Unlimited internet access in the class romm
is not always a good thing. All you end up
with is a class room full of students playing
the latest flash games, checking on pop stars
websites etc.
What I'd really like is a big switch so at
the teachers control the internet conection
could be turned on or off.
One project which worked really well was doing
a powerpoint presentation about their favorite
popstar. It really easy to add special effects
and such and looks good.
If you want to get in the news, its got to be
new. Internet activism is.
One of the key aspects to any activism is to
keep moving. If you keep doing the same type
of protest then the media will get bored and
the protest will not get any coverage.
We have seen this in the UK with road protests.
The first few protests were new and got lots of
media attention. Now they are a bit passe and
very rarly get any coverage. It was time to
move on to other forms of protest. Before that
a mass rally could get some coverage, but now
they never get reported (unless they turn into
a riot).
Internet activism is new and is getting the
coverage, which probably helps a bit. A few
years down the line they will become tierd
and not get any coverage. But now is the time
to persue this form of activism (if your so inclinded).
Internet activism does not have to be just
hactivism. Some of you will probably have heard
of the Nike-sweatshop incident which has been making the rounds of the mailing lists. Here
someone used nikes web page to request a customized pair of shoes bearing the word swetshop on them. Nike refused and
an intresting exchange of emails occured. This
exchange of emails was passed round then net and
found its way to BBC radio's You and Yours program
one luchtime. Much embarisment to Nike.
This is the sort of internet activism which is working.
Running linux apps under windows seems a lot
less hassle to me than running windows apps
under linux.
For me using windows as my basic opperating system
has a lot of advantages:
I don't need to go through all the hassle of installing linux. I did it a few years back and spent more time trying to get it to run than doing anything productive.
90 percent of what I need to do needs windows (people send me lots of MS office documents, and I like the occasional game).
I've a feeling it might be simplier this way. There are so many wierd things going on in windows that it must be hell to get 100% compatability.
Building a linux emulator is probably a lot simpiler.
I tend to use cygwin all the time and gives me the
best of both worlds. If only someone would write
a good vt100 terminal I'd be happy.
Microsoft are very busy on the research front. In the UK they have basically bought all the leading lights in the Computer Vision community and they have set up a research center near Cambridge. Some of the profs I know of who jumpped to Mircosoft are very happy at the move as they nolonger have to spend all their time writing papers and grant proposals.
This mirrors what a lot of the other big computer companies have done. IBM has lots of research dedicated labs and what about Bell Labs.
Cynics might say that Mircosoft is trying to monopolise yet another market.
even though it didn't have neat-o polygon graphics.
I always though the neto-o polygon graphics were worse than the bit maps. Polygons may work fine for angular things like robots but when your trying to do curvies like humans they still come out jaggy. And then theres all the reduction in polygon counts which justs ups the jaggyness. The next big push in gaming is overcoming the jaggy problem.
Don't waste your time on Goldbach's conjecture: it is highly technical and intellectually almost worthless.
Would the same have been said of Fermat's last theorem. Again it seems to be a rather special result in number theory. Yet the proof of this turned out to be very deep indeed, and perhaps one of the outstanding mathematical results in the last centuary.
At the other end of the scale I saw a talk a year ago by some US army guys. There they were modelling dog flight situations with a very real posibility of the system being used in a real combat senarios. Thing was they were doing all this with an AI system which is about as far as you can get from a verifiable system. Should we be worried
Slashdot responsable for stock market crash
on
Tech Stocks Tumble
·
· Score: 1
Try this for size.
The reason the stock market has taken a tumble now is because of the Mircosoft case which has sent jitters amongst the stock market pundits who are worried about how a potential split of microsoft will effect the industry.
The imputus for the whole Microsoft case has come from the open source community. The govenment has responded to the concerns of the community (and others).
Slashdotters should be wary of a backlash against those who are trying to bring down microsoft. It's stopped being a game and is now hitting people where it hurts: in the pocket.
> Just off the first two pages I've already seen two really poor commands... using tables to control text flow...
There does seem to be a very good usibility reason for shortening the width of of text columns so that they scan easier. Tables/CSS seem the only posible ways of doing this. Problem is neither really offers a way to do it right: I want my column to be 40 em wide not 50% browser width or 150 pixels.
I can heartly recomend R I use it all the time. They have just (yesterday) released version 1.0.0 so nows the time to play. I've yet to find something that S+ can do that R can't. The only problem I've found is it make things to easy and there almost no need to actually write any programs. Its much more flexiable than the likes of SPSS, SAS etc.
For 3D mathematical graphics have a look at Geomview geom.umn.edu which is freeware. I've got a suite of programs, the LSMP, which work with geomview. It can creating algebraic surfaces and such like. I use to sell the package to the singularity theory community but I'm well up for open-sourcing/public domaining the package. The web-sites is currently out of action. But email me and I'll get things going again.
In this senario theres two rights 1) The right to bare arms. 2) The right to bar someone from your property. Theres then a negotion process where by mutual consent you could ask people to give up 1) before you grant them 2). Or by strapping on the sign you ask them (the property owner) to give up 2) without you having to give up 1). The property owner could of course not agree with this and bar you from the property.
In terms of the GPL'd quake we have 1) I don't thinks theres a real equivilent to 1) here. 2) The right to restrict someone from using your source code. The GPL is more akin to the negotion process. I.E. negotiate to use the source code given certain conditions.
Whilst I don't know the ins and outs of the GPL it does seem like Slade has reneged on the negotion process and conditions he accepted when using the software in the first place. He's really doing the equivilent of sticking up the sign. If he had said he would do this at the outset its most likely that Carmak would not have granted 2) in the first place.
So what does the GPL have to say about how the code must be distributed?
Slashdot Mirror
Unlimited internet access in the class romm
is not always a good thing. All you end up
with is a class room full of students playing
the latest flash games, checking on pop stars
websites etc.
What I'd really like is a big switch so at
the teachers control the internet conection
could be turned on or off.
I teach IT to homeless people and 16 year olds.
One project which worked really well was doing
a powerpoint presentation about their favorite
popstar. It really easy to add special effects
and such and looks good.
If you want to get in the news, its got to be new. Internet activism is.
One of the key aspects to any activism is to keep moving. If you keep doing the same type of protest then the media will get bored and the protest will not get any coverage.
We have seen this in the UK with road protests. The first few protests were new and got lots of media attention. Now they are a bit passe and very rarly get any coverage. It was time to move on to other forms of protest. Before that a mass rally could get some coverage, but now they never get reported (unless they turn into a riot).
Internet activism is new and is getting the coverage, which probably helps a bit. A few years down the line they will become tierd and not get any coverage. But now is the time to persue this form of activism (if your so inclinded).
Internet activism does not have to be just hactivism. Some of you will probably have heard of the Nike-sweatshop incident which has been making the rounds of the mailing lists. Here someone used nikes web page to request a customized pair of shoes bearing the word swetshop on them. Nike refused and an intresting exchange of emails occured. This exchange of emails was passed round then net and found its way to BBC radio's You and Yours program one luchtime. Much embarisment to Nike. This is the sort of internet activism which is working.
Running linux apps under windows seems a lot less hassle to me than running windows apps under linux.
For me using windows as my basic opperating system has a lot of advantages:
I tend to use cygwin all the time and gives me the best of both worlds. If only someone would write a good vt100 terminal I'd be happy.
This mirrors what a lot of the other big computer companies have done. IBM has lots of research dedicated labs and what about Bell Labs.
Cynics might say that Mircosoft is trying to monopolise yet another market.
I always though the neto-o polygon graphics were worse than the bit maps. Polygons may work fine for angular things like robots but when your trying to do curvies like humans they still come out jaggy. And then theres all the reduction in polygon counts which justs ups the jaggyness. The next big push in gaming is overcoming the jaggy problem.
Would the same have been said of Fermat's last theorem. Again it seems to be a rather special result in number theory. Yet the proof of this turned out to be very deep indeed, and perhaps one of the outstanding mathematical results in the last centuary.
At the other end of the scale I saw a talk a year ago by some US army guys. There they were modelling dog flight situations with a very real posibility of the system being used in a real combat senarios. Thing was they were doing all this with an AI system which is about as far as you can get from a verifiable system. Should we be worried
Try this for size.
The reason the stock market has taken a tumble
now is because of the Mircosoft case which has
sent jitters amongst the stock market pundits
who are worried about how a potential split of
microsoft will effect the industry.
The imputus for the whole Microsoft case has come
from the open source community. The govenment
has responded to the concerns of the community
(and others).
Slashdotters should be wary of a backlash against
those who are trying to bring down microsoft.
It's stopped being a game and is now hitting people where it hurts: in the pocket.
I'd say the story is relavant to slashdot.
> Just off the first two pages I've already seen two really poor commands ... ...
using tables to control text flow
There does seem to be a very good usibility reason
for shortening the width of of text columns so that they scan easier. Tables/CSS seem the only
posible ways of doing this. Problem is neither
really offers a way to do it right: I want my
column to be 40 em wide not 50% browser width
or 150 pixels.
Rich
For 3D mathematical graphics have a look at Geomview geom.umn.edu which is freeware. I've got a suite of programs, the LSMP, which work with geomview. It can creating algebraic surfaces and such like. I use to sell the package to the singularity theory community but I'm well up for open-sourcing/public domaining the package. The web-sites is currently out of action. But email me and I'll get things going again.
Heres my interpretation:
In this senario theres two rights
1) The right to bare arms.
2) The right to bar someone from your property.
Theres then a negotion process where by mutual consent you could ask people to give up 1) before you grant them 2). Or by strapping on the sign you ask them (the property owner) to give up 2) without you having to give up 1). The property owner could of course not agree with this and bar you from the property.
In terms of the GPL'd quake we have
1) I don't thinks theres a real equivilent to 1) here.
2) The right to restrict someone from using your source code.
The GPL is more akin to the negotion process. I.E. negotiate to use the source code given certain conditions.
Whilst I don't know the ins and outs of the GPL it does seem like Slade has reneged on the negotion process and conditions he accepted when using the software in the first place. He's really doing the equivilent of sticking up the sign. If he had said he would do this at the outset its most likely that Carmak would not have granted 2) in the first place.
So what does the GPL have to say about how the code must be distributed?