I think cameras can/have caught (well, ok, identified what they looked like when they were still in one piece) quite a few terrorists, they just haven't necessarily saved any lives because they pretty are much only useful *after* a terrorist attack (or any other crime) to go back and find the guy getting on the train with the big backpack etc. The terrorist and all his victims are still dead, so whether anyone's life ever gets saved is more debatable.
There aren't going to be any more registration tags. With always online law enforcement there's no reason to apply a sticker to the plate as the plate number itself plus an instant online lookup will tell you everything you want to know about the registration status of the vehicle.
Distributing tags costs money, cops don't want to have to kneel down in the snow and scrape off the slush and read the number off them, etc. Expect that the next step will be to announce that the vehicle registration system will now be completely virtual requiring no physical exchange to complete, and tags will be history.
Virtual registration also means that they could do things like require "temporary registration" for vehicles from other states that are, say, going to be in the state for more than a week. Before this would be impractical because nobody would want to have to apply some new sticker or display a registration card, and certainly not overwrite their home license tags with something else. But now the whole thing can be done virtually. Coming to New York for a month? Better go online and pay your $10/week temporary registration before the cameras catch up to you.
Personally I think violent TV is probably worse than violent games. Kids learn to behave by copying behaviors they see in other people, so when they see violence on TV it's a passive experience that may leave them wanting to try it out for themselves, to see what it feels like, etc.
In a game, they've already committed the violent act so perhaps there will be relatively less chance they will want to act it out in real life as they will have to some degree gotten the violent acts "out of their systems".
I think it's also a question of who wants to be the only adult on a committee of twelve-year-olds where everyone on the committee has an equal vote about what is done.
In writing for Wikipedia you start with no more reputation or respect than the kid who thinks he knows everything. Academics have spent years building reputations so that when they say something people have a basis for respecting their opinion.
So even if you do talk someone into contributing it's going to be hard to get them into the Wikipedia culture, and chances are you'll lose them after their first edit when someone responds with "Nah, your wrong, reverted."
Besides, the people it sounds like they're talking about are the people who tend to produce original primary source material, and Wikipedia by definition does not publish original research. Academics also often have very STRONG opinions about their own work and are usually not necessarily the ones you want to have write an encyclopedia article about their own field of expertise.
I think the distinction between pure "research grade" CS and applied "I want to get a job in the real world" CS is the important thing.
For too long it has seemed as though if you like computers then you should aspire to a CS degree. But as everyone finds out, the stuff you learn in a real in-depth CS program is often not applicable to much in the world of interesting application development. The stuff that IS could just as easily be taught in a more applied way without all the math.
We're supposed to be leveraging "re-use" and not re-inventing algorithms every time, so people should be able to use a library of algorithm objects (or whatever) for pretty much ALL applied programming, at which point all you have to understand is the trade-offs between different available choices and what they do but not necessarily how they do it or especially how to invent a better one.
I think of "real" CS as what you find in Knuth. If you want to publish papers on combinatorial algorithms then you probably want at least a master's in math before you even get started with the computer stuff. You will then aspire to getting a job as a CS professor, or possibly working in a corporate sponsored lab for IBM or maybe Google. But the things this type of scientist does may not be the kinds of things that actually got people excited about computing to begin with.
If what you really want to do is to build cool applications and Change The World(tm) then honestly hardly ANY math is needed, and while more knowledge and a better understanding of the fundamentals of what's going on will always make you better, there might be more effective and efficient things to expend your effort on, especially in cross-discipline areas that interest you and which you would like to work in.
Pure CS is really just pure math, and there are a limited number of applications (and jobs) in such a thing. What really makes computers interesting is their applications, so instead of CS, why not learn applied programming plus an application domain like Biology, Finance, etc. Ask yourself "what problems do I want to solve?" and if computing is going to be a tool to that end and not just an end unto itself, then a pure CS degree is probably a waste of effort.
I'm sure you could design and build a PC case out of some inexpensive non-metal/plastic material, but this one just seems wrong in pretty much every possible way.
This is just a prelude to the new Apple iEars implantable neural audio interface (with full DRM and iAd support) that they're going to sell you so you can fully appreciate this exciting new bandwidth. Then there will be the iEars TruSeven 7.1 channel version, which involves drilling another six holes in your head so you can actually experience BluRay Movies the way that God intended.
The Genius Bar guys can get you set up with an appointment at your nearest AOSC (Apple Outpatient Surgery Center).
Agreed, the reports of sightings and recovery are almost certainly mostly (or all) hoaxes, and the people doing this seem to be in no hurry to confirm them.
All these people saying "who cares, it's cool!" should consider whether it's still cool if all the planes fell to the ground within 100 miles of the launch point and none have yet been found.
Yes, it WOULD be cool if planes made it to Sydney or Bangalore, but if people are just making this shit up then maybe not so much.
Dreaming of what might happen is fine, but you get no points for pretending it happened if it didn't, and you do people a disservice by doing so. There's plenty of stuff in the world that's cool these days, but hardly anyone notices because it's completely overshadowed by fantasy crap that people make up and pretend is real to the point that your average member of the public has no idea what's real any more., and few people have a basis for actually understanding how to appreciate the stuff that actually IS real and insanely cool.
You drop 100 paper planes from 23 miles up and more than 2% of them glide for thousands of miles (in different directions) and land in heavily populated areas where they are found by people (who actually report the find) only a couple days after they're launched?
While I am dubious of all the reported sightings/recovery of the planes (which seem rather fantastic), I think it's cool that Samsung did (or at least supported) this, and it will increase the chance I pay the extra buck next time I'm out choosing whether to pay $8 for a more generic, or $9 for a Samsung SD card:)
It's called lightning and it has been a "temporary blindness" risk that pilots have always been required to contend with.
Of course you're probably more alert the the possibility of lightning when flying near thunderstorms than you will be expecting a laser out of nowhere.
I do tend to believe that the risks are potentially overblown here, based on just how fast laser beams spread and so forth. I think it's more a case of outrage and indignity that some asshole would actually point a laster at a pilot flying an aircraft than it is likely to be something that requires banning the devices entirely and making it a federal offense to use one outdoors at night etc.
Personally I think I might prefer the asshole with the laser pointer over having to land in a thunderstorm.
A few years ago it occurred to me that you could utilize an existing fleet of delivery vehicles suck as the USPS, UPS, or FEDX for applications like Google Street View.
You would negotiate with the controlling organization to mount your sensor/camera array on each vehicle, and remotely collect the data.
The cool thing was, if there's a particular street that hasn't gotten coverage, you can simply send an empty package to an address at the end of the street as a way of ensuring that one of the trucks visits that address.
I can't think of another internet product or service that has improved my quality of life as much as Message Labs has.
I have not gotten a single email with a virus/trojan attached since we signed up for their service several years ago.
I get maybe up to a dozen spam messages a day (probably half of them semi-legitimate attempts to sell me stuff as opposed to pure broadcast drug spam etc.) but the Message Labs stats show they're deleting hundreds and hundreds of spam messages a day directed at me. I never need to bother obscuring or hiding my primary email address on the net. I use it openly on Usenet and web pages and I'm still almost completely free of spam.
I've never had a false-positive problem.
I can recommend them very highly if you get a lot of spam / virus email and you just want the problem to go away with essentially no work on your part.
It seems to me that everything that you can find on the moon (or in asteroids for that matter) can be found here on earth in similar quantities and accessed more inexpensively, probably by a factor of 1/1,000,000 or so.
Sure, building your starship construction facility on the moon has advantages, ok, one advantage, that of 1/10 the gravity of earth, but honestly is it really cheaper to build something there rather than just do it on earth? Sure it would cost a lot more to launch stuff out of Earth's gravity well, but is it so much more expensive that it justifies the cost of learning how to do all this stuff on the moon?
You tell me what you want to do on the moon and I'll tell you how to do it faster and cheaper here on Earth.
There are lots of fun reasons to explore space (and maybe even the moon) but not for silver mining (and spaceport construction).
I know people get all romantic about human space flight, but personally I'd say send the robots until we find something worth visiting in person. They're better at the job.
It sounds like they're re-developing it from scratch, so this will be an entirely new game rather than yet-another update to the old FS.
Honestly I think this is a great thing, since FS was an ancient code-base that always had its share of really annoying behaviors. It was kind of like a mainframe application from the the 1960s, not something designed after the dawn of the age of GUIs.
If they do a halfway decent job of it I think the simulator community will be really happy about this.
And honestly was there any question in anyone's mind that they wouldn't do this eventually when you heard about the shutdown and layoffs of the original FS group?
Indeed, "I need a scope" is very much like asking "I need a computer".
Can you tell us anything more about what sort of projects you want to work on? The problem is that a lot of modern technology now involves signal frequencies that are high enough that the test equipment needed to deal with it is both obscenely expensive and very special purpose.
Some years ago Agilent made a very sexy combination logic analyzer and scope for around $5K (IIRC) which I was lusting after for quite a while. These days their stuff has become mostly unfordable though, and the low end (you can get a dual trace 200MHz scope for 2K list price from them) really seems expensive for what you get. If you have a quarter million dollars to spend they can totally hook you up though.
Oscilloscopes are an area where advances in technology have not made them cheap and ubiquitous, and for the hobbyist the situation seems to be much worse than it was in the past, unless you can live with the 100Mhz world in which case there seem to be a fair number of options.
I suspect your best bet will be to look for something used.
I loved Avatar in IMAX 3D, and the 3D definitely looked cool, at least in the exterior CG shots.
But I don't know that I believe 3D is really capable of adding emotion to a film presentation, and if you can't heighten the emotion somehow, then how are you going to say the experience is $3 better?
I think maybe it's something like this: If you don't provide explicit 3D information to the brain, it seems to be quite happy to generate that information itself based on the visual cues it gets from analyzing the scene. The end result is that a short time later you'll have the same memory of the scene whether it was presented in 3D or not.
Anyhow, I'm almost certain there are some basic biological limits like this on how much you can get out of 3D in the theater, since we just haven't evolved to care about stereo-derived depth as important information. We care a lot about spatial positioning and relationships, but we have lots of ways of computing that information and stereo isn't that important for the sorts of scenes presented in a movie.
I saw Toy Story 3 the other day in RealD 3D and honestly for most of the movie I really didn't notice the 3D effect unless I actually looked for it. My mind seemed to prefer its own analysis of the images over that provided by the 3D.
So unless Jim Cameron can keep cranking out 3D epics fast enough, I think the rest of the industry is going to have a hard time keeping 3D afloat.
I think 3D capability (with glasses) will be with us forever on TV and computer displays (since it costs virtually nothing to add to a modern TV) and you'll see it used for sports and some special programming, and definitely it adds a lot to video games potentially (or any kind of interactive environment).
Honestly I really hate excess heat in any kind of computer controller. My old Mac "Wallstreet" G3 laptop had the trackpad button get really hot, and that was a major reason I stopped using the machine.
I've used fancy mice with lights that would heat up, and it's just not a good feeling.
I generate quite enough heat on my own thanks very much, so the only thing that sounds useful here would be permanent cooling, and that's going to require a fan to get rid of the heat after you pull it off with the peltier.
But people already make game controllers with fans to keep your hands cool and dry if you need that sort of thing.
Honestly this sounds like the dumbest idea since 3D movies.
"According to observers, 75 percent of companies have been infected with undetected, targeted attacks"
These "observers" wouldn't happen to be people with a vested interest in the cyber-security industry would they?
This sounds a lot like "75% of the population has an undetectable terminal disease with no symptoms and so everyone needs to buy our miracle cure right away!"
Running (or trying to run) a significant guild in WoW can teach you more about human group dynamics and people management than you could ever want to know:)
This time I spent playing WoW was *incredibly* valuable to me in this regard, and I don't consider that time wasted at all.
Back in 2001/2002 or somewhere thereabouts, I got to attend a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) meeting. This was the same meeting where I saw the most amazing presentation I've ever seen, Brad Edwards presenting his work on the Space Elevator. (It's also where I ended up with up Buzz Aldrin's name badge as a souvenir, but that's another story).
One of the other presenters though was these guys from Sikorsky:
Presenting their study "on the potential for the use of autonomous vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles for affordable package delivery.", which is to say A fleet of autonomous vehicles which would fly to your house and land in the driveway and drop off your latest purchases from Amazon.com, or pick up packages for delivery elsewhere.
Honestly the whole idea was clearly madness, but they were very serious and had put a lot of thought into it. Their final report (at the link above) is worthwhile browsing for anyone interested in the issues involved.
I don't think they had considered things like kids using the system to take joy-rides for example.
Reading about other people's bad luck and capacity for self-delusion and occasionally pure boneheaded stupidity can be both entertaining and enlightening. Better than most reality TV anyway:)
Indeed, and when those poor turtles have been exposed to all the toxic mutagens in the oil and the weird chemical dispersants that have been employed, we could all be in serious trouble once they become teenagers...
Slashdot Mirror
I think cameras can/have caught (well, ok, identified what they looked like when they were still in one piece) quite a few terrorists, they just haven't necessarily saved any lives because they pretty are much only useful *after* a terrorist attack (or any other crime) to go back and find the guy getting on the train with the big backpack etc. The terrorist and all his victims are still dead, so whether anyone's life ever gets saved is more debatable.
G.
There aren't going to be any more registration tags. With always online law enforcement there's no reason to apply a sticker to the plate as the plate number itself plus an instant online lookup will tell you everything you want to know about the registration status of the vehicle.
Distributing tags costs money, cops don't want to have to kneel down in the snow and scrape off the slush and read the number off them, etc. Expect that the next step will be to announce that the vehicle registration system will now be completely virtual requiring no physical exchange to complete, and tags will be history.
Virtual registration also means that they could do things like require "temporary registration" for vehicles from other states that are, say, going to be in the state for more than a week. Before this would be impractical because nobody would want to have to apply some new sticker or display a registration card, and certainly not overwrite their home license tags with something else. But now the whole thing can be done virtually. Coming to New York for a month? Better go online and pay your $10/week temporary registration before the cameras catch up to you.
G.
Personally I think violent TV is probably worse than violent games. Kids learn to behave by copying behaviors they see in other people, so when they see violence on TV it's a passive experience that may leave them wanting to try it out for themselves, to see what it feels like, etc.
In a game, they've already committed the violent act so perhaps there will be relatively less chance they will want to act it out in real life as they will have to some degree gotten the violent acts "out of their systems".
G.
I think it's also a question of who wants to be the only adult on a committee of twelve-year-olds where everyone on the committee has an equal vote about what is done.
In writing for Wikipedia you start with no more reputation or respect than the kid who thinks he knows everything. Academics have spent years building reputations so that when they say something people have a basis for respecting their opinion.
So even if you do talk someone into contributing it's going to be hard to get them into the Wikipedia culture, and chances are you'll lose them after their first edit when someone responds with "Nah, your wrong, reverted."
Besides, the people it sounds like they're talking about are the people who tend to produce original primary source material, and Wikipedia by definition does not publish original research. Academics also often have very STRONG opinions about their own work and are usually not necessarily the ones you want to have write an encyclopedia article about their own field of expertise.
G.
What has NYT got that I can't get elsewhere for free?
Exactly! Since you KNOW that all the urgent hot breaking news stories will show up here on Slashdot only about a week after they happen.
G.
I think the distinction between pure "research grade" CS and applied "I want to get a job in the real world" CS is the important thing.
For too long it has seemed as though if you like computers then you should aspire to a CS degree. But as everyone finds out, the stuff you learn in a real in-depth CS program is often not applicable to much in the world of interesting application development. The stuff that IS could just as easily be taught in a more applied way without all the math.
We're supposed to be leveraging "re-use" and not re-inventing algorithms every time, so people should be able to use a library of algorithm objects (or whatever) for pretty much ALL applied programming, at which point all you have to understand is the trade-offs between different available choices and what they do but not necessarily how they do it or especially how to invent a better one.
I think of "real" CS as what you find in Knuth. If you want to publish papers on combinatorial algorithms then you probably want at least a master's in math before you even get started with the computer stuff. You will then aspire to getting a job as a CS professor, or possibly working in a corporate sponsored lab for IBM or maybe Google. But the things this type of scientist does may not be the kinds of things that actually got people excited about computing to begin with.
If what you really want to do is to build cool applications and Change The World(tm) then honestly hardly ANY math is needed, and while more knowledge and a better understanding of the fundamentals of what's going on will always make you better, there might be more effective and efficient things to expend your effort on, especially in cross-discipline areas that interest you and which you would like to work in.
Pure CS is really just pure math, and there are a limited number of applications (and jobs) in such a thing. What really makes computers interesting is their applications, so instead of CS, why not learn applied programming plus an application domain like Biology, Finance, etc. Ask yourself "what problems do I want to solve?" and if computing is going to be a tool to that end and not just an end unto itself, then a pure CS degree is probably a waste of effort.
G.
I'm sure you could design and build a PC case out of some inexpensive non-metal/plastic material, but this one just seems wrong in pretty much every possible way.
G.
This is just a prelude to the new Apple iEars implantable neural audio interface (with full DRM and iAd support) that they're going to sell you so you can fully appreciate this exciting new bandwidth. Then there will be the iEars TruSeven 7.1 channel version, which involves drilling another six holes in your head so you can actually experience BluRay Movies the way that God intended.
The Genius Bar guys can get you set up with an appointment at your nearest AOSC (Apple Outpatient Surgery Center).
G.
Agreed, the reports of sightings and recovery are almost certainly mostly (or all) hoaxes, and the people doing this seem to be in no hurry to confirm them.
All these people saying "who cares, it's cool!" should consider whether it's still cool if all the planes fell to the ground within 100 miles of the launch point and none have yet been found.
Yes, it WOULD be cool if planes made it to Sydney or Bangalore, but if people are just making this shit up then maybe not so much.
Dreaming of what might happen is fine, but you get no points for pretending it happened if it didn't, and you do people a disservice by doing so. There's plenty of stuff in the world that's cool these days, but hardly anyone notices because it's completely overshadowed by fantasy crap that people make up and pretend is real to the point that your average member of the public has no idea what's real any more., and few people have a basis for actually understanding how to appreciate the stuff that actually IS real and insanely cool.
You drop 100 paper planes from 23 miles up and more than 2% of them glide for thousands of miles (in different directions) and land in heavily populated areas where they are found by people (who actually report the find) only a couple days after they're launched?
Color me skeptical on this one, sorry.
G.
While I am dubious of all the reported sightings/recovery of the planes (which seem rather fantastic), I think it's cool that Samsung did (or at least supported) this, and it will increase the chance I pay the extra buck next time I'm out choosing whether to pay $8 for a more generic, or $9 for a Samsung SD card :)
G.
...should be big enough for anybody!
G.
It's called lightning and it has been a "temporary blindness" risk that pilots have always been required to contend with.
Of course you're probably more alert the the possibility of lightning when flying near thunderstorms than you will be expecting a laser out of nowhere.
I do tend to believe that the risks are potentially overblown here, based on just how fast laser beams spread and so forth. I think it's more a case of outrage and indignity that some asshole would actually point a laster at a pilot flying an aircraft than it is likely to be something that requires banning the devices entirely and making it a federal offense to use one outdoors at night etc.
Personally I think I might prefer the asshole with the laser pointer over having to land in a thunderstorm.
G.
A few years ago it occurred to me that you could utilize an existing fleet of delivery vehicles suck as the USPS, UPS, or FEDX for applications like Google Street View.
You would negotiate with the controlling organization to mount your sensor/camera array on each vehicle, and remotely collect the data.
The cool thing was, if there's a particular street that hasn't gotten coverage, you can simply send an empty package to an address at the end of the street as a way of ensuring that one of the trucks visits that address.
G.
I can't think of another internet product or service that has improved my quality of life as much as Message Labs has.
I have not gotten a single email with a virus/trojan attached since we signed up for their service several years ago.
I get maybe up to a dozen spam messages a day (probably half of them semi-legitimate attempts to sell me stuff as opposed to pure broadcast drug spam etc.) but the Message Labs stats show they're deleting hundreds and hundreds of spam messages a day directed at me. I never need to bother obscuring or hiding my primary email address on the net. I use it openly on Usenet and web pages and I'm still almost completely free of spam.
I've never had a false-positive problem.
I can recommend them very highly if you get a lot of spam / virus email and you just want the problem to go away with essentially no work on your part.
G.
It seems to me that everything that you can find on the moon (or in asteroids for that matter) can be found here on earth in similar quantities and accessed more inexpensively, probably by a factor of 1/1,000,000 or so.
Sure, building your starship construction facility on the moon has advantages, ok, one advantage, that of 1/10 the gravity of earth, but honestly is it really cheaper to build something there rather than just do it on earth? Sure it would cost a lot more to launch stuff out of Earth's gravity well, but is it so much more expensive that it justifies the cost of learning how to do all this stuff on the moon?
You tell me what you want to do on the moon and I'll tell you how to do it faster and cheaper here on Earth.
There are lots of fun reasons to explore space (and maybe even the moon) but not for silver mining (and spaceport construction).
I know people get all romantic about human space flight, but personally I'd say send the robots until we find something worth visiting in person. They're better at the job.
G.
It sounds like they're re-developing it from scratch, so this will be an entirely new game rather than yet-another update to the old FS.
Honestly I think this is a great thing, since FS was an ancient code-base that always had its share of really annoying behaviors. It was kind of like a mainframe application from the the 1960s, not something designed after the dawn of the age of GUIs.
If they do a halfway decent job of it I think the simulator community will be really happy about this.
And honestly was there any question in anyone's mind that they wouldn't do this eventually when you heard about the shutdown and layoffs of the original FS group?
I for one am excited about this news.
G.
Indeed, "I need a scope" is very much like asking "I need a computer".
Can you tell us anything more about what sort of projects you want to work on? The problem is that a lot of modern technology now involves signal frequencies that are high enough that the test equipment needed to deal with it is both obscenely expensive and very special purpose.
Some years ago Agilent made a very sexy combination logic analyzer and scope for around $5K (IIRC) which I was lusting after for quite a while. These days their stuff has become mostly unfordable though, and the low end (you can get a dual trace 200MHz scope for 2K list price from them) really seems expensive for what you get. If you have a quarter million dollars to spend they can totally hook you up though.
Oscilloscopes are an area where advances in technology have not made them cheap and ubiquitous, and for the hobbyist the situation seems to be much worse than it was in the past, unless you can live with the 100Mhz world in which case there seem to be a fair number of options.
I suspect your best bet will be to look for something used.
G.
I loved Avatar in IMAX 3D, and the 3D definitely looked cool, at least in the exterior CG shots.
But I don't know that I believe 3D is really capable of adding emotion to a film presentation, and if you can't heighten the emotion somehow, then how are you going to say the experience is $3 better?
I think maybe it's something like this: If you don't provide explicit 3D information to the brain, it seems to be quite happy to generate that information itself based on the visual cues it gets from analyzing the scene. The end result is that a short time later you'll have the same memory of the scene whether it was presented in 3D or not.
Anyhow, I'm almost certain there are some basic biological limits like this on how much you can get out of 3D in the theater, since we just haven't evolved to care about stereo-derived depth as important information. We care a lot about spatial positioning and relationships, but we have lots of ways of computing that information and stereo isn't that important for the sorts of scenes presented in a movie.
I saw Toy Story 3 the other day in RealD 3D and honestly for most of the movie I really didn't notice the 3D effect unless I actually looked for it. My mind seemed to prefer its own analysis of the images over that provided by the 3D.
So unless Jim Cameron can keep cranking out 3D epics fast enough, I think the rest of the industry is going to have a hard time keeping 3D afloat.
I think 3D capability (with glasses) will be with us forever on TV and computer displays (since it costs virtually nothing to add to a modern TV) and you'll see it used for sports and some special programming, and definitely it adds a lot to video games potentially (or any kind of interactive environment).
But for your average movie, not so much.
G.
Now now, perhaps NASA is just being optimistic that an unexpectedly long and protracted drain on their funds might FINALLY be coming to an end.
From more recent missions it kind of appears that they are taking steps now to avoid any future repetition of this unacceptably high level of success.
G.
Honestly I really hate excess heat in any kind of computer controller. My old Mac "Wallstreet" G3 laptop had the trackpad button get really hot, and that was a major reason I stopped using the machine.
I've used fancy mice with lights that would heat up, and it's just not a good feeling.
I generate quite enough heat on my own thanks very much, so the only thing that sounds useful here would be permanent cooling, and that's going to require a fan to get rid of the heat after you pull it off with the peltier.
But people already make game controllers with fans to keep your hands cool and dry if you need that sort of thing.
Honestly this sounds like the dumbest idea since 3D movies.
G.
"According to observers, 75 percent of companies have been infected with undetected, targeted attacks"
These "observers" wouldn't happen to be people with a vested interest in the cyber-security industry would they?
This sounds a lot like "75% of the population has an undetectable terminal disease with no symptoms and so everyone needs to buy our miracle cure right away!"
Or Dogbert has upgraded his invisible robots...
http://www.hulu.com/watch/78089/dilbert-animated-cartoons-invisible-robot
Color me skeptical on this claim.
G.
Running (or trying to run) a significant guild in WoW can teach you more about human group dynamics and people management than you could ever want to know :)
This time I spent playing WoW was *incredibly* valuable to me in this regard, and I don't consider that time wasted at all.
G.
Back in 2001/2002 or somewhere thereabouts, I got to attend a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) meeting. This was the same meeting where I saw the most amazing presentation I've ever seen, Brad Edwards presenting his work on the Space Elevator. (It's also where I ended up with up Buzz Aldrin's name badge as a souvenir, but that's another story).
One of the other presenters though was these guys from Sikorsky:
http://www.niac.usra.edu/studies/516Keith.html
Presenting their study "on the potential for the use of autonomous vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles for affordable package delivery.", which is to say A fleet of autonomous vehicles which would fly to your house and land in the driveway and drop off your latest purchases from Amazon.com, or pick up packages for delivery elsewhere.
Honestly the whole idea was clearly madness, but they were very serious and had put a lot of thought into it. Their final report (at the link above) is worthwhile browsing for anyone interested in the issues involved.
I don't think they had considered things like kids using the system to take joy-rides for example.
G.
Anyone with an interest in aviation safety should be able to entertain themselves for hours with the NTSB database of accident reports:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/month.asp
Reading about other people's bad luck and capacity for self-delusion and occasionally pure boneheaded stupidity can be both entertaining and enlightening. Better than most reality TV anyway :)
G.
Indeed, and when those poor turtles have been exposed to all the toxic mutagens in the oil and the weird chemical dispersants that have been employed, we could all be in serious trouble once they become teenagers...
G.