My son is on the Dreadbot team, the one in the video. Last year was his first year, too. The team is only four years old and is not well funded, but we managed to get into the world championships last year and make almost all the way to the top of our division. For the record, we're not particularly well funded; we had to beg for money from local businesses so we could afford to go to the state and world competitions. I know some teams get a lot of funding and mentoring from big engineering companies, but a talented team can go a long way without that.
I also looked (but could not find) information on the population being surveyed. Is this an actual random sampling, or self-selected respondents to an ad in Astrology Today magazine?
Janine Melnitz: Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?
Winston Zeddemore: Ah, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.
It's not perfect, but it's a good first approximation. It has the benefit of being a quick test that anyone with a measuring tape and scale can perform. There are certainly exceptions, and you may argue that the accepted ranges are wrong, but overall the ratio of weight:height^2 is a reasonably accurate indicator of health for the vast majority of people.
(This coming from a man who's been on the wrong side of the "obese" line for at least a decade, so I'm not just saying that because I'm pleased that it validates my lifestyle.)
I installed the game, rated it 1 star with a note about how much of a rip-off the in-game wallet raping is, the uninstalled it. EA is not the only one that can abuse the rating system.
And was this based on your own assessment of the game, or based on hearsay?
users probably don't want other people to be able to monitor their heart rate sensor
I should say not! Hell, if hackers can monitor your heart rate sensor they can get in and adjust it. Make your heart race until it explodes! This is why we need to restrict the transceiver technology this article talks about. Keep it in the hands of licensed professionals. It's just too dangerous to let hackers get anywhere near it.
This reminds me of a 2600 article I saw way back in the day. The authors had painstakingly reverse engineered the analog cellular system control channel. I read the article, saw the trouble they went through and where they drew the wrong conclusions, and thought to myself, "Guys, you know you can just go buy the actual spec, right?"
I can tell that you, Mr. Smart Guy, have never really interviewed in the position of the guy doing the hiring. You would be amazed how many candidates can't even answer the most basic questions. Last fall interviewing on-campus at some reasonably well respected schools I got completely fed up with the so-called CS majors that I damn near started the interviews with, "Pick a language. Any language. Write 'hello world'." Yes, people a year or two away from graduating with a CS degree were actually failing that level of question.
But I didn't want to seem snarky as an interviewer, either. So I started things out by saying, "Look, I'm going to start with some pretty basic questions." Then I'd ask things like what's a netmask or what are the arguments to main() or something like that. From there I could either move quickly to the real questions or to a polite brush-off. (And I had to do a truly depressing number of brush-offs.)
The same can be said for on-site interviews, too. Especially on the phone. I called you because your resume sounded promising. Now I have to find out if that impression is right or if you're just blowing smoke.
So yes, the interviewer knows the starting questions are ridiculously easy. They're meant to be. Try not to be an asshole about it. (And btw, a router "built out of an old workstation, two network cards, and a patched Linux kernel" is hardly impressive. Answering that way just tells the interviewer that you have absolutely no experience but you think you're god's gift to the data center. No experience is fine, we all started there. Just drop the attitude.)
JavaScript performance on mobile is terrible - like 10x slower than desktop. If you make your website dependent on javascript, prepare to lose a lot of mobile customers who won't have the patience to wait it out.
Why would providers care? Most of them have mobile versions of their sites which are already severely crippled, and they go out of their way to make them that way. You'd think that would be enough to drive people away, but it doesn't. What's a little page load time on top of it?
I will personally contribute a vast sum to send Honey Boo Boo on a one-way trip to Mars -- on the condition that communication is *not* part of the package.
I say we allocate votes based on tax dollars paid. One dollar paid in taxes equals 1 vote you can cast. Mind you, this is based on actual tax dollars paid, not on taxable income before deductions are subtracted.
Won't this make a rich elite ruling class? Sure, but we have that now. At least this way the rich elite will be falling all over themselves to figure out how to pay more in taxes, not less -- more that can be used for welfare programs. And if they do vote to pay less in taxes (lower capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, etc.) they're giving voting power away to the poor. Conversely, the same argument can be used to placate the rich that the poor won't impose all sorts of stick-it-to-the-man luxury tax. It's a self-balancing system.
I wasn't serious when I started this post, but I think I'm talking myself into it...
Unless you include a huge "donation" check in your letter . . . your "representation" won't even receive your letter. The secretary will just toss it in the trash.
Nah, it'll get aggregated by subject matter. In the month-end statistics it'll just be another check for "concerned about border security", prompting the lawmaker to introduce a bill to *require* searches of all laptops. Mission accomplished.
(An exception is astronomy, where amateurs continue to play important roles. Of course, astronomy doesn't involve chemicals or other (currently) 'scary stuff.')
You just wait. Someday an amateur astronomer is going to discover an asteroid that will hit the earth and kill us all. Then you'll see how scary amateur astronomy really is! We can only be safe by prohibiting these dangerous amateurs and leaving the field to the responsible professionals.
I'm also an author of one of these games. No one asked me my permission either. Of course they didn't have to, I'm not the copyright holder. The company I worked for at the time is. I doubt they asked them either, though.
But good for Archive.org! I'm glad to see an easy way to get this collection. I'm downloading it and will be seeding it. And when I get around to overhauling my MAME cabinet I'll be using it as my source of ROMs.
Now, the people hoarding incandescent bulbs are a bit more puzzling.
Don't you know, man? The electronics in any CFL or LED bulb produce unnatural beat frequencies against high-end audio equipment. If you're going to spend all that money on the really *good* audio equipment, (tube amp, wooden knobs, cables made of pre-WWII oxygen-depleted copper) you can't ruin it with harsh electronic light. You *need* an incandescent in the room.
No, it's not useless. That was my point, though I was being somewhat flip in making it. It's not giving me eyestrain. In fact it's alleviating it. The pixels aren't used to make things *smaller*, they're used to make things *sharper* while keeping them the same size. I have the same number of rows and columns in my text editor, they're just less blurry. The same number of icons on my desktop, only they're sharper and more well-defined. Kind of the difference between reading an illustrated article in a high-quality glossy magazine versus the same text and pictures in a daily newspaper.
I went from an older laptop with a 15" 1440x900 display to this one with a 15" 2880x1800 display. I didn't notice a lot of difference. Marginally clearer, I thought, but no big deal. Certainly not worth the extra money, good thing my company was paying. But then after a few weeks I went back and looked at the old machine. Good gravy, the 1440x900 display looked *awful* after getting used to four times the pixels! I hadn't made major changes to my desktop layout, my editor, my browser, or anything else. The same physical size elements, just with more pixels. It was rather surprising how it didn't make much difference going from low-res to high-res, but going back was a *huge* difference.
So yeah, more pixels is better, at least when the screen is only 18" from my face. On the other hand I keep my TV, clear across the room, at 720 instead of 1080. Why? I'm nearsighted, I can't tell the difference at that range, and running at the lower resolution lets my aging and somewhat underpowered HTPC function better. I can't say that more pixels is better in all situations for everyone, but for me anyway I'll take all the pixels you can give me in a laptop display.
As I sit here typing this on my 15" 2880x1800 MacBook I can honestly say that more is better, baby. It's a shame that Windows really blows chunks scaling its display. I just set up Win7 in a BootCamp partition and it looks like Bill Gates did everything in his power to say, "Make this look like ass on Apple hardware." A lot of Mac apps initially looked like that when the Retina displays first came out, so I imagine Windows apps are going to stay at this same half-assed level until hi-dpi displays are commonly available.
And any 2nd year engineering student could figure out that by putting a slot in the glass and a void behind it you're reducing the structural integrity of an already thin, brittle material. But before that happened a 3rd year industrial design student would slap it down because the little rubber nub would destroy the sleek minimalist look that Apple prizes so much.
Then how about social stigma and/or embarrassment associated with opting out? "All right-thinking moral upstanding citizens want the filter in place, but we value your freedoms. If you're the sort of immoral, depraved pervert who likes that sort of thing, feel free to just ring us up and tell us specifically that you want to access all that horrid stuff."
As to conspiracy theories, there doesn't need to be a conspiracy for there to be a chilling effect if people *believe* there's one. "I'm not going to opt-out, because I don't want to end up on some government list of paedos and terrorists." It doesn't matter whether or not the government is actually keeping a list so long as people suspect that they are. The net effect on freedom is the same either way.
That means USA voted for it. It also means countries that you would not normally associate with a right to privacy voted for it. Basically it was watered down enough that no one opposed it.
My guess is that the magic word is "unlawful". Sure, the US opposes unlawful surveillance. That's why we've made it perfectly legal for the government to poke it's nose into anywhere, at any time. No unlawful surveillance here, nope!
"Well, it's been running slow lately. And once a website popped up a notice saying it had detected a virus on my machine."
"... It did?"
"Yeah. I downloaded and ran the program it suggested but it seems even worse now."
"You're right, Dad. Your computer has a virus. Better take it to the repair guy."
True story. I love my parents, but they're three hours away by car, I gave up on Windows years ago, and there's no way I can talk them through a de-lousing session over the phone. ("Open the control panel. Go to the start menu... No, the one in the lower-left. Now click on it. LEFT click. Press the button on the left side of the mouse, Dad...") Computer repair shops still exist, or in the worst case they can take it to the Geek Squad who at the very least can re-image the damned thing.
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My son is on the Dreadbot team, the one in the video. Last year was his first year, too. The team is only four years old and is not well funded, but we managed to get into the world championships last year and make almost all the way to the top of our division. For the record, we're not particularly well funded; we had to beg for money from local businesses so we could afford to go to the state and world competitions. I know some teams get a lot of funding and mentoring from big engineering companies, but a talented team can go a long way without that.
All we know for sure is that there's a witch involved in here somewhere, and she will be hunted down and burned!
Why in the world would they do that? The vast majority of Congress want the government to have wiretapping powers.
It's not perfect, but it's a good first approximation. It has the benefit of being a quick test that anyone with a measuring tape and scale can perform. There are certainly exceptions, and you may argue that the accepted ranges are wrong, but overall the ratio of weight:height^2 is a reasonably accurate indicator of health for the vast majority of people.
(This coming from a man who's been on the wrong side of the "obese" line for at least a decade, so I'm not just saying that because I'm pleased that it validates my lifestyle.)
And was this based on your own assessment of the game, or based on hearsay?
Why would anyone tech-savvy enough to know how to set up a mail filter still be using hotmail?
I should say not! Hell, if hackers can monitor your heart rate sensor they can get in and adjust it. Make your heart race until it explodes! This is why we need to restrict the transceiver technology this article talks about. Keep it in the hands of licensed professionals. It's just too dangerous to let hackers get anywhere near it.
This reminds me of a 2600 article I saw way back in the day. The authors had painstakingly reverse engineered the analog cellular system control channel. I read the article, saw the trouble they went through and where they drew the wrong conclusions, and thought to myself, "Guys, you know you can just go buy the actual spec, right?"
I can tell that you, Mr. Smart Guy, have never really interviewed in the position of the guy doing the hiring. You would be amazed how many candidates can't even answer the most basic questions. Last fall interviewing on-campus at some reasonably well respected schools I got completely fed up with the so-called CS majors that I damn near started the interviews with, "Pick a language. Any language. Write 'hello world'." Yes, people a year or two away from graduating with a CS degree were actually failing that level of question.
But I didn't want to seem snarky as an interviewer, either. So I started things out by saying, "Look, I'm going to start with some pretty basic questions." Then I'd ask things like what's a netmask or what are the arguments to main() or something like that. From there I could either move quickly to the real questions or to a polite brush-off. (And I had to do a truly depressing number of brush-offs.)
The same can be said for on-site interviews, too. Especially on the phone. I called you because your resume sounded promising. Now I have to find out if that impression is right or if you're just blowing smoke.
So yes, the interviewer knows the starting questions are ridiculously easy. They're meant to be. Try not to be an asshole about it. (And btw, a router "built out of an old workstation, two network cards, and a patched Linux kernel" is hardly impressive. Answering that way just tells the interviewer that you have absolutely no experience but you think you're god's gift to the data center. No experience is fine, we all started there. Just drop the attitude.)
Why would providers care? Most of them have mobile versions of their sites which are already severely crippled, and they go out of their way to make them that way. You'd think that would be enough to drive people away, but it doesn't. What's a little page load time on top of it?
I will personally contribute a vast sum to send Honey Boo Boo on a one-way trip to Mars -- on the condition that communication is *not* part of the package.
I say we allocate votes based on tax dollars paid. One dollar paid in taxes equals 1 vote you can cast. Mind you, this is based on actual tax dollars paid, not on taxable income before deductions are subtracted.
Won't this make a rich elite ruling class? Sure, but we have that now. At least this way the rich elite will be falling all over themselves to figure out how to pay more in taxes, not less -- more that can be used for welfare programs. And if they do vote to pay less in taxes (lower capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, etc.) they're giving voting power away to the poor. Conversely, the same argument can be used to placate the rich that the poor won't impose all sorts of stick-it-to-the-man luxury tax. It's a self-balancing system.
I wasn't serious when I started this post, but I think I'm talking myself into it...
Nah, it'll get aggregated by subject matter. In the month-end statistics it'll just be another check for "concerned about border security", prompting the lawmaker to introduce a bill to *require* searches of all laptops. Mission accomplished.
You just wait. Someday an amateur astronomer is going to discover an asteroid that will hit the earth and kill us all. Then you'll see how scary amateur astronomy really is! We can only be safe by prohibiting these dangerous amateurs and leaving the field to the responsible professionals.
I'm also an author of one of these games. No one asked me my permission either. Of course they didn't have to, I'm not the copyright holder. The company I worked for at the time is. I doubt they asked them either, though.
But good for Archive.org! I'm glad to see an easy way to get this collection. I'm downloading it and will be seeding it. And when I get around to overhauling my MAME cabinet I'll be using it as my source of ROMs.
Don't you know, man? The electronics in any CFL or LED bulb produce unnatural beat frequencies against high-end audio equipment. If you're going to spend all that money on the really *good* audio equipment, (tube amp, wooden knobs, cables made of pre-WWII oxygen-depleted copper) you can't ruin it with harsh electronic light. You *need* an incandescent in the room.
Why not actually buy the books, use calibre to convert them to some other format, and read them in the (non-spying) reader of your choice?
No, it's not useless. That was my point, though I was being somewhat flip in making it. It's not giving me eyestrain. In fact it's alleviating it. The pixels aren't used to make things *smaller*, they're used to make things *sharper* while keeping them the same size. I have the same number of rows and columns in my text editor, they're just less blurry. The same number of icons on my desktop, only they're sharper and more well-defined. Kind of the difference between reading an illustrated article in a high-quality glossy magazine versus the same text and pictures in a daily newspaper.
I went from an older laptop with a 15" 1440x900 display to this one with a 15" 2880x1800 display. I didn't notice a lot of difference. Marginally clearer, I thought, but no big deal. Certainly not worth the extra money, good thing my company was paying. But then after a few weeks I went back and looked at the old machine. Good gravy, the 1440x900 display looked *awful* after getting used to four times the pixels! I hadn't made major changes to my desktop layout, my editor, my browser, or anything else. The same physical size elements, just with more pixels. It was rather surprising how it didn't make much difference going from low-res to high-res, but going back was a *huge* difference.
So yeah, more pixels is better, at least when the screen is only 18" from my face. On the other hand I keep my TV, clear across the room, at 720 instead of 1080. Why? I'm nearsighted, I can't tell the difference at that range, and running at the lower resolution lets my aging and somewhat underpowered HTPC function better. I can't say that more pixels is better in all situations for everyone, but for me anyway I'll take all the pixels you can give me in a laptop display.
640x480 should be enough for anyone...
As I sit here typing this on my 15" 2880x1800 MacBook I can honestly say that more is better, baby. It's a shame that Windows really blows chunks scaling its display. I just set up Win7 in a BootCamp partition and it looks like Bill Gates did everything in his power to say, "Make this look like ass on Apple hardware." A lot of Mac apps initially looked like that when the Retina displays first came out, so I imagine Windows apps are going to stay at this same half-assed level until hi-dpi displays are commonly available.
You are. But what you're wearing is actually worse. Seriously, some bodies are just *not* suited to the leather-and-latex scene.
And any 2nd year engineering student could figure out that by putting a slot in the glass and a void behind it you're reducing the structural integrity of an already thin, brittle material. But before that happened a 3rd year industrial design student would slap it down because the little rubber nub would destroy the sleek minimalist look that Apple prizes so much.
Then how about social stigma and/or embarrassment associated with opting out? "All right-thinking moral upstanding citizens want the filter in place, but we value your freedoms. If you're the sort of immoral, depraved pervert who likes that sort of thing, feel free to just ring us up and tell us specifically that you want to access all that horrid stuff."
As to conspiracy theories, there doesn't need to be a conspiracy for there to be a chilling effect if people *believe* there's one. "I'm not going to opt-out, because I don't want to end up on some government list of paedos and terrorists." It doesn't matter whether or not the government is actually keeping a list so long as people suspect that they are. The net effect on freedom is the same either way.
My guess is that the magic word is "unlawful". Sure, the US opposes unlawful surveillance. That's why we've made it perfectly legal for the government to poke it's nose into anywhere, at any time. No unlawful surveillance here, nope!
Tautology cat is tautological.
"I think my computer has a virus."
"What makes you think that, Dad?"
"Well, it's been running slow lately. And once a website popped up a notice saying it had detected a virus on my machine."
"... It did?"
"Yeah. I downloaded and ran the program it suggested but it seems even worse now."
"You're right, Dad. Your computer has a virus. Better take it to the repair guy."
True story. I love my parents, but they're three hours away by car, I gave up on Windows years ago, and there's no way I can talk them through a de-lousing session over the phone. ("Open the control panel. Go to the start menu... No, the one in the lower-left. Now click on it. LEFT click. Press the button on the left side of the mouse, Dad...") Computer repair shops still exist, or in the worst case they can take it to the Geek Squad who at the very least can re-image the damned thing.