In my experience it's pretty difficult to get a degree from a new university if you're "almost finished" even if your lab is moving. Usually, what happens is the new institution will allow you to complete your studies, but you will still receive a degree from your home institution, unless of course you have some preexisting arrangement between the two schools
Additionally, what is the difficulty in receiving a computer science degree? I understand most ivy league schools would be expected to have a comp. sci. department.
For that matter, there are plenty of PhD students working in areas that don't correspond to their PhD expertise. Maybe it's different in computer science, but in the physical sciences the extreme specialization you pursue in your undergraduate research doesn't really transfer to the function you'll be serving afterwards (that function is, after all, is your advisor's job: you aren't being trained to usurp your advisor!). While they won't hire someone with no background in the area they're looking for (i.e., you should maybe know a little about circuits if you're building chips for Intel) they will certainly be flexible if can convince them you are capable of applying your knowledge to the correct area.
I dunno. I very seriously doubt that, even after trucks become self driving, we will see trucks that are self driving and *driverless.* What this will likely mean for the trucker is that instead of getting a special driver's license, he'll probably have to learn a little about software troubleshooting. It may very well be that the level of skill required for driving a truck will increase, with the benefit of having trucks driven more efficiently (with two drivers, and some additional space, an autotruck could go for days without stopping). While it's easy to see the short term problem as the elimination of positions, what is more pressing is the long term problem of a slowly increasing baseline for "skilled" vs. "unskilled" labor. This is only a problem when society refuses to acknowledge this increase, and leaves the responsibility to the workers to train themselves for the future. It used to be that truckers only needed a high school education (if that), a burden society was willing to shoulder. But if in the future, it becomes necessary for truckers to attend a year or two of trade school, at their own expense, even if the wages are adjusted (which they will not be) it becomes an employment crisis wherein there are more people suited for, by temperament, ability, or inclination, unskilled labor than there are unskilled positions, and at the same time a skilled position which employers are given a license to treat as unskilled by the mere fact of tradition.
I feel for these guys, I really do. But this article makes it sound like LA is entirely devoted to nuclear weapons research, I suppose so that it could have a sexier tag clod. LA is actually under the Department of Energy, as the article says, and conducts varied research in many more areas than just nuclear science. I'd hardly say nuclear weapons research is a profitable venture for a national lab in any case: we already have bombs big enough to blow up the entire planet, anything after that is just decoration. It certainly sounds like a mismanaged lab, but we should be upset because science is being impeded, not because baddies may or may not be threatening ohttp://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/10/0329206/the-political-assault-on-los-alamos-national-laboratory?utm_source=feedburnerGoogle+Reader&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#ur favorite olde tyme nucleare wyponnes shoppe's ability to do irrelevant shit.
it's a dedicated e-zone of the cybernet, designed for so called "renegade" code warriors to manufacture, pure unadulterated digistreams and unleash them on the unsuspecting infosphere, jacking into nodes, disabling linkups, and rerouting mainframes and wreaking havoc across the netverse
Yes, actually, fair enough and that's a good point. What I meant to emphasize is, it seems very unlikely that he will actually be convicted. I know that there's a lot of edgy politics floating around the whole rape charge, but it seems suspicious of me that a woman who had just been raped (in a way that is legally meaningful) would be talking about it casually at a party the next day being "the worst lay of her life" or words to that effect. Not that I think something didn't happen: not even that I think Assange didn't commit any untoward crime, but I'm inclined to agree with the prosecutor who refused to take this case up in the first place in that there's not enough evidence of Assange being a rapist to justify the amount of attention he is getting. He is also not even being tried: he is what those of us stateside might refer to as a person of interest. Far more likely than him getting dragged back to Sweden and locked up for his horrible crimes are him getting dragged back to Sweden and put into custody over the US's call to extradite, or other such harassment.
The bigger issue is that the case had already been thrown out, due to insufficient evidence. It was only after the details of the case hit the media and the case reappealed that they decided it was worth pursuing. For better or for worse, it is in fact Assange's identity as the founder of Wikileaks that is on trial
That goes for the registered sex offender database in general. But then, isn't it more obvious what the intent of these programs is? It's an expression of the fact that as a society, we want the responsibility for punishing sex offenders to lie with the public. You won't go to jail for life for being sex offender, but you will be subject to permanent ostracization on a level not equaled by the penalties for committing any other crime. In short, these things are the modern day stocks: punishment by humiliation. I think we do this because sexually based crimes strike at something painful about our social fabric we're not comfortable admitting. Just look at those crazy bastards on SVU.
Are they really going to log the information of every satnav that communicates with Galileo, match it up to a car, and then send you a bill in the mail? GPS actually doesn't work like that (The GPS system can't figure out who's listening). Wouldn't you have to register with the Bureau of keeping track of weird things, just for them to know where to send the bill? Assuming this works at all. Which it doesn't. People seem to think that GPS satellites are something like sky cameras, that look down on you and tell you where you are. At least one conspiracy theory *requires this literally*
http://ironiestoo.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-galileo-really-just-eu-big-brother.html
Miraculously dumbassed stuff (signs on the road indeed!). Didn't we all just read Wikipedia's GPS entry after that CERN thing? And this is not to mention all the other reasons why a GPS system wouldn't (not just couldn't) function as a position monitor, including all those mentioned here, the construction of a multiple other GPS networks in other countries, and the lack of necessity for a NEW system, should the big bad EU want to get up to some mischief.
Troll? The fact that there's a chance you're not is sad for us all
The original article and the slashdot one both seem to give UEFI pretty thorough dicksuckings. This one doesn't even seem to acknowledge the post a few days ago. And who cares if they're blocking Linux: what they're doing is making computers yet shittier. Given that I do most of my work on one of these things, I don't want to have to deal with some fat horrible "mini-OS" standing between me and the basic process of cleaning all the free trial versions of MediaFinderPro Virus Collator and PonyPicture.net, the interactive pony picture manipulation and rendering client.
So really, this only affects people trying to double boot? The only network I could be "blacklisted" from is whatever god awful appstore clone they'll give us with Windows 8, and I'm realreal fine with that.
Could this set a precedent for how private businesses can use drones?
I know we've all said it, but thank god I am alive to see a news story where that sentence was appropriate commentary
Where does the ring come from? This is something they're hoping to embed on a touchscreen, so I'm not sure why ring is in the headline, and they've got that goofy graphic on the article. I'm not sure I could think of any scenario in which what is essentially a ring mounted mouse could be any help. It sure sounds cyberpunk, but becomes noticeably less so upon a little reflection.
I'm also a little confused about what they think is going to happen with this: are we supposed to use it like a mouse on our smartphones? I'm no fan of the big touchscreen movement, but on a phone it just makes more sense than trying to squidge a pointer around with an electronic clit-mouse
You guys aren't listening: he's a contractor, but so is EVERYBODY who works there. It's not like he's some guy they brought in to plug in their printers. There's no "management" because the "company" is a handful of contractors, with only a few people (probably the owners) constituting "full time" employees. He likely does constitute a pretty essential part of the crew, since at this stage there isn't a lot of fat for the company to trim
He essentially helped to start this company, and he's worried that he and the rest of the contractors are going to be let go once the high level work gets done so that the owners can let them all go once the remaining labor can be done by peons who require less cash. He should definitely ask them about the possibility of full time employment. I'd say he shouldn't bother continuing there if after what he's done if they really DO just consider him the guy who plugs in printers. Tell your bosses outright that if they aren't willing to give you some stake in the company, you don't see why you should be wasting your time with them. If they're going to act like they don't know you and continue to pay you startup company rates even after serious dough starts rolling in just because the books let them do so, you should find someone who will pay you what you deserve.
At my university, I had the privilege of studying with a young "refugee" from a Hassidic Jewish community. He came into the program not knowing how to multiply fractions. He graduated magna cum laude with a double major in chemistry and mathematics, and won the award for outstanding senior in the mathematics program. Early exposure doesn't necessarily correlate with your skill: a great violinist will have a better developed gift if they start at 8, but they won't necessarily be BETTER than someone who starts at 20.
Though really, failing the intro course is a pretty good indication you aren't cut out for it. I had to pass comp sci II (without I) for my minor, and managed to ace the course with only a semester of Visual Basic from high school under my belt. Same story with a lot of other people in my class: all this arguing about needing prior experience is moot if people aren't failing these courses because of inexperience.
Intro courses in pretty much every STEM subject are widely acknowledged to be more about hazing than about instruction. My intro chemistry, physics, and mathematics courses had an attendance component (while no other STEM course I have taken since does). The programming problems in comp sci I and II are easy, and you don't really need to design very elegant pieces of code: just ones that work. The course is an opportunity to prove you're serious, not necessarily that you're GOOD, and it's quite possible for a poor student, but a good coder, to fail the course. In that case, the student should get a second chance.
Which brings me to the biggest issue with this article: "not allowed to walk again?" Just repeat the course. I know that after failing the course a bunch of times, you might get some words from instructors about how maybe this isn't the major for you, but if repeat the intro course a bunch, and then ace everything after that, I don't think any school has specific administrative hurdles that bar you from continuing. If you have to repeat EVERY course, then it's not sink or swim, you just suck.
Whoops, didn't notice you pointed out that democracy is representative; I read to fast. I meant to highlight that a representative democracy is merely the most convenient way to represent the will of the people, but a entrustment of politicians with power. The vote endows congress with the power to vote how they see fit: that may or may not be what the people want. The theory is that if it pisses "the people" off, they'll just vote accordingly.
So, populations are never willing, individuals just are? I'm pretty sure all those individuals add up to become a population after a while. That wars are often fought without the direct consent of the people, I can believe. (we actually entrust the president with the power to make war on our behalf, the real power to enter war is in fact NOT with the people, it is with the people's congress, and the power to engage in military actions begins and ends with the pres.) That wars are by definition something a population does not desire, I cannot. You've got it backwards: people are stupid and evil, a person is good, not the other way around.
You see, I've never been able to understand this sort of thinking. Why, if ignorance is such an objective evil, are there people actively trying to promote it? If populations never willingly go into a war, then why do we ever go into wars? Is it the case that the situations which justify a war never exist, but are some kind of fantasy? If so, why do people who supposedly have access to the "genuine" information still insist on going to war? Is it merely because it is in their best interest? If so, why is it always in the best interest of those who can be well informed without media intervention and always in the worst interest of people who cannot? It seems to me that this philosophy explicitly posits a good guys vs. bad guys cosmology, and the idea that the soul of mankind would be pure and lily white if it were free of these unseen Illuminati who have apparently raided the secret stash of evil that God keeps in the back of the fridge, out of reach of everyone below a certain income bracket. That worldview smells too much like shit for me to believe, no matter how much hippie-charisma it has.
I use it on the train or bus, commutes which only take about 3 hours tops. It's perfectly suited to short trips where you might be near a jack (hotel room, etc.) but not near your TV. I'm never home enough to justify owning a console, so it fills that role.
Not again. Not another asshole claiming that some feature of the iPad's tepid contribution to the computing industry is due to some sort of magical goddam sauce that Steve Jobs poured all over it. I can't take it anymore. It always happens like this: some article purporting to be a serious look at the tablet phenomenon follows a torturous path that leads to some variant of "the iPad changed everything with its magical magic." There was a similar article around the time the iPad came out about its inability to run multiple apps and lack of Flash.
I have used an iPad, as well as other tablets, I admit, they are fun. There's something ticklish about the high response of the touch screen and the high functioning, high portability of it all. But the fact remains that NOTHING. NEW. IS GODDAM. HAPPENING IN THERE. I am going to use it to do the exact same things I do on any other platform. I am going to check email, type things, look at shapes in specific patterns that make me feel things. There really, really REALLY is nothing I can do on a iPad that I cannot do on a netbook, or for that matter any other computer. Touch screens are not suitable for doing anything other than web browsing, and anyone who claims that the keyboard is not the most efficient and powerful way to interact with a computer is probably challenged in some way.
You can just hear the sneering, techier-than-thou derision when the article writer describes Android (and conventional computer users) as people who think of computing as "same old same old." As if realizing that whatever hunk of plastic you carry around, you will get the same exact thing with a slightly different flavor is somehow horribly naive, because it represents a failure to accept the irreversibly altered paradigm of using a computer. I would certainly agree that the dressing up apple does of its particlar brand of aluminum slag gives it the edge, but don't act like computing is being done "differently" because people can watch porn on the bus.
The tablet certainly changed the market for consumer electronics, and the computing industry has crowded around this newfound source of cash and market penetration like hungry carp. But the tablet is a brilliant piece of business, not of technology. People who use a tablet are not on the bleeding edge of technology because they bought a dedicated device for fucking around on the internet, they're just a demographic who have only recently been exploited effectively. This whole rude-business-cunning-mistaken-for-innovative-genius thing is starting to give me a goddam headache.
these are the rules for IUPAC systematic names of inorganic compounds. However, no one ever uses those exactly, especially when talking about smaller compounds and lower oxides, and indeed "dihydrogen monoxide" is a terrible term, especially since oxygen can only ever have a single oxidation state when in a compound with oxygen. Carbon is probably the only element (with multiple oxidation states) whose lower oxides are differentiated on the basis of "di-" and "mono-" (cf. nitrous/ic oxide, silica) The fact that the highest oxide of hydrogen is called "hydrogen peroxide" it makes sense that the next lowest should simply be "hydrogen oxide," and since the lowest oxide after THAT is called "hydroxide," (which albeit exists only as a radical or ion) there is no danger of confusion if we call it "hydrogen oxide." (though it properly should be called "hydrogen hypoxide but since it's not a neutral species oh well)
Oxygen dihydride would be incorrect as it implies that hydrogen exists in a higher oxidation state, i.e., as a hydride. Deuterium, when in the analogous compound with oxygen, is referred to as "deuterium oxide" rather than "dideuterium monoxide." And many other hydrogen compounds follow a similar convention.
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience it's pretty difficult to get a degree from a new university if you're "almost finished" even if your lab is moving. Usually, what happens is the new institution will allow you to complete your studies, but you will still receive a degree from your home institution, unless of course you have some preexisting arrangement between the two schools Additionally, what is the difficulty in receiving a computer science degree? I understand most ivy league schools would be expected to have a comp. sci. department.
For that matter, there are plenty of PhD students working in areas that don't correspond to their PhD expertise. Maybe it's different in computer science, but in the physical sciences the extreme specialization you pursue in your undergraduate research doesn't really transfer to the function you'll be serving afterwards (that function is, after all, is your advisor's job: you aren't being trained to usurp your advisor!). While they won't hire someone with no background in the area they're looking for (i.e., you should maybe know a little about circuits if you're building chips for Intel) they will certainly be flexible if can convince them you are capable of applying your knowledge to the correct area.
I dunno. I very seriously doubt that, even after trucks become self driving, we will see trucks that are self driving and *driverless.* What this will likely mean for the trucker is that instead of getting a special driver's license, he'll probably have to learn a little about software troubleshooting. It may very well be that the level of skill required for driving a truck will increase, with the benefit of having trucks driven more efficiently (with two drivers, and some additional space, an autotruck could go for days without stopping). While it's easy to see the short term problem as the elimination of positions, what is more pressing is the long term problem of a slowly increasing baseline for "skilled" vs. "unskilled" labor. This is only a problem when society refuses to acknowledge this increase, and leaves the responsibility to the workers to train themselves for the future. It used to be that truckers only needed a high school education (if that), a burden society was willing to shoulder. But if in the future, it becomes necessary for truckers to attend a year or two of trade school, at their own expense, even if the wages are adjusted (which they will not be) it becomes an employment crisis wherein there are more people suited for, by temperament, ability, or inclination, unskilled labor than there are unskilled positions, and at the same time a skilled position which employers are given a license to treat as unskilled by the mere fact of tradition.
I feel for these guys, I really do. But this article makes it sound like LA is entirely devoted to nuclear weapons research, I suppose so that it could have a sexier tag clod. LA is actually under the Department of Energy, as the article says, and conducts varied research in many more areas than just nuclear science. I'd hardly say nuclear weapons research is a profitable venture for a national lab in any case: we already have bombs big enough to blow up the entire planet, anything after that is just decoration. It certainly sounds like a mismanaged lab, but we should be upset because science is being impeded, not because baddies may or may not be threatening ohttp://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/10/0329206/the-political-assault-on-los-alamos-national-laboratory?utm_source=feedburnerGoogle+Reader&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#ur favorite olde tyme nucleare wyponnes shoppe's ability to do irrelevant shit.
it's a dedicated e-zone of the cybernet, designed for so called "renegade" code warriors to manufacture, pure unadulterated digistreams and unleash them on the unsuspecting infosphere, jacking into nodes, disabling linkups, and rerouting mainframes and wreaking havoc across the netverse
Yes, actually, fair enough and that's a good point. What I meant to emphasize is, it seems very unlikely that he will actually be convicted. I know that there's a lot of edgy politics floating around the whole rape charge, but it seems suspicious of me that a woman who had just been raped (in a way that is legally meaningful) would be talking about it casually at a party the next day being "the worst lay of her life" or words to that effect. Not that I think something didn't happen: not even that I think Assange didn't commit any untoward crime, but I'm inclined to agree with the prosecutor who refused to take this case up in the first place in that there's not enough evidence of Assange being a rapist to justify the amount of attention he is getting. He is also not even being tried: he is what those of us stateside might refer to as a person of interest. Far more likely than him getting dragged back to Sweden and locked up for his horrible crimes are him getting dragged back to Sweden and put into custody over the US's call to extradite, or other such harassment.
The bigger issue is that the case had already been thrown out, due to insufficient evidence. It was only after the details of the case hit the media and the case reappealed that they decided it was worth pursuing. For better or for worse, it is in fact Assange's identity as the founder of Wikileaks that is on trial
That goes for the registered sex offender database in general. But then, isn't it more obvious what the intent of these programs is? It's an expression of the fact that as a society, we want the responsibility for punishing sex offenders to lie with the public. You won't go to jail for life for being sex offender, but you will be subject to permanent ostracization on a level not equaled by the penalties for committing any other crime. In short, these things are the modern day stocks: punishment by humiliation. I think we do this because sexually based crimes strike at something painful about our social fabric we're not comfortable admitting. Just look at those crazy bastards on SVU.
Are they really going to log the information of every satnav that communicates with Galileo, match it up to a car, and then send you a bill in the mail? GPS actually doesn't work like that (The GPS system can't figure out who's listening). Wouldn't you have to register with the Bureau of keeping track of weird things, just for them to know where to send the bill? Assuming this works at all. Which it doesn't. People seem to think that GPS satellites are something like sky cameras, that look down on you and tell you where you are. At least one conspiracy theory *requires this literally* http://ironiestoo.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-galileo-really-just-eu-big-brother.html Miraculously dumbassed stuff (signs on the road indeed!). Didn't we all just read Wikipedia's GPS entry after that CERN thing? And this is not to mention all the other reasons why a GPS system wouldn't (not just couldn't) function as a position monitor, including all those mentioned here, the construction of a multiple other GPS networks in other countries, and the lack of necessity for a NEW system, should the big bad EU want to get up to some mischief. Troll? The fact that there's a chance you're not is sad for us all
The original article and the slashdot one both seem to give UEFI pretty thorough dicksuckings. This one doesn't even seem to acknowledge the post a few days ago. And who cares if they're blocking Linux: what they're doing is making computers yet shittier. Given that I do most of my work on one of these things, I don't want to have to deal with some fat horrible "mini-OS" standing between me and the basic process of cleaning all the free trial versions of MediaFinderPro Virus Collator and PonyPicture.net, the interactive pony picture manipulation and rendering client.
So really, this only affects people trying to double boot? The only network I could be "blacklisted" from is whatever god awful appstore clone they'll give us with Windows 8, and I'm realreal fine with that.
In 2nd grade, they introduced us to logo. I loved it. Do that.
Could this set a precedent for how private businesses can use drones? I know we've all said it, but thank god I am alive to see a news story where that sentence was appropriate commentary
Where does the ring come from? This is something they're hoping to embed on a touchscreen, so I'm not sure why ring is in the headline, and they've got that goofy graphic on the article. I'm not sure I could think of any scenario in which what is essentially a ring mounted mouse could be any help. It sure sounds cyberpunk, but becomes noticeably less so upon a little reflection.
I'm also a little confused about what they think is going to happen with this: are we supposed to use it like a mouse on our smartphones? I'm no fan of the big touchscreen movement, but on a phone it just makes more sense than trying to squidge a pointer around with an electronic clit-mouse
You guys aren't listening: he's a contractor, but so is EVERYBODY who works there. It's not like he's some guy they brought in to plug in their printers. There's no "management" because the "company" is a handful of contractors, with only a few people (probably the owners) constituting "full time" employees. He likely does constitute a pretty essential part of the crew, since at this stage there isn't a lot of fat for the company to trim
He essentially helped to start this company, and he's worried that he and the rest of the contractors are going to be let go once the high level work gets done so that the owners can let them all go once the remaining labor can be done by peons who require less cash. He should definitely ask them about the possibility of full time employment. I'd say he shouldn't bother continuing there if after what he's done if they really DO just consider him the guy who plugs in printers. Tell your bosses outright that if they aren't willing to give you some stake in the company, you don't see why you should be wasting your time with them. If they're going to act like they don't know you and continue to pay you startup company rates even after serious dough starts rolling in just because the books let them do so, you should find someone who will pay you what you deserve.
At my university, I had the privilege of studying with a young "refugee" from a Hassidic Jewish community. He came into the program not knowing how to multiply fractions. He graduated magna cum laude with a double major in chemistry and mathematics, and won the award for outstanding senior in the mathematics program. Early exposure doesn't necessarily correlate with your skill: a great violinist will have a better developed gift if they start at 8, but they won't necessarily be BETTER than someone who starts at 20.
Though really, failing the intro course is a pretty good indication you aren't cut out for it. I had to pass comp sci II (without I) for my minor, and managed to ace the course with only a semester of Visual Basic from high school under my belt. Same story with a lot of other people in my class: all this arguing about needing prior experience is moot if people aren't failing these courses because of inexperience.
Intro courses in pretty much every STEM subject are widely acknowledged to be more about hazing than about instruction. My intro chemistry, physics, and mathematics courses had an attendance component (while no other STEM course I have taken since does). The programming problems in comp sci I and II are easy, and you don't really need to design very elegant pieces of code: just ones that work. The course is an opportunity to prove you're serious, not necessarily that you're GOOD, and it's quite possible for a poor student, but a good coder, to fail the course. In that case, the student should get a second chance.
Which brings me to the biggest issue with this article: "not allowed to walk again?" Just repeat the course. I know that after failing the course a bunch of times, you might get some words from instructors about how maybe this isn't the major for you, but if repeat the intro course a bunch, and then ace everything after that, I don't think any school has specific administrative hurdles that bar you from continuing. If you have to repeat EVERY course, then it's not sink or swim, you just suck.
I thought he was an enemy combatant. That makes him a soldier, not a murderer
Whoops, didn't notice you pointed out that democracy is representative; I read to fast. I meant to highlight that a representative democracy is merely the most convenient way to represent the will of the people, but a entrustment of politicians with power. The vote endows congress with the power to vote how they see fit: that may or may not be what the people want. The theory is that if it pisses "the people" off, they'll just vote accordingly.
So, populations are never willing, individuals just are? I'm pretty sure all those individuals add up to become a population after a while. That wars are often fought without the direct consent of the people, I can believe. (we actually entrust the president with the power to make war on our behalf, the real power to enter war is in fact NOT with the people, it is with the people's congress, and the power to engage in military actions begins and ends with the pres.) That wars are by definition something a population does not desire, I cannot. You've got it backwards: people are stupid and evil, a person is good, not the other way around.
You know, this should just be the default first post for every Slashdot story. It fits almost all of them.
You see, I've never been able to understand this sort of thinking. Why, if ignorance is such an objective evil, are there people actively trying to promote it? If populations never willingly go into a war, then why do we ever go into wars? Is it the case that the situations which justify a war never exist, but are some kind of fantasy? If so, why do people who supposedly have access to the "genuine" information still insist on going to war? Is it merely because it is in their best interest? If so, why is it always in the best interest of those who can be well informed without media intervention and always in the worst interest of people who cannot? It seems to me that this philosophy explicitly posits a good guys vs. bad guys cosmology, and the idea that the soul of mankind would be pure and lily white if it were free of these unseen Illuminati who have apparently raided the secret stash of evil that God keeps in the back of the fridge, out of reach of everyone below a certain income bracket. That worldview smells too much like shit for me to believe, no matter how much hippie-charisma it has.
Not necessarily: I'll bet you could totally patent an all wood replica of an iPhone
I use it on the train or bus, commutes which only take about 3 hours tops. It's perfectly suited to short trips where you might be near a jack (hotel room, etc.) but not near your TV. I'm never home enough to justify owning a console, so it fills that role.
Not again. Not another asshole claiming that some feature of the iPad's tepid contribution to the computing industry is due to some sort of magical goddam sauce that Steve Jobs poured all over it. I can't take it anymore. It always happens like this: some article purporting to be a serious look at the tablet phenomenon follows a torturous path that leads to some variant of "the iPad changed everything with its magical magic." There was a similar article around the time the iPad came out about its inability to run multiple apps and lack of Flash.
I have used an iPad, as well as other tablets, I admit, they are fun. There's something ticklish about the high response of the touch screen and the high functioning, high portability of it all. But the fact remains that NOTHING. NEW. IS GODDAM. HAPPENING IN THERE. I am going to use it to do the exact same things I do on any other platform. I am going to check email, type things, look at shapes in specific patterns that make me feel things. There really, really REALLY is nothing I can do on a iPad that I cannot do on a netbook, or for that matter any other computer. Touch screens are not suitable for doing anything other than web browsing, and anyone who claims that the keyboard is not the most efficient and powerful way to interact with a computer is probably challenged in some way.
You can just hear the sneering, techier-than-thou derision when the article writer describes Android (and conventional computer users) as people who think of computing as "same old same old." As if realizing that whatever hunk of plastic you carry around, you will get the same exact thing with a slightly different flavor is somehow horribly naive, because it represents a failure to accept the irreversibly altered paradigm of using a computer. I would certainly agree that the dressing up apple does of its particlar brand of aluminum slag gives it the edge, but don't act like computing is being done "differently" because people can watch porn on the bus.
The tablet certainly changed the market for consumer electronics, and the computing industry has crowded around this newfound source of cash and market penetration like hungry carp. But the tablet is a brilliant piece of business, not of technology. People who use a tablet are not on the bleeding edge of technology because they bought a dedicated device for fucking around on the internet, they're just a demographic who have only recently been exploited effectively. This whole rude-business-cunning-mistaken-for-innovative-genius thing is starting to give me a goddam headache.
these are the rules for IUPAC systematic names of inorganic compounds. However, no one ever uses those exactly, especially when talking about smaller compounds and lower oxides, and indeed "dihydrogen monoxide" is a terrible term, especially since oxygen can only ever have a single oxidation state when in a compound with oxygen. Carbon is probably the only element (with multiple oxidation states) whose lower oxides are differentiated on the basis of "di-" and "mono-" (cf. nitrous/ic oxide, silica) The fact that the highest oxide of hydrogen is called "hydrogen peroxide" it makes sense that the next lowest should simply be "hydrogen oxide," and since the lowest oxide after THAT is called "hydroxide," (which albeit exists only as a radical or ion) there is no danger of confusion if we call it "hydrogen oxide." (though it properly should be called "hydrogen hypoxide but since it's not a neutral species oh well)
Oxygen dihydride would be incorrect as it implies that hydrogen exists in a higher oxidation state, i.e., as a hydride. Deuterium, when in the analogous compound with oxygen, is referred to as "deuterium oxide" rather than "dideuterium monoxide." And many other hydrogen compounds follow a similar convention.