From my own experiences, being in college (away from
home) makes it a pain in the ass to vote. A large number of people actually go away to college, therefore no longer reside in
their registered district. To vote, they either must go home or take the time to register in their new location (if they can find
their information, etc).
Ever heard of absentee ballots? We get flyers from the different parties telling us how to get them, some flyers include the forms!
This hysterical pandering has nothing to do with the reality of children's lives, or their welfare. If either Bush, Cheney, Gore or Lieberman cared a whit about children, they would shriek instead
about the paucity of decent Internet access -- and even decent computers -- in America's public
elementary and middle-schools.
I really can see no real purpose for computers
in classrooms, generally speaking. If parents want to buy their kids one, great. More power to them. I actually bought my own, with money I "made myself" (selling veggies from grandpa's garden) when I was in the sixth grade; it was a Sinclair ZX-81.
If every student can't have their own at their desk, they are nothing more than toys for the few that have the opportunity to use them. The rest
can only view from a distance; the majority can't
interact. Couple that with the fact that there's
just not enough room in a classroom for thirty or more of these boxes, and the immediate conclusion that computers in school, if they are there at all, should be in a lab. In this day and age of portable classrooms, what facility has the space to spare to set up a sporadically-used computer lab, and pay for the staff to operate it?
Secondly, computers are distractions. In a classroom they take even more time away from the real reason students are there-- to learn. No, not everything in school is fun. Some of it may, to the kids, not seem neccessary. But lack of fundamentals is one of the things that's killing this country. I can't tell you how often I find illiterate high-school students. They read like third graders! Why? Certainly not because they don't have computers in the classroom.
Computers in the classroom-- ya might as well call an arcade a "classroom." Don't give me platitudes about how they'll be able to research projects on the Web. With very limited exceptions, it just doesn't happen. What does happen? Games. Note-passing. Oggling naked women. Software piracy (in high school we called it "off-site archival preservation"). Generally, those things that in the past were not allowed in the classroom.
Information on the 'net is uncatagorized and unorganized. Students can hardly write these days, do you really think they'll be able to distill terabytes of noise and glean the kilobytes of needed data? Even if they could get to the stuff they need, much of it is on the 'net as advertisements. I am often frustrated to find that information that would be available printed and bound in the library is only on the web in the form of an abstract and order form. Not particularly useful for school-age researchers. I end up hiking to the library anyway. At least their card catalogs are focused, and don't contain millions of porn links disguised as what I want.
Americans have missed the boat on what education means. Education is not job skills. True education make one a better person. It builds character. Education creates wisdom. If kids today get out of school knowing little more than where the power switch is and how to run a small set of software applications, we have done a grave disservice to not only them, but to ourselves. We will have weakend the fabric of this country's society.
How about we get back to teaching what kids need to know to get through life. Reading is important for numerous reasons. Math lets them describe their world in measurable ways. Literature helps them understand their feelings, and express themselves to others. History tells them how we got here, and generally points to where we're going. Science teaches critical thinking. These are what schools need, not computers. Ignore these, and we'll get a society that won't even know how to build a computer!
I've not lifted weights since high school when
I tore up my shoulder playing football. This past
winter I bit the bullet and had orthroscopy done to fix it.
This past summer my wife and I joined a gym. We
go several times a week, although I'm sure we're not as consistant as most of the other patrons (physique bears this out;). In any case, I certianly feel better after an hour there than after nine at work!
It's my strong belief that the technologic society is "wrong" for people in that we weren't made for it. People were designed for agriculture, not computers. Physical labor is good for us, actually. I'm glad that some research is adding a little bit of creedence to my already-held belief.
The nearest VHF transmitter to me is about sixty
miles away in Bithlo. Furthermore, it's aimed not
at me, but at Orlando (Yes, TV antenna patterns are shaped).
Channel 2 (WESH) is nice enough to provide us
a VERY low-power repeater on (I think) UHF-16.
Not that that's any better.
I don't know anyone that uses a non-microwave
antenna around here (satellite or "wireless cable"). It's either that or cable.
Such is life in a medium-sized town in the middle
of nowhere.
Example 108 MHZ - you have a
maximum of 108Mbps if you were able to encode on every cycle of the carrier (impossible without generating nasty things)
What about your old analog modem with its ~3kHz
bandwidth? We're getting a lot more than 3kbps
out it it, aren't we? I average more than TEN
times that speed getting a new kernel (I usually
get 48k connects).
Instead of using shorter and shorter symbols,
as you propose, the key in the past has been to
use longer, more easily identified symbols, and
encode more bits into them.
QAM is an often-
used multiple-bit-per-symbol system. Each symbol
encodes two bits.
Unfortunately, as you add bits to the symbol, it
degrades noise immunity. I think that this would
be the big breakthrough for comm systems, and
the natural law that would have to be gotten "around."
The world needs dynamite too; but that doesn't mean it ought to be available to just anyone on a whim as some so-called "right".
First, this whole message has got to be a troll.
That said, the bigger question is, "where does
it end?"
If you regulate explosives, as your example,
does that mean that you regulate the chemicals
required the make an explosive, or just the
explosive itself? Will farmers have to get a
special permit to buy high nitrogen content
fertilizer? What about the knowledge of chemisty
required to make that explosive? Should books
detailing the steps required to make explosives
be banned or regulated as well?
The answer to all these, of course, is, "No!"
We live in a time where nobody is responsible
for their actions. Just this month, a new law
took effect here in Florida that requires
home swimming pools to have a fence, alarm, or
some other cost-adding feature to "protect the
children." Kids are required to wear bicycle
helmets or face ticketing by police. Presidential campaigns talk about shoring up failing dole programs with more and more taxes.
These laws all say that we're too dumb as
individuals to take care of ourselves, and
momma Government must come in and take care of
us.
Living our lives is not a privelege. It's
our right. Government's role should not, can not,
be that of nanny.
Funny you should mention Florida. There's an
Orlando based company that makes a product that
is suited to just such emergencies.
Damp-Rid!
Damp-Rid is a chemical dehumidifier. That is,
you open the package, and pour the white pellets
into a double wall bucket. The inner bucket is
perferated. As the pellets grab the water out
of the air, it is deposited as a pink, slightly
viscous, liquid in the outer bucket. Over time
this turns into a pink gelatinous goo.
Damp-Rid advertising claims that it can dehumidify
a room to the point that fungus (mildew, specifically) can't grow!
I guess we need to fly more Damp-Rid on our space
flights.
Issue: Could the mold problem be directly caused by the human inhabitants? Where would the humidity come from otherwise?
Intuit:Quicken runs fine on Linux, a la Corel. (if Corel's Office Suite runs under Linux, so does Quicken, it's just
not official...)
I admit never using Corel Office. I've only been
using Linux at home since the beginning of July.
I'll bite: in what form does Intuit's Quicken actually operate on Linux? I don't mean VMware. I know about VMware. I knew about it before the local LUG offered it as a solution to running Quicken on Linux. Of course, WINE doesn't run Quicken very well, either.
Yes, there have been Slashdot articles that gave
me hope, but I've yet to see an Intuit product yet.
I know about other money manager-- GnuCash, for example. None of them export Quicken data. As a church treasurer, I need the ability to export data in formats that less-enlightened (Win users) people can use. Quicken is available for Windows (what I use now). It comes pre-installed on iMacs.
When I resign the position, I need to be able to transfer the data to somebody else in a machine-readable form.
Quicken is the only thing that keeps me from going completely Microsoft-free at home. I can give my wife a mail client that looks enough like Outlook to make her happy. Next winter when Evolution is done, she can have something that is exactly like Outlook. Quicken is my sticky wicket.
Well, there goes my mods, but I'll
explain. He's not trolling, but
trying to make a funny. This is
basically lifting a line from
Eminem's "Real Slim Shady," replacing
"Dre" with "Feynman" to make it
topical.
Actually, Xerox name is Xerox. Everybody
knew what you meant; but as an ex-Kimberly-Clark
employee, I've been taught the value (!) of a
good trademark.
Not that Kimberly-Clark (Kleenex, anyone?), Xerox or Coca-Cola for that matter have held theirs very well.
I wonder when Microsoft is going to sue over X's use of the word "Windows."
back on topic...
Isn't this just a return to the old days of copy protection via manual keyword lookup? I remember games that made you type in a seemingly random word out of their manual before it'd let you play. This would be a similar function, wouldn't it?
As far as I'm concerned, the only useful barcode scanner would let you cut through all the BS that women give you down at the pub!
There's two ways that somebody could get your
web site down.
First, they could show that your web site has
inflicted injury upon them. That's pretty easy
to avoid, I'd think. Well, on second thought, if
the MPAA can sue 2600 for merely hosting DeCSS,
I guess anything is possible. In any case, if
all you're doing is hosting articles and essays
written by you and others (of course you've
received permssion to publish those essays you didn't write), I don't see how anyone could sue in this case. Just use editorial common sense. Don't plagarize or spread false rumors.
If you make some good enemies, they may launch a
DDoS against you, and annoy your ISP such that they turn off your account. Of course, this isn't fair; you've not done anything wrong. But from the ISP's point of view, their other customers are suffering while your account is active. So they shut it off to end the DDoS attack. I'm not sure what to do about this other than have mirrors.
In any case, I'm not sure what anyone could do, legally. As long as your content isn't breaking any laws, I don't think anyone can say boo about it.
I am not playing games, but I do need a high
speed graphics subsystem. Right now I have an
ADS (Agilent's Advanced Design System) layout
that's 16 inches tall by 17 inches wide, has
six metal layers and will contain
about 40,000 wires when I'm done.
A screen repaint takes about five
minutes on the Dell Optiplex GX-1 P3-500 that
they gave me here at work. On the Sun Ultra
60 I'm currently using it's about 30 seconds.
I've been asked why I've ditched the WinNT box.
They ask me if I need a new one. It was new in
February.
On a side note, it doesn't feel much faster than
the P2-266 that it replaced.
Why are you putting things in tmp that you don't want to lose?
Speed. At work we're given network partitions
for our projects. Unfortunately, much of what we
do is very math, and therefore disk, intensive. When running Ansoft Maxwell (HFSS) for example,
solutions can be found at least twice as fast
by running in the locally-mounted/tmp than then
network mounted/project directory!
Police officers don't have an easy job and it's made
harder by the fact that the media image of the police is rarely accurate.
C'mon! The media doesn't just portray police
negatively. When's the last time they got a technical story right? Computers? Never. Aviation? Never. Science? Never. They never get anything of even a slightly technical nature right.
I'd like to comment on zpengo's first bullet point: donating old computers to a charity.
My wife teaches at a local private school, and I helped get many of the donated computers going.
I can't tell you how many name-brand computers we threw away due to their proprietery features. With little budget and manpower, they just don't have the ability to support things like:
Micro Channel All the IBM PS/2s we got went right in the dumpster.
non-standard MB form factors Goodby to Compaq and many other name-brand machines; your custom, non-standard system boards aren't interchangeable.
Macintosh A boat load of LC-IIIs, Mac IIs and the like went home with a student who likes Macs; at least he kept them out of the dumpster.
My point: if you want to keep computer hardware out of the dumpster, a good way to start is by increasing the interoperability between brands. In other words, use commodity items that can be swapped in or out with other people.
Slashdot Mirror
Jeff
Jeff
If every student can't have their own at their desk, they are nothing more than toys for the few that have the opportunity to use them. The rest can only view from a distance; the majority can't interact. Couple that with the fact that there's just not enough room in a classroom for thirty or more of these boxes, and the immediate conclusion that computers in school, if they are there at all, should be in a lab. In this day and age of portable classrooms, what facility has the space to spare to set up a sporadically-used computer lab, and pay for the staff to operate it?
Secondly, computers are distractions. In a classroom they take even more time away from the real reason students are there-- to learn. No, not everything in school is fun. Some of it may, to the kids, not seem neccessary. But lack of fundamentals is one of the things that's killing this country. I can't tell you how often I find illiterate high-school students. They read like third graders! Why? Certainly not because they don't have computers in the classroom.
Computers in the classroom-- ya might as well call an arcade a "classroom." Don't give me platitudes about how they'll be able to research projects on the Web. With very limited exceptions, it just doesn't happen. What does happen? Games. Note-passing. Oggling naked women. Software piracy (in high school we called it "off-site archival preservation"). Generally, those things that in the past were not allowed in the classroom.
Information on the 'net is uncatagorized and unorganized. Students can hardly write these days, do you really think they'll be able to distill terabytes of noise and glean the kilobytes of needed data? Even if they could get to the stuff they need, much of it is on the 'net as advertisements. I am often frustrated to find that information that would be available printed and bound in the library is only on the web in the form of an abstract and order form. Not particularly useful for school-age researchers. I end up hiking to the library anyway. At least their card catalogs are focused, and don't contain millions of porn links disguised as what I want.
Americans have missed the boat on what education means. Education is not job skills. True education make one a better person. It builds character. Education creates wisdom. If kids today get out of school knowing little more than where the power switch is and how to run a small set of software applications, we have done a grave disservice to not only them, but to ourselves. We will have weakend the fabric of this country's society.
How about we get back to teaching what kids need to know to get through life. Reading is important for numerous reasons. Math lets them describe their world in measurable ways. Literature helps them understand their feelings, and express themselves to others. History tells them how we got here, and generally points to where we're going. Science teaches critical thinking. These are what schools need, not computers. Ignore these, and we'll get a society that won't even know how to build a computer!
Jeff
This past summer my wife and I joined a gym. We go several times a week, although I'm sure we're not as consistant as most of the other patrons (physique bears this out ;). In any case, I certianly feel better after an hour there than after nine at work!
It's my strong belief that the technologic society is "wrong" for people in that we weren't made for it. People were designed for agriculture, not computers. Physical labor is good for us, actually. I'm glad that some research is adding a little bit of creedence to my already-held belief.
Jeff
Jeff
Jeff
Jeff
Channel 2 (WESH) is nice enough to provide us a VERY low-power repeater on (I think) UHF-16. Not that that's any better.
I don't know anyone that uses a non-microwave antenna around here (satellite or "wireless cable"). It's either that or cable.
Such is life in a medium-sized town in the middle of nowhere.
Jeff
Jeff
Instead of using shorter and shorter symbols, as you propose, the key in the past has been to use longer, more easily identified symbols, and encode more bits into them.
QAM is an often- used multiple-bit-per-symbol system. Each symbol encodes two bits.
Unfortunately, as you add bits to the symbol, it degrades noise immunity. I think that this would be the big breakthrough for comm systems, and the natural law that would have to be gotten "around."
Jeff
Jeff
That said, the bigger question is, "where does it end?"
If you regulate explosives, as your example, does that mean that you regulate the chemicals required the make an explosive, or just the explosive itself? Will farmers have to get a special permit to buy high nitrogen content fertilizer? What about the knowledge of chemisty required to make that explosive? Should books detailing the steps required to make explosives be banned or regulated as well?
The answer to all these, of course, is, "No!"
We live in a time where nobody is responsible for their actions. Just this month, a new law took effect here in Florida that requires home swimming pools to have a fence, alarm, or some other cost-adding feature to "protect the children." Kids are required to wear bicycle helmets or face ticketing by police. Presidential campaigns talk about shoring up failing dole programs with more and more taxes.
These laws all say that we're too dumb as individuals to take care of ourselves, and momma Government must come in and take care of us.
Living our lives is not a privelege. It's our right. Government's role should not, can not, be that of nanny.
Jeff
Jeff
Jeff
Jeff
Damp-Rid is a chemical dehumidifier. That is, you open the package, and pour the white pellets into a double wall bucket. The inner bucket is perferated. As the pellets grab the water out of the air, it is deposited as a pink, slightly viscous, liquid in the outer bucket. Over time this turns into a pink gelatinous goo.
Damp-Rid advertising claims that it can dehumidify a room to the point that fungus (mildew, specifically) can't grow!
I guess we need to fly more Damp-Rid on our space flights.
Issue: Could the mold problem be directly caused by the human inhabitants? Where would the humidity come from otherwise?
Jeff
Jeff
I'll bite: in what form does Intuit's Quicken actually operate on Linux? I don't mean VMware. I know about VMware. I knew about it before the local LUG offered it as a solution to running Quicken on Linux. Of course, WINE doesn't run Quicken very well, either.
Yes, there have been Slashdot articles that gave me hope, but I've yet to see an Intuit product yet.
I know about other money manager-- GnuCash, for example. None of them export Quicken data. As a church treasurer, I need the ability to export data in formats that less-enlightened (Win users) people can use. Quicken is available for Windows (what I use now). It comes pre-installed on iMacs.
When I resign the position, I need to be able to transfer the data to somebody else in a machine-readable form.
Quicken is the only thing that keeps me from going completely Microsoft-free at home. I can give my wife a mail client that looks enough like Outlook to make her happy. Next winter when Evolution is done, she can have something that is exactly like Outlook. Quicken is my sticky wicket.
Jeff
Score:+5, funny
Jeff
The original lines are something like...
I gotta get out moreJeff
"Submit" and "Preview" are too close together, in my opinion
Perhaps you shouldn't be able to submit until you've previewed.
Not that Kimberly-Clark (Kleenex, anyone?), Xerox or Coca-Cola for that matter have held theirs very well.
I wonder when Microsoft is going to sue over X's use of the word "Windows."
back on topic... Isn't this just a return to the old days of copy protection via manual keyword lookup? I remember games that made you type in a seemingly random word out of their manual before it'd let you play. This would be a similar function, wouldn't it?
As far as I'm concerned, the only useful barcode scanner would let you cut through all the BS that women give you down at the pub!
Jeff
First, they could show that your web site has inflicted injury upon them. That's pretty easy to avoid, I'd think. Well, on second thought, if the MPAA can sue 2600 for merely hosting DeCSS, I guess anything is possible. In any case, if all you're doing is hosting articles and essays written by you and others (of course you've received permssion to publish those essays you didn't write), I don't see how anyone could sue in this case. Just use editorial common sense. Don't plagarize or spread false rumors.
If you make some good enemies, they may launch a DDoS against you, and annoy your ISP such that they turn off your account. Of course, this isn't fair; you've not done anything wrong. But from the ISP's point of view, their other customers are suffering while your account is active. So they shut it off to end the DDoS attack. I'm not sure what to do about this other than have mirrors.
In any case, I'm not sure what anyone could do, legally. As long as your content isn't breaking any laws, I don't think anyone can say boo about it.
Jeff
A screen repaint takes about five minutes on the Dell Optiplex GX-1 P3-500 that they gave me here at work. On the Sun Ultra 60 I'm currently using it's about 30 seconds.
I've been asked why I've ditched the WinNT box. They ask me if I need a new one. It was new in February.
On a side note, it doesn't feel much faster than the P2-266 that it replaced.
Jeff
Jeff
http://slashdot.org/yro/00/08/15/158226.shtml I guess it's a slow news day!
Jeff
My wife teaches at a local private school, and I helped get many of the donated computers going.
I can't tell you how many name-brand computers we threw away due to their proprietery features. With little budget and manpower, they just don't have the ability to support things like:
- Micro Channel All the IBM PS/2s we got went right in the dumpster.
- non-standard MB form factors Goodby to Compaq and many other name-brand machines; your custom, non-standard system boards aren't interchangeable.
- Macintosh A boat load of LC-IIIs, Mac IIs and the like went home with a student who likes Macs; at least he kept them out of the dumpster.
My point: if you want to keep computer hardware out of the dumpster, a good way to start is by increasing the interoperability between brands. In other words, use commodity items that can be swapped in or out with other people.Jeff
It's the love of money that's the root of all evil.
Jeff