriguing OS, though I haven't had the opportunity to try it.
Clicking around the Be site today I found this description:
Work with audio, video, image, and Internet-based applications, and edit files of millions of gigabytes in size, simultaneously, in real-time.
What files exactly are millions of gigabytes? I'm not trolling, I'm sincerely interested.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually met Prof. Franklin a few years back when she came to lecture in one of my courses. She has an absolutely amazing grasp of the different ways that technology impacts our lives. That lecture and reading her book have definitely changed the way I perceive the technological world we live in.
As a side note, The Real World of Technology was re-released this year with 3-4 new chapters on the impacts of information technology. You can also listen to the original lectures in RealAudio here.
Free Coke in Canada!!!
(This ain't no troll, I am Canadian!)
While they may not be as big as the hardware vendors mentioned above, I noticed that AST is now shipping BeOs systems.
I must say that the fact that a Canadian company is such a leading edge networking power is a great source of pride. But there is an interesting article in the Globe and Mail today and apparently Nortel now drives one-fifth of our stock market. That's big.
Is there anything these guys can't genetically engineer:
Now Monsanto is considering technologies that turn engineered genes on and off in plants after they are sprayed with a chemical.
So they bow to pressure on the terminator seed issue, but they already seem to have an end run planned. Is it just me or is it somewhat chilling that their bag of genetically modified tricks is seemingly bottomless?
Another big plus of a material like this would be the life-cycle costs. When I looked into such things years ago in university, it was eye opening to see the hazardous materials invloved in conventional solar panels and in solar panel manufacture. Heavy metals, etc. We were looking at ideas like if x percent energy is legislated to come from solar, what would be the environmental impact? And the hazardous material disposal takes on some nasty proportions. (Even more worrying is large scale electric car use, but that is another discussion.)
A material like this with a carbon backbone and basically bio-molecule characteristics would be pretty benign to dispose of. Of course, as is mentioned in many other posts, how this energy could be harnessed is a complete unknown at this point. But to my mind this seems to be a good step towards lower cradle to grave impact. Which makes it a great selling point with an infinitessimally small portion of the population, but a guy can dream can't he?
Cheers.
Isn't hype about hype meta-hype?
Perhaps there is a clue in the name after all.
What I would sincerely love to see is an AGP port or at least an external monitor port. As I doubt they will ever have a 17" monitor in this form factor, it would be great to plop a 19" Trinitron next to the iMac for games, Photoshop, etc.
Of course, I own a 6100 so this is just dreaming.
LOFLMAO
That is dead clever! I just mailed the link off to all my friends in NF.
Do any of our U.K. /.'ers know when this will be on specifically? I'll be touring around the U.K. this fall (or autumn, whatever) and would love to see this. Besides, it could take years to cross the pond to CBC or PBS.
I got:
Openess - Yoda(90%)
Conscientious - Han Solo (2%)
Extraversion - Old Ben Kenobi (22%)
Agreeableness - Qui-Gon Jinn (79%)
Neuroticism - Chewbacca (49%)
I'm as extroverted as an old hermit. Figures.
I used to work on a PLC control system that was half Siemens and half Bailey. You could work on the Bailey system through a DOS machine we had, but the Siemens system had it's own terminal with an alphabetic keyboard and it ran CP/M.
I still shudder when I think of wheeling a chair from one to the other all night and having my brain absolutely freeze up each time I switched systems.
I've always heard it called a Crown Float. Go figure.
Indeed, with all the Yank shows we do get in Canada, you'd think that one of the myriad new cable stations we have (Space, Comedy Channel) would pick up MST3K re-runs.
Odd that this topic came up this weekend, I just rented MST3K:The Movie last night (For the nth time.) Other than that, all I've ever seen are videos from friends in Vancouver lucky enough to get it out there.
Followed by:
Kewl, can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these???
Anyhow, this whole "portal" strategy doesn't sound like a big winner, especially if that's their front door. At a first glance, it looks marginally more useful to those looking for "HOWTOS" etc. than Linux.com or org's which are "news and views" oriented.
Funny thing is, I went to Red Hat this morning looking for particular HOWTO (built my first Linux box on the weekend, YAY) and the link to the HOWTO within their mirror was broken. I like site updates which improve the looks of the site (and at first glance RH's isn't bad) but I hate when they make the front page look all pretty and don't fix the links deeper down. Grr.
Indeed, a port to Power2 would be incredibly useful. I've been offered an old 365 with AIX 3.2.5 for the cost of shipping. I'd love to have it, but AIX 3.2.5 isn't terribly useful to me, and may be even less so after Dec 31st.
Actually, can anyone confirm the rumour I've heard that 3.2.5 has some Y2K issues?
Indeed, a couple of hours of heavy mouse usage kills me far beyone typing all day.
What is working against me is that the vendors of the software I use all day, every day (high end chemical process simulation) keep taking more and more keyboard shortcuts out of each new release. The only way now to do many things is through the mouse, there is no keyboard equivalent.
It seems I use the mouse more now than when I was doing drawing with AutoCAD for a living. It was amazing how many keyboard shortcuts you could use (and AutoCAD was smart enough to keep them.)
I'm thinking of switching to a trackball (prolly Logitech), has anyone's wrists felt noticably better after such a switch?
Those same paper pushers ...
According to Samuel Florman in The Civilized Engineer, all of the managers at MT who told NASA what they wanted to hear the night before the launch had a technical background of some sort. I thnk at least one was an engineer. They were told directly to take off their engineer hats and put on their management hats and make the decision.
I find it utterly disgusting when an engineer cuts the legs out from under what should be a technical decision in the name of management.
Contrary to numerous cheesy Hollywood movies, people do not explode in a vacuum.
I saw an interview with Chris Hadwell (sp?), a Canadian astronaut, where they asked him what does happen when an astronaut is exposed to a vacuum. (This was in the context of a space suit leaking on a space walk) He described that all of those wonderful dissolved gases we have in our blood would come out of solution like opening a bottle of soda and you would foam to death.
ICK!!!!
Could be, I just had my eyes examined last week and had an interesting discussion on measuring hydrostatic pressure in the eye optically.
/. ;-)
BTW, the bollocks comment above is the funniest thing I have ever read on
This discussion brings to mind an interesting anecdote from a camping trip I took a couple of weeks back. A bunch of folks from the engineering company I work for went out to the mountains for a little whitewater rafting and a little relaxing in the Rockies.
Around the campfire one night, a few of us got to talking about OS's, with myself and another Linux dabbler trying to shed some light on Linux to a couple members of our IT group (we are a hardcore NT/95 shop). The conversation was very calm, well reasoned, and informative for both sides. The M$ guys admitted that there was things they liked about Linux, like development tools etc., but pointed out the barriers to it being accepted on desktops. Which was a point fairly well taken. The whole discussion was a great exchange of views and information for both sides.
And then I mentioned I was (and to some extent still am) a Mac user and advocate. And the mood immediately changed. The M$ guys became actually quite hostile, dragging out every possible argument against Mac OS and Mac users in general. They became argumentative and unwilling to listen to any of my points. At the time I was extremely annoyed, but in retrospect I see their attitude as a result of years of exposure to Mac evangelism. I have to admit that over the years, I have ran into an awful lot of Mac zealots exhibiting the exact behaviour the author is warning against.
I guess my point is that if you jump down peoples throats for long enough, eventually they are going to get defensive and ignore you. But if you try to have calm and well reasoned discussions, maybe both sides can learn something. And maybe, just maybe, you can subvert a few folks without them even knowing it.
petabytes - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal Bytes? ;-)
Seriously, thanks to all who answered.
Let me preface by saying I've kind of followed Be from the start (being a Mac guy from way back) and have found it to be an intriguing OS, though I haven't had the opportunity to try it.
Clicking around the Be site today I found this description:
Work with audio, video, image, and Internet-based applications, and edit files of millions of gigabytes in size, simultaneously, in real-time.
What files exactly are millions of gigabytes? I'm not trolling, I'm sincerely interested.
Thanks
And they are even from my home town. Who knew Canuck's were so darn clever. :-)