Great video and argument for the need for well-made methods for present data, but there are a couple of issues I think need to be addressed with this video:
-One is that I'm seeing quite a few misinterpretations on life expectancy in various comments, and though not expressly stated, even in the implications suggested by the professor himself. It is important to keep in mind that life expectancy is almost always calculated as the full blown all-inclusive average of "age-when-people-died". While this may seem like a very standard indicator for the overall health of a nation, it is actually highly influenced by natal and infant mortality rates.
Of-course, that's not to say that being able to keep a baby alive shouldn't be a measure of a nation's overall healthiness, however the misinterpretation comes in when there are comments relating this life-expectancy to vaccines and whatnot. It is a common urge (one that seems implicitly shared by the professor in the video) to associate mankind's technological achievements with a longer fuller life, but to discount all of the carcinogens, obesity, diabetes, and other newfound sources of death that have come hand-in-hand with technology is a very hasty move. And for those that counter-argue about the elimination of disease, yes, do note the huge dips in life-expectancy in the plot as time progresses; but also observe that these dips, representing epidemics, only last for 2-5 years, and the population rebounds. My point is regarding the baseline equilibrium "life expectancy".
As far as I know, studies have shown that it doesn't matter whether you were born as a healthy baby back then versus now, as a person's life expectancy when controlled for infant mortality, has remained basically steady, with improvements in healthcare cancelling out all the crap we try to kill ourselves with. It's just that we manage to keep more babies alive til they get cancer.
-Secondly, I wanted to comment on the professor's utopian endgame of every country landing in the happy zone that is wealthy and healthy. It was common knowledge among the political big boys towards the end of Chinese communism (the economic form, not the social one. You can argue whatever you want if you feel like being ignorant, but a person driving an important Porsche Cayenne next to someone pulling a rickshaw isn't quite the equality communism originally set out for) that if China had the same proportion of its population become middle class as America, there wouldn't be enough natural resources (steel, fuel, etc.) on the entire planet to give every family an automobile. My point there is that overall wealth, while better for a country and its individuals, is definitely not better for the planet. And given it's subjective nature, it doesn't necessarily mean everyone would actually be "wealthy". If a rich nation could buy something now that a poor one cannot afford, but in the future both countries could afford it, it would just make that item in question cost more due to increased demand. Effectively, every country being "wealthy" is exactly the same as every country being "poor". We could just make America and most of Europe as poor as a developing nation, and technically every country would be "wealthy". The quality of life wouldn't necessarily improve in that case.
Slightly different, as what the artist does is actually charge up the acrylic block with excess electrons (like a supersaturated chemical solution) that have nowhere to go because of the acrylic and surrounding air acting as an insulator. Then he takes a nail to the start of the "lightning", and hammers it in which creates a ground (just like what happens in charged thunderclouds when lightning strikes), creating the effect so reminiscent of lightning.
They start with a charged up piece of acrylic, and it's obvious that the effect is not from the beam itself but from the geometry of the piece of acrylic and the grounding path they introduce.
How dare you even SUGGEST a lack of integrity in the news industry. I'm going to iReport about such insolence on CNN, and THEN you'll be sorry. Pretty soon everyone will Facebook "Like" it (right after they vote, on the front fucking page, whether they've ever unfriended someone on aforementioned Facebook), "mixx" it, twatt all over it, and proceed comment on each other's penis size (but also on your insolence... maybe!) and then someone on staff will most likely live blog about your spiral into despair _by the minute_. And that's just CNN! Once I'm done with there I'm going to iVillage on NBC and... okay something about Fox news, but that pile of crap is such a joke I don't even want to touch it with sarcasm.
Yo dawg! I heard you like overkill, so we put up a video of a video of an advertisement in an advertisement so you can watch while you read about watching while you read!
Oh I'm sorry, was that supposed to point out to me how the differences from X-rays created by lasers impinging on gold vs lasers directly ablating the top layers of a DT pellet will magically erase every single other hurdle that ICF actually has going against it? Because if this gain curve can solve the issues of symmetry and highly inefficient laser systems (with even diode pumped lasers topping out at ~1/4) I'd really like to hear it.
Sigh, I normally don't want to bother commenting on articles that have to do with fusion, but given the traffic that/. receives, it seems almost irresponsible to let such bullcrap have its way every time it rears its head.
First off, even from the getgo, ITER is arguably more pointless than it is purposeful. It's nowhere near a stepping stone towards an actual powerplant, even if this sucker proves to be able to do pulsed Q>10 fusion, the technology required for heating won't be economically or thermodynamically feasible for energy production for decades to come. While it's politically a great way to blow a large sum of money (we pulled out of this program at first, but went back in because Bush needed to kiss France's ass for the Iraq war), the most useful science coming out of it will be materials science in trying to deal with high TC superconductors and blanket materials constantly suffering neutron damage; blanket materials we won't need until a real fusion powerplant comes along (once again, decades). That aside, since its original proposal of sustained thermonuc. fusion has been thrown out in favor of hour-long pulses, probably 90% of the physics it will undergo is either known predictable. (In other words, this is NOT the plasma physics equivalent of the LHC, which is actually necessary to set boundary conditions on many physical models).
Now that's all a big clusterF* of he-said she-said that political spin gets to amplify 100-fold, but what really gets me is the comparison to NIF. Read the next few sentences very carefully:
1. NIF requires its tiny fuel pellets to be perfectly symmetrical, encased in a gold hohlraum, and perfectly centered, then shot at by the most powerful laser system ever created in earth.
2. NIF is a giant weapons research project, funded mostly by the DOD (Department, of, Defense) because we want to play nice and not test full blown warheads, and are instead simulating their fusion reactions in a laboratory (Go google NIF's funding, or enjoy the tid-bit that hohlraum was a classified word less than 30 years ago, the mention of which could get you interrogated by the FBI)
3. The laser system used to beat the crap out of the carefully assembled perfect heavy-water pellet has less than 1% efficiency. I don't care how big your Q is, the technology to fix THAT problem is way more than decades away.
4. Finally, a real powerplant, using the current studies NIF is undergoing, would require over ~60 perfectly frozen pellets (purpose is for yield, either of turbine-driving energy or more realistically better warhead modeling) per second fusion rate, lasers with a hundred times better efficiency (putting it at, oh say 10%? hah), and quite a bit of gold, that or another mechanism which they aren't studying.
The next time someone talks NIF like we're not trying to figure out a better way to irradiate large plots of people or land, please just look at them like the idiots they are. I'm sorry fusion power is taking so long, we're working on it, and we're working pretty hard. But hey, and near-infinite supply of power from just centrifuged seawater is worth the wait, right? =P
This is somewhat old hat. Companies that depend on urban transportation efficiency for a profit (FedEx and UPS) have long ago implemented systems that recommend routes to drivers. UPS for example uses technology to help reduce/eliminate left turns (usually involve sitting at an intersection idling and waiting, wasting gas and time): http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/ups-driving-cost-savings-by-eliminating-left-hand-turns/2190 (2005 article). True it hasn't been done on such a scale or for specifically this exact purpose, but data mining this informational ore vein isn't exactly new.
Off topic, but another slightly more shocking example of just how the drive of money has helped corporations know everything about us: How about being able to predict your marriage and divorce percentage to 90% accuracy? Better yet, how about doing that based on _what you buy_? Visa's got you all covered: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/visa-predicts-divorce/story?id=10320638;)
Things like this make me wonder what knowledge about society these companies know about us, and aren't letting ourselves know, simply to help them turn a better profit.
A fat, balding, selfish, stupid, bad-skinned, horrible-father-figure is voted as being "great". Welcome to America.
You have to realize, the reason he's great is _because_ he embodies those "fat, balding, selfish... etc. (I'm going to add irreverent to this)" qualities on so many levels. Not only is he as lazy and ignorant as we all at least on SOME occasions have wanted to be, but he's also the embodiment of irony and self-deprecating humor in that respect too. There's a reason why other countries that hate America still love the Simpsons and love Homer. And no it's not because they're stupid enough to think that character actually represents America (maybe Hank Hill from King of the Hill, though =P). Sure America might take many (too many? most?) of those qualities too far, especially in how stubbornly we present ourselves politically to the rest of the world. But The Simpsons, in its decades long run, is our attempt to not just revel in that attitude, but also constantly remind everyone in the world, including and _especially_ ourselves that we are nowhere near as perfect as we claim to be.
If anything, the Simpsons has been a great lesson in finding the good with the bad, a little bit of the bad in the good, and a lot of funny in everything.
A lot of people who are 'obsessed' or 'addicted' to gaming are in it for the reward system. It's almost arguable, but also pretty obvious considering how so many games have managed to successfully up their replay value simply with the addition of "achievements" that reward a player for doing random crap. Of course, life has its own reward system as well, but those that are more responsive (read: susceptible) to instant and simple gratification generally take to games very well (especially RPG's). If those are the types of games he likes to play, I would suggest looking for programs/contests that reward a person for learning writing programs.
A great *dip the toes* example are those "hack this website" type games, where you keep getting more and more links, with progressively more intricate and involved puzzles to get either a password or a link to progress in the game. Some levels involve tweaking a Flash program, some involve looking at the HTML, and some levels you're trying to find a bug in some javascript or something.
The next step would be to integrate this artificially constructed rewards system to better align itself with reality. Look for an event similar to google's Summer of Code program, but maybe on a more local or attainable level (once again, it would have to be a relatively simple task with a reward involved, not yet something every other coder on earth knows about and wants to win). (Hell, given how much programming he's learned, this might be where you'd have him look for something called a "job". Money is a ridiculously good bonus reward if you already enjoy the puzzles you get to solve on a daily basis).
Essentially, you might have to put in a bit more effort to make programming look like a game, but ultimately once programming becomes easier, the tasks become more effortless, and the rewards become more self-motivated and possibly even... "rewarding".
Anyway good luck! And don't forget to work some exercise into it too;)
Doubt anyone will have read that previous post unless they care, so here's an errata addendum:
NO2 should have read O2 and N2, NO2 is still an NOx (x being integer), the platinum traps that molecule til another NO comes along and smacks into it, and changes both into diatomics.
Another point is that CO2 and "emissions" can both still be attributed to cars (although more CO2 from power sources like coal fired plants). This is where the debate between mpg and "emissions" comes in, and why depending on where you're from, some "emissions" are worse than others because of politics (europe vs CARB vs rest of America), but why everyone thinks better mpg (less CO2) is awesome.
Remember that post a few hundred lines up that suggest fact checking? I would suggest some sanity-checking.
So for a simple tweak in software, cars would not only gain performance, save more gas, but also eliminate the need for expensive (cats are one of the world's biggest uses platinum) catalytic converters? Man, it makes complete sense now that the car companies of the world, especially those on the verge of bankruptcy in this economy, don't want the public to know that they are totally IGNORING this simple reprogramming of the ECU for the great reason of...... oh yeah it's completely wrong and stupid.
Cats are there to change NOx (smog, eventually becomes ground level ozone, the kind you WANT depleted) emissions into more harmless NO2. Problem is NOx emissions come from higher ignition temperatures (why Diesels get great fuel economy and power, but have always been seen as a dirty fuel source/powertrain), _which are a result of running lean_.
As a general point, it's also important to remember that CO2 emissions are different from the "Emissions" that they usually talk about in cars (LEV, ULEV, ZEV). Even the "Zero emission vehicles" (many of which are fuel celled) still emit CO2 and water, it's just that they don't burn anything containing nitrogens, and thus emit "zero" NOX (still a bit arguable since fuel cells run hot, and the atmosphere is 80% diatomic nitrogen).
Anyway, point of the matter, and man I hope people have read this far, is that CO2 is what is being attributed to global warming (save that debate for another thread), but the "emissions" coming out of tailpipes are what's important for whether your children have chronic asthma by their teenage years.
First I was going to suggest that this satellite would careen forward out of control like a Toyota, but then realized that wouldn't be quite accurate.
The cosmic rays we get one Earth are actually short-lived particles such as muons (a fat electron, probably most well known aside from the standard protons-neutrons-electrons) that result from cosmic naked hydrogens hitting our atmosphere. Out in space though, it'd be interesting to see if those protons would have the same effect as a terrestrial "cosmic ray".
I'm not sure if the author of the article is actually a moron who can't shop and also a complete racist, or smart enough to realize his article would have no readers without putting in a culturally ignorant title, but I'd like to know where the hell he has been shopping in SF.
First of all, you can get black duck eggs damn near everywhere. I can get them in Fremont, Sunnyvale, or Cupertino, California at a variety of locations (Lions, 99Ranch, etc.), and I'm PRETTY sure you'd be able to find it in one of the biggest Chinatowns this country has to offer. Hell I live in Madison, Wisconsin now and I'm 10 minutes (walking distance) away from a run down Chinese grocery outlet the size of a 7-11 that sells black duck eggs, and two out of the three crappy fast-food only takeout restaurants here serve porridge with black duck eggs.
To use decades old "cultural insight" that black duck eggs are a "Chinese Delicacy" without realizing that within the last two decades foods and goods Chinese people have only heard about in stories have become commonplace items not only in China, but also internationally as exports, is just pathetic.
But I guess there really was no other way to emphasize the ridiculously commonplace adage--that the human link is the weakest in security--without resorting to making ridiculous and dated cultural assumptions.
It's alright that he's not too good with cultures and people I guess. I mean, he's Russian after all, they're only good at math and physics.
Yes, it's true that Flash is not a right. And yes, it's also true that by "choosing Apple" you're choosing a "closed system". But none of it get to the core issue. Why do people write software? Most people (aside from those that just do it for their own jollies) write software so that others can use it and share in its benefit. As for software corporations, there's a big financial aspect tied to the motivations, but the want for mass-consumption is still there.
In this case, Adobe being such a crybaby about this situation is both an insult to Apple, but also a very big compliment. There is so much fear that the iPad will revolutionize... something (Granted I don't know what, as the most entertaining thing I've managed to get out of it is tapping flying Dragonballs to a musical beat) and become so ubuiquitous, that Adobe not being able to take part in it the way they've currently done with so many other forms of computing environments makes them throw e-hissy fits.
But it's neither party's fault. Apple could just as easily fail, like so many others before them (including their younger self) at creating a tablet like device, and this entire argument would be moot. On the flip side, were flash able to take more than just the left mouse button (wait, why doesn't Apple like Flash again?) and anything other than Tab as an input; had Flash actually overran the internet, I'm sure Apple would have been more than happy to play along or make exceptions.
I know there will be many who would argue whether the latter were true, but just look at Visa. They only went public _two_ years ago, but even before then they were THE name in plastic. Discover, MasterCard, AmEx? You had to ask if those would be accepted, after you saw a Visa logo on the door. There's nothing wrong with programming for a "closed" system, as long as everyone else is using it. But right now Apple just doesn't think Adobe has enough market share to be worth being "Open" for, and Adobe is scared Apple is on its way to becoming the next Visa.
What makes me wonder then is why such a disparity between hotels rooms and business/first class vs economy flights.
In hotels, it seems like the basic conveniences, as long as they charge you fractionally little enough for it, you won't mind paying in addition to whatever the room cost already was (~10% a day?). However on flights, the more you spend on your ticket, the more they will go out of their way to plant their lips on your butt as far as letting you board first, get cozy, have a free drink, check a bag for free, etc.
I guess the difference is that you're not getting two disparately priced rooms within one building in the case of hotels? But it's still pretty damn ironic that those you pay more to, try to screw you over more in the hotel industry. Somewhere along the way apparently it seems image and prestige way overtook actual customer satisfaction and service.
I was expecting something scathing for all Hyatt sub-brands across the board, and was ridiculously surprised that Hyatt's name popped up at all under the "Best" category.
Apparently the caveat being: "Hyatt offers free WiFi for guests of certain loyalty program status (Diamond and Platinum)"
I'm not sure if this website realizes that a lot of people aren't going into a hotel reservation with "5 eligible stays or 15 nights in a calendar year" (for Diamond, 25/50 for Platinum jeeze) under their belt to meet that diamond threshold...
Are other hotels really this much worse? I've been to places MUCH crappier than Holiday Inns and they've all managed to squeeze out a couple free megabits for the guest's convenience.
It feels like these guys were going into the survey already with full blown premium memberships or something if needing to spend $1500 in room reservations in a year first to get "free" WiFi doesn't warrant anything more than a footnote.
At the same time, that's the philosophy that's allowed Google to grow so big without having been hit by so many (successful) lawsuits like Microsoft.
They blatantly hoard more information (your personal info, books, voice, etc) and often offer poorly created/executed (anyone feel that Buzz?) products to either get more of your information or sell more ads, but do so at such a level that for the common person it's not worth caring about.
If anything, I think they've mastered being an unintrusive jack-of-all-trades.
I think "bulletproof t-shirts" is just a bit of verbal hyperbole from the reporter, albeit fitting in regards to the process that led to the creation of this material.
The main breakthrough of the process is that the third strongest material in the world, which was previously only accessible in a ceramic (read: brittle and crystalline) form can now be formed around templates of carbon fibers (the aforementioned, t-shirts baked to perfection).
In other articles, the main emphasis is definitely on this new stronger material being an improvement on current ballistic fibers such as Kevlar.
Slashdot Mirror
Great video and argument for the need for well-made methods for present data, but there are a couple of issues I think need to be addressed with this video:
-One is that I'm seeing quite a few misinterpretations on life expectancy in various comments, and though not expressly stated, even in the implications suggested by the professor himself.
It is important to keep in mind that life expectancy is almost always calculated as the full blown all-inclusive average of "age-when-people-died". While this may seem like a very standard indicator for the overall health of a nation, it is actually highly influenced by natal and infant mortality rates.
Of-course, that's not to say that being able to keep a baby alive shouldn't be a measure of a nation's overall healthiness, however the misinterpretation comes in when there are comments relating this life-expectancy to vaccines and whatnot. It is a common urge (one that seems implicitly shared by the professor in the video) to associate mankind's technological achievements with a longer fuller life, but to discount all of the carcinogens, obesity, diabetes, and other newfound sources of death that have come hand-in-hand with technology is a very hasty move.
And for those that counter-argue about the elimination of disease, yes, do note the huge dips in life-expectancy in the plot as time progresses; but also observe that these dips, representing epidemics, only last for 2-5 years, and the population rebounds. My point is regarding the baseline equilibrium "life expectancy".
As far as I know, studies have shown that it doesn't matter whether you were born as a healthy baby back then versus now, as a person's life expectancy when controlled for infant mortality, has remained basically steady, with improvements in healthcare cancelling out all the crap we try to kill ourselves with. It's just that we manage to keep more babies alive til they get cancer.
-Secondly, I wanted to comment on the professor's utopian endgame of every country landing in the happy zone that is wealthy and healthy. It was common knowledge among the political big boys towards the end of Chinese communism (the economic form, not the social one. You can argue whatever you want if you feel like being ignorant, but a person driving an important Porsche Cayenne next to someone pulling a rickshaw isn't quite the equality communism originally set out for) that if China had the same proportion of its population become middle class as America, there wouldn't be enough natural resources (steel, fuel, etc.) on the entire planet to give every family an automobile.
My point there is that overall wealth, while better for a country and its individuals, is definitely not better for the planet. And given it's subjective nature, it doesn't necessarily mean everyone would actually be "wealthy". If a rich nation could buy something now that a poor one cannot afford, but in the future both countries could afford it, it would just make that item in question cost more due to increased demand. Effectively, every country being "wealthy" is exactly the same as every country being "poor". We could just make America and most of Europe as poor as a developing nation, and technically every country would be "wealthy". The quality of life wouldn't necessarily improve in that case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Interpretation_of_life_expectancy
Slightly different, as what the artist does is actually charge up the acrylic block with excess electrons (like a supersaturated chemical solution) that have nowhere to go because of the acrylic and surrounding air acting as an insulator. Then he takes a nail to the start of the "lightning", and hammers it in which creates a ground (just like what happens in charged thunderclouds when lightning strikes), creating the effect so reminiscent of lightning.
You can see it in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-X5QAV0Rtk
They start with a charged up piece of acrylic, and it's obvious that the effect is not from the beam itself but from the geometry of the piece of acrylic and the grounding path they introduce.
Lose their integrity!? Ofcourse they didn't!
How dare you even SUGGEST a lack of integrity in the news industry. I'm going to iReport about such insolence on CNN, and THEN you'll be sorry. Pretty soon everyone will Facebook "Like" it (right after they vote, on the front fucking page, whether they've ever unfriended someone on aforementioned Facebook), "mixx" it, twatt all over it, and proceed comment on each other's penis size (but also on your insolence... maybe!) and then someone on staff will most likely live blog about your spiral into despair _by the minute_. And that's just CNN! Once I'm done with there I'm going to iVillage on NBC and... okay something about Fox news, but that pile of crap is such a joke I don't even want to touch it with sarcasm.
Yo dawg! I heard you like overkill, so we put up a video of a video of an advertisement in an advertisement so you can watch while you read about watching while you read!
Oh I'm sorry, was that supposed to point out to me how the differences from X-rays created by lasers impinging on gold vs lasers directly ablating the top layers of a DT pellet will magically erase every single other hurdle that ICF actually has going against it? Because if this gain curve can solve the issues of symmetry and highly inefficient laser systems (with even diode pumped lasers topping out at ~1/4) I'd really like to hear it.
Sigh, I normally don't want to bother commenting on articles that have to do with fusion, but given the traffic that /. receives, it seems almost irresponsible to let such bullcrap have its way every time it rears its head.
First off, even from the getgo, ITER is arguably more pointless than it is purposeful. It's nowhere near a stepping stone towards an actual powerplant, even if this sucker proves to be able to do pulsed Q>10 fusion, the technology required for heating won't be economically or thermodynamically feasible for energy production for decades to come. While it's politically a great way to blow a large sum of money (we pulled out of this program at first, but went back in because Bush needed to kiss France's ass for the Iraq war), the most useful science coming out of it will be materials science in trying to deal with high TC superconductors and blanket materials constantly suffering neutron damage; blanket materials we won't need until a real fusion powerplant comes along (once again, decades). That aside, since its original proposal of sustained thermonuc. fusion has been thrown out in favor of hour-long pulses, probably 90% of the physics it will undergo is either known predictable. (In other words, this is NOT the plasma physics equivalent of the LHC, which is actually necessary to set boundary conditions on many physical models).
Now that's all a big clusterF* of he-said she-said that political spin gets to amplify 100-fold, but what really gets me is the comparison to NIF. Read the next few sentences very carefully:
1. NIF requires its tiny fuel pellets to be perfectly symmetrical, encased in a gold hohlraum, and perfectly centered, then shot at by the most powerful laser system ever created in earth.
2. NIF is a giant weapons research project, funded mostly by the DOD (Department, of, Defense) because we want to play nice and not test full blown warheads, and are instead simulating their fusion reactions in a laboratory (Go google NIF's funding, or enjoy the tid-bit that hohlraum was a classified word less than 30 years ago, the mention of which could get you interrogated by the FBI)
3. The laser system used to beat the crap out of the carefully assembled perfect heavy-water pellet has less than 1% efficiency. I don't care how big your Q is, the technology to fix THAT problem is way more than decades away.
4. Finally, a real powerplant, using the current studies NIF is undergoing, would require over ~60 perfectly frozen pellets (purpose is for yield, either of turbine-driving energy or more realistically better warhead modeling) per second fusion rate, lasers with a hundred times better efficiency (putting it at, oh say 10%? hah), and quite a bit of gold, that or another mechanism which they aren't studying.
The next time someone talks NIF like we're not trying to figure out a better way to irradiate large plots of people or land, please just look at them like the idiots they are.
I'm sorry fusion power is taking so long, we're working on it, and we're working pretty hard. But hey, and near-infinite supply of power from just centrifuged seawater is worth the wait, right? =P
This is somewhat old hat. Companies that depend on urban transportation efficiency for a profit (FedEx and UPS) have long ago implemented systems that recommend routes to drivers. UPS for example uses technology to help reduce/eliminate left turns (usually involve sitting at an intersection idling and waiting, wasting gas and time): http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/ups-driving-cost-savings-by-eliminating-left-hand-turns/2190 (2005 article). True it hasn't been done on such a scale or for specifically this exact purpose, but data mining this informational ore vein isn't exactly new.
Off topic, but another slightly more shocking example of just how the drive of money has helped corporations know everything about us: How about being able to predict your marriage and divorce percentage to 90% accuracy? Better yet, how about doing that based on _what you buy_? Visa's got you all covered: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/visa-predicts-divorce/story?id=10320638 ;)
Things like this make me wonder what knowledge about society these companies know about us, and aren't letting ourselves know, simply to help them turn a better profit.
Thinking about drug companies is a scary thought.
By asking "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" and hoping for an incriminating response!
For lazier cops, there's also the great goto option of "Do you have any idea why I stopped you?"
He forgot to include:
Write perfectly good, previously accepted, well-supported code that doesn't violate any of the explicit SDK agreement terms.
But I mean, I guess that one's so obvious it goes without saying!
A fat, balding, selfish, stupid, bad-skinned, horrible-father-figure is voted as being "great". Welcome to America.
You have to realize, the reason he's great is _because_ he embodies those "fat, balding, selfish... etc. (I'm going to add irreverent to this)" qualities on so many levels.
Not only is he as lazy and ignorant as we all at least on SOME occasions have wanted to be, but he's also the embodiment of irony and self-deprecating humor in that respect too.
There's a reason why other countries that hate America still love the Simpsons and love Homer. And no it's not because they're stupid enough to think that character actually represents America (maybe Hank Hill from King of the Hill, though =P). Sure America might take many (too many? most?) of those qualities too far, especially in how stubbornly we present ourselves politically to the rest of the world. But The Simpsons, in its decades long run, is our attempt to not just revel in that attitude, but also constantly remind everyone in the world, including and _especially_ ourselves that we are nowhere near as perfect as we claim to be.
If anything, the Simpsons has been a great lesson in finding the good with the bad, a little bit of the bad in the good, and a lot of funny in everything.
A lot of people who are 'obsessed' or 'addicted' to gaming are in it for the reward system. It's almost arguable, but also pretty obvious considering how so many games have managed to successfully up their replay value simply with the addition of "achievements" that reward a player for doing random crap.
Of course, life has its own reward system as well, but those that are more responsive (read: susceptible) to instant and simple gratification generally take to games very well (especially RPG's).
If those are the types of games he likes to play, I would suggest looking for programs/contests that reward a person for learning writing programs.
A great *dip the toes* example are those "hack this website" type games, where you keep getting more and more links, with progressively more intricate and involved puzzles to get either a password or a link to progress in the game. Some levels involve tweaking a Flash program, some involve looking at the HTML, and some levels you're trying to find a bug in some javascript or something.
http://www.hack-test.com/ is an example of such a game.
The next step would be to integrate this artificially constructed rewards system to better align itself with reality. Look for an event similar to google's Summer of Code program, but maybe on a more local or attainable level (once again, it would have to be a relatively simple task with a reward involved, not yet something every other coder on earth knows about and wants to win). (Hell, given how much programming he's learned, this might be where you'd have him look for something called a "job". Money is a ridiculously good bonus reward if you already enjoy the puzzles you get to solve on a daily basis).
Essentially, you might have to put in a bit more effort to make programming look like a game, but ultimately once programming becomes easier, the tasks become more effortless, and the rewards become more self-motivated and possibly even... "rewarding".
Anyway good luck! And don't forget to work some exercise into it too ;)
Yeah! I strongly suggest they allow that, especially if they want it to turn out as popular as SnAKeS oN a PlAnE!!11one.
Hahaha he should totally do the voice. But I'd go with Channing Tatum for the lead.
How many elephants is that?
LoL, you might want to read the actual post, I was using the literary device commonly referred to as "sarcasm" in that paragraph.
Doubt anyone will have read that previous post unless they care, so here's an errata addendum:
NO2 should have read O2 and N2, NO2 is still an NOx (x being integer), the platinum traps that molecule til another NO comes along and smacks into it, and changes both into diatomics.
Another point is that CO2 and "emissions" can both still be attributed to cars (although more CO2 from power sources like coal fired plants).
This is where the debate between mpg and "emissions" comes in, and why depending on where you're from, some "emissions" are worse than others because of politics (europe vs CARB vs rest of America), but why everyone thinks better mpg (less CO2) is awesome.
Remember that post a few hundred lines up that suggest fact checking? I would suggest some sanity-checking.
So for a simple tweak in software, cars would not only gain performance, save more gas, but also eliminate the need for expensive (cats are one of the world's biggest uses platinum) catalytic converters? ... oh yeah it's completely wrong and stupid.
Man, it makes complete sense now that the car companies of the world, especially those on the verge of bankruptcy in this economy, don't want the public to know that they are totally IGNORING this simple reprogramming of the ECU for the great reason of...
Cats are there to change NOx (smog, eventually becomes ground level ozone, the kind you WANT depleted) emissions into more harmless NO2.
Problem is NOx emissions come from higher ignition temperatures (why Diesels get great fuel economy and power, but have always been seen as a dirty fuel source/powertrain), _which are a result of running lean_.
As a general point, it's also important to remember that CO2 emissions are different from the "Emissions" that they usually talk about in cars (LEV, ULEV, ZEV). Even the "Zero emission vehicles" (many of which are fuel celled) still emit CO2 and water, it's just that they don't burn anything containing nitrogens, and thus emit "zero" NOX (still a bit arguable since fuel cells run hot, and the atmosphere is 80% diatomic nitrogen).
Anyway, point of the matter, and man I hope people have read this far, is that CO2 is what is being attributed to global warming (save that debate for another thread), but the "emissions" coming out of tailpipes are what's important for whether your children have chronic asthma by their teenage years.
First I was going to suggest that this satellite would careen forward out of control like a Toyota, but then realized that wouldn't be quite accurate.
The cosmic rays we get one Earth are actually short-lived particles such as muons (a fat electron, probably most well known aside from the standard protons-neutrons-electrons) that result from cosmic naked hydrogens hitting our atmosphere. Out in space though, it'd be interesting to see if those protons would have the same effect as a terrestrial "cosmic ray".
I'm not sure if the author of the article is actually a moron who can't shop and also a complete racist, or smart enough to realize his article would have no readers without putting in a culturally ignorant title, but I'd like to know where the hell he has been shopping in SF.
First of all, you can get black duck eggs damn near everywhere. I can get them in Fremont, Sunnyvale, or Cupertino, California at a variety of locations (Lions, 99Ranch, etc.), and I'm PRETTY sure you'd be able to find it in one of the biggest Chinatowns this country has to offer.
Hell I live in Madison, Wisconsin now and I'm 10 minutes (walking distance) away from a run down Chinese grocery outlet the size of a 7-11 that sells black duck eggs, and two out of the three crappy fast-food only takeout restaurants here serve porridge with black duck eggs.
To use decades old "cultural insight" that black duck eggs are a "Chinese Delicacy" without realizing that within the last two decades foods and goods Chinese people have only heard about in stories have become commonplace items not only in China, but also internationally as exports, is just pathetic.
But I guess there really was no other way to emphasize the ridiculously commonplace adage--that the human link is the weakest in security--without resorting to making ridiculous and dated cultural assumptions.
It's alright that he's not too good with cultures and people I guess. I mean, he's Russian after all, they're only good at math and physics.
Yes, it's true that Flash is not a right. And yes, it's also true that by "choosing Apple" you're choosing a "closed system". But none of it get to the core issue.
Why do people write software? Most people (aside from those that just do it for their own jollies) write software so that others can use it and share in its benefit. As for software corporations, there's a big financial aspect tied to the motivations, but the want for mass-consumption is still there.
In this case, Adobe being such a crybaby about this situation is both an insult to Apple, but also a very big compliment. There is so much fear that the iPad will revolutionize... something (Granted I don't know what, as the most entertaining thing I've managed to get out of it is tapping flying Dragonballs to a musical beat) and become so ubuiquitous, that Adobe not being able to take part in it the way they've currently done with so many other forms of computing environments makes them throw e-hissy fits.
But it's neither party's fault. Apple could just as easily fail, like so many others before them (including their younger self) at creating a tablet like device, and this entire argument would be moot. On the flip side, were flash able to take more than just the left mouse button (wait, why doesn't Apple like Flash again?) and anything other than Tab as an input; had Flash actually overran the internet, I'm sure Apple would have been more than happy to play along or make exceptions.
I know there will be many who would argue whether the latter were true, but just look at Visa. They only went public _two_ years ago, but even before then they were THE name in plastic. Discover, MasterCard, AmEx? You had to ask if those would be accepted, after you saw a Visa logo on the door. There's nothing wrong with programming for a "closed" system, as long as everyone else is using it. But right now Apple just doesn't think Adobe has enough market share to be worth being "Open" for, and Adobe is scared Apple is on its way to becoming the next Visa.
What makes me wonder then is why such a disparity between hotels rooms and business/first class vs economy flights.
In hotels, it seems like the basic conveniences, as long as they charge you fractionally little enough for it, you won't mind paying in addition to whatever the room cost already was (~10% a day?). However on flights, the more you spend on your ticket, the more they will go out of their way to plant their lips on your butt as far as letting you board first, get cozy, have a free drink, check a bag for free, etc.
I guess the difference is that you're not getting two disparately priced rooms within one building in the case of hotels?
But it's still pretty damn ironic that those you pay more to, try to screw you over more in the hotel industry. Somewhere along the way apparently it seems image and prestige way overtook actual customer satisfaction and service.
I was expecting something scathing for all Hyatt sub-brands across the board, and was ridiculously surprised that Hyatt's name popped up at all under the "Best" category.
Apparently the caveat being:
"Hyatt offers free WiFi for guests of certain loyalty program status (Diamond and Platinum)"
I'm not sure if this website realizes that a lot of people aren't going into a hotel reservation with "5 eligible stays or 15 nights in a calendar year" (for Diamond, 25/50 for Platinum jeeze) under their belt to meet that diamond threshold...
Are other hotels really this much worse? I've been to places MUCH crappier than Holiday Inns and they've all managed to squeeze out a couple free megabits for the guest's convenience.
It feels like these guys were going into the survey already with full blown premium memberships or something if needing to spend $1500 in room reservations in a year first to get "free" WiFi doesn't warrant anything more than a footnote.
But master of none, to finish the phrase. ;)
At the same time, that's the philosophy that's allowed Google to grow so big without having been hit by so many (successful) lawsuits like Microsoft.
They blatantly hoard more information (your personal info, books, voice, etc) and often offer poorly created/executed (anyone feel that Buzz?) products to either get more of your information or sell more ads, but do so at such a level that for the common person it's not worth caring about.
If anything, I think they've mastered being an unintrusive jack-of-all-trades.
You can't know criminals' names in Korea? Kind of weird.
Yeah ditto on that weirdness vibe. Kind of makes one wonder how they handle something like America's Sex Offender registry.
I think "bulletproof t-shirts" is just a bit of verbal hyperbole from the reporter, albeit fitting in regards to the process that led to the creation of this material.
The main breakthrough of the process is that the third strongest material in the world, which was previously only accessible in a ceramic (read: brittle and crystalline) form can now be formed around templates of carbon fibers (the aforementioned, t-shirts baked to perfection).
In other articles, the main emphasis is definitely on this new stronger material being an improvement on current ballistic fibers such as Kevlar.
Popsci article:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/armored-t-shirts-contain-boron-carbide-nanowires?cpage=1