Exactly. Many of history's greatest scientists were religious people, but they were trying to understand God's creation. Their flavor of religion was entirely different from that of the YECs and other fundamentalists, who think they already know all the answers.
I'm sorry, the level of knowledge needed to do residential plumbing doesn't come close to approaching what's needed to get a BSCS degree. It probably takes 4 years in your country because they have an apprenticeship program of some kind, so it's on-the-job learning (i.e., you can't claim to be a "plumber" (on your own) if you haven't put in the time). It's not like it really takes 4 years to learn how to solder some copper pipes together and unclog a drain line with a sewer snake.
Don't be so sure. Lots of people make tons of money in this country without doing any math. Look at contractors (plumbers, HVAC repair, etc.); they make really good money without any real education and without having to do any math. They probably make out better than most engineers. Or look at Mitt Romney: you think he's ever had to do any math in his business? Heck, go all the way back to Thomas Edison: that guy didn't understand math either (that's why he hated AC power). And he got filthy rich basically by using a brute-force method.
Sorry, but those people were right. They don't need anything more than simple addition to work at Starbucks making crappy burnt coffee drinks. The fact that their mobile phones will work better as they send inane messages to each other on Facebook is nice, but it doesn't require them to know any algebra or other higher math; the engineers (in other countries where math is valued) implementing this stuff need to know that math, but the users don't.
Yes, stuff like that still gets linked over here, but all I'm saying is that Slashdot isn't the hacker's and nerd's paradise that it used to be. Heck, every time something about evolution pops up, there's a ton of people here saying the earth is 6000 years old, evolution is false, etc. I don't remember that happening here in the 90s.
Your low user ID shows you to be a dinosaur here. Simply put: you don't belong here. Today's Slashdot is not for hacker nerds, it's for Apple fanboys and Microsoft fanboys (or are they shills?) to endlessly argue. It's not for anyone who likes to hack on stuff. Those days are over, and people like that have either moved on to other pursuits or moved on to other forums besides this one. Sure, there's places on the internet that still cater to this stuff (probably more places than ever, in fact), like the ones you pointed out. However, the average Slashdotter these days is not interested in such things.
Yeah, I think these people are a bunch of liars, trying to justify the use of an ultra-cheap material (plywood) over aluminum or steel by making up bogus claims about metal distortion.
There's other low-cost CNC systems out there that also use such materials (usually MDF), but they don't do it because it's a better material, they use MDF because it's dirt cheap and for hobbyists just doing some engraving or woodcarving, it's usually good enough. But don't pretend it's actually better than aluminum because it's not. It doesn't have anywhere near the rigidity an aluminum or steel-frame CNC machine has, and if you're cutting harder materials (like metals), at any kind of speed, than you absolutely need a highly rigid frame.
But if all they ever answer is "I don't know", won't them put them out of a job? After all, who else would employ seismologists besides the government? And what's the point of having seismologists if they're not going to make predictions now and then? Sure, the main role of seismologists is to study earthquakes and earth movement, but if now they're going to refuse to make any predictive assessments whatsoever, and will only speak to past seismological activity, what's the point of keeping them employed at all? You might as well not have them, and just take your chances with not having a clue when or if there'll be an earthquake, or where one might occur (wouldn't want to predict that either; you'll either cause a panic or pronounce a place safe when it wasn't).
No, you can't. If the screen is too wide, and you turn it 90 degrees, it's not going to fit on the helm station; it'll be too tall. The helm and nav stations are suspended in the air.
No, I don't buy it; the Q are exactly what they appear to be. You can tell this because of the episode where Q (the John de Lancie one, since they all stupidly have the same name) loses his powers, and at the end of the episode steals the shuttlecraft to get the angry cloud creature away from the Enterprise so they can fix the killer-asteroid problem, and another Q shows up and they have a conversation about Q making a selfless sacrifice. That scene showed the two Qs interacting without any humans (except the audience) being able to observe them, so it's not some act they're putting on, that's really how they are.
I will admit JdL was fun to watch, but it got old after a few episodes.
They were kind of annoying. I mean really; a race of beings who are really gods (they're omnipotent and claim to be omniscient, that fits the definition), but they're not really omniscient since they can be out-argued by a human? The whole thing just didn't make much sense.
Not necessarily: the form factors are odd. I'm thinking especially of the helm and nav stations at the front of the bridge: they're long and narrow. You can't take a touchscreen and saw it in half; it has to be manufactured in its final shape. So they have to find something that's already made in the right size. Maybe they could get 2 or 3 screens to fit together.
However, they don't have to use touchscreen LCD displays for these things; they can just have the regular backlit static controls, and overlay them with a glass touch panel (and maybe embed some smaller LCDs in there). There are companies that can manufacture custom-size capacitive touch panels; they're pretty simple, just glass panels with ultra-thin wires sandwiched between them in a grid.
Agreed. It's also too bad they never made any sequels to The Matrix, or any more Alien movies after Cameron's "Aliens" in 1986, or any prequels to "Star Wars" explaining the whole Clone Wars thing.
Star Trek V? There was no Star Trek V movie. They inexplicably went straight from IV (the whales movie) to VI (the one where they make peace with the Klingons).
I don't know how economically viable the idea is, but it's a good idea because it'd be a fun thing to visit. I went to the "Star Trek: The Experience" (or whatever it was called) exhibit at Hilton in Las Vegas before they closed that up, and it was a pretty amazing experience. One part that really stood out to me was when we were taken through a door onto the Enterprise-D bridge. It's a pretty amazing experience to actually stand on the bridge (even if it's in the back with all the other dumb tourists), a place we've seen countless times in the show, and it actually looks like a real place. I'd pay money to go do that again, especially if I got a little more time to walk around it, sit in the captain's chair, sit at the helm and play with the controls, etc. It'd be a lot of fun.
TNG was a great show. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't hyper-gritty and dark like everything these days seems to try to be, and it sure as hell wasn't realistic in its depiction of humans (somehow in the 24th century, humans are all extremely competent and not very prone to Jerry Springer-esque drama and idiocy), but it was great fun to watch, and the acting was good for an 80s TV show, though admittedly the first season was a little rough with some of the actors. The stories were excellent for the most part, with a few exceptions as you'd expect on a show that ran for 7 seasons. I just went back and rewatched much of the series over the last few months and enjoyed it thoroughly. I do have to admit though that I tended to avoid episodes which were 1) in the first season, 2) included Wesley as a major character (again, mostly season 1), 3) involved Lwaxana Troi, or 4) involved Q. This isn't to say all these episodes were bad though; the S1 episode "Conspiracy" for instance was one of the best episodes in the whole series.
I do have to admit, however, that probably my favorite thing about TNG is its depiction of humans. It's completely unrealistic, because it shows humans as we (or at least some of us) wish they were: competent, intelligent, considerate, thoughtful, just, and not corrupt. It shows a society I wish I could live in, but which doesn't exist, and probably never will due to human nature. But that makes it good escapist entertainment. Many times, I don't really want to watch a show/movie that shows humans as they really are. If I wanted to do that, I could watch Jerry Springer or Maury Povitch; you can see stupid humans in their full glory there. I see enough of that crap in real life; why would I want to watch more of it on TV?
They didn't say that the displays and controls would actually control real devices, just that the displays and controls would themselves work.
I'm pretty sure that back in the 80s when they filmed ST:TNG, none of the displays and controls actually did anything: they didn't make beeping noises, there were no actual displays, etc. All that stuff was added in post-production. The actors were just pushing on the LCARS panels at random, with nothing happening when they did. When Data read pages of text at ridiculous speed, I could be wrong but that might not have even been there, he might have been looking at a blank panel, with the cool graphics added in later.
It sounds like these guys want to refit the sets so there's actual monitors in the displays, displaying information that looks like it's from the show, and the control panels so that they're actual working touch panels where you can press the "buttons" and get beeps and maybe some realistic-looking information on the built-in displays when you do. If so, that's a pretty ambitious project, but it's quite doable with today's technology. The biggest challenge would be making the touch panels I think.
Exactly right. HSR is a waste of time, because terrorists could blow it up.
Similarly, airports and air travel is a waste of time, because terrorists could blow it up. We need to just shut down all the airports.
Similarly, bridges are a waste of time and money, because terrorists could blow up these critical points in the highway infrastructure. We need to just not have any bridges and transport people and cargo across rivers using rafts.
Similarly, government buildings, like courts and administrative offices, are all a waste of time, because terrorists could blow them up. We need to just shut down the government altogether so we can avoid terrorist attacks on these places.
Similarly, farms are a waste of time because terrorists could blow them up and eliminate our food supply. We should just shut down all farms and make everyone responsible for growing their own food individually.
This is perfectly fine advice if you really don't know where exactly you're going. However, if you're going to the exact same site you visit every single day (like gmail.com, slashdot.org, reddit.com, cnn.com, or whatever your own daily websites are), it's pointless. After visiting the same site every day, you should know what the direct html address is.
Of course, Firefox and Chrome these days put your most-visited sites right on the front page when you open a new window/tab.
If a site is so popular and so important that people do just want information from them - they wont be going via google, they'll be coming straight in.
Actually, that's not always true. There's a lot of people who use Google (or whatever the default search engine is) for everything. Even if they want to go to, say, cnn.com, they'll type "cnn" into the search bar and go there that way. Or worse, you'll find people who actually type "cnn.com" into a google search. Don't ask me why.
Even so, this doesn't mean the destination sites should be getting a cut of Google's advertising profit. If they want money, they can put up a paywall, or have their own advertising on their site.
Steve Ballmer didn't know whether Courier was any good or not, so he called in Bill Gates to look at it, and he didn't like it, so it was canned.
As for managers getting fired by investors, that doesn't happen at MS. Bill, Steve, and Paul basically control the company (though Paul doesn't really take such an active interest any more), so their word is sovereign, regardless of what any investors think. Any investors who buy into that company thinking they'll have any kind of control are morons and deserve to lose all their money.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Many of history's greatest scientists were religious people, but they were trying to understand God's creation. Their flavor of religion was entirely different from that of the YECs and other fundamentalists, who think they already know all the answers.
I'm sorry, the level of knowledge needed to do residential plumbing doesn't come close to approaching what's needed to get a BSCS degree. It probably takes 4 years in your country because they have an apprenticeship program of some kind, so it's on-the-job learning (i.e., you can't claim to be a "plumber" (on your own) if you haven't put in the time). It's not like it really takes 4 years to learn how to solder some copper pipes together and unclog a drain line with a sewer snake.
Don't be so sure. Lots of people make tons of money in this country without doing any math. Look at contractors (plumbers, HVAC repair, etc.); they make really good money without any real education and without having to do any math. They probably make out better than most engineers. Or look at Mitt Romney: you think he's ever had to do any math in his business? Heck, go all the way back to Thomas Edison: that guy didn't understand math either (that's why he hated AC power). And he got filthy rich basically by using a brute-force method.
Sorry, but those people were right. They don't need anything more than simple addition to work at Starbucks making crappy burnt coffee drinks. The fact that their mobile phones will work better as they send inane messages to each other on Facebook is nice, but it doesn't require them to know any algebra or other higher math; the engineers (in other countries where math is valued) implementing this stuff need to know that math, but the users don't.
Yes, stuff like that still gets linked over here, but all I'm saying is that Slashdot isn't the hacker's and nerd's paradise that it used to be. Heck, every time something about evolution pops up, there's a ton of people here saying the earth is 6000 years old, evolution is false, etc. I don't remember that happening here in the 90s.
Your low user ID shows you to be a dinosaur here. Simply put: you don't belong here. Today's Slashdot is not for hacker nerds, it's for Apple fanboys and Microsoft fanboys (or are they shills?) to endlessly argue. It's not for anyone who likes to hack on stuff. Those days are over, and people like that have either moved on to other pursuits or moved on to other forums besides this one. Sure, there's places on the internet that still cater to this stuff (probably more places than ever, in fact), like the ones you pointed out. However, the average Slashdotter these days is not interested in such things.
Yeah, I think these people are a bunch of liars, trying to justify the use of an ultra-cheap material (plywood) over aluminum or steel by making up bogus claims about metal distortion.
There's other low-cost CNC systems out there that also use such materials (usually MDF), but they don't do it because it's a better material, they use MDF because it's dirt cheap and for hobbyists just doing some engraving or woodcarving, it's usually good enough. But don't pretend it's actually better than aluminum because it's not. It doesn't have anywhere near the rigidity an aluminum or steel-frame CNC machine has, and if you're cutting harder materials (like metals), at any kind of speed, than you absolutely need a highly rigid frame.
Ok, you still have to have the touch screen custom made to that weird shape. The aspect ratio of the nav and helm panels is very, very far from 16:9.
Those people get a free pass because they pull the religion card.
But if all they ever answer is "I don't know", won't them put them out of a job? After all, who else would employ seismologists besides the government? And what's the point of having seismologists if they're not going to make predictions now and then? Sure, the main role of seismologists is to study earthquakes and earth movement, but if now they're going to refuse to make any predictive assessments whatsoever, and will only speak to past seismological activity, what's the point of keeping them employed at all? You might as well not have them, and just take your chances with not having a clue when or if there'll be an earthquake, or where one might occur (wouldn't want to predict that either; you'll either cause a panic or pronounce a place safe when it wasn't).
No, you can't. If the screen is too wide, and you turn it 90 degrees, it's not going to fit on the helm station; it'll be too tall. The helm and nav stations are suspended in the air.
No, I don't buy it; the Q are exactly what they appear to be. You can tell this because of the episode where Q (the John de Lancie one, since they all stupidly have the same name) loses his powers, and at the end of the episode steals the shuttlecraft to get the angry cloud creature away from the Enterprise so they can fix the killer-asteroid problem, and another Q shows up and they have a conversation about Q making a selfless sacrifice. That scene showed the two Qs interacting without any humans (except the audience) being able to observe them, so it's not some act they're putting on, that's really how they are.
I will admit JdL was fun to watch, but it got old after a few episodes.
They were kind of annoying. I mean really; a race of beings who are really gods (they're omnipotent and claim to be omniscient, that fits the definition), but they're not really omniscient since they can be out-argued by a human? The whole thing just didn't make much sense.
Not necessarily: the form factors are odd. I'm thinking especially of the helm and nav stations at the front of the bridge: they're long and narrow. You can't take a touchscreen and saw it in half; it has to be manufactured in its final shape. So they have to find something that's already made in the right size. Maybe they could get 2 or 3 screens to fit together.
However, they don't have to use touchscreen LCD displays for these things; they can just have the regular backlit static controls, and overlay them with a glass touch panel (and maybe embed some smaller LCDs in there). There are companies that can manufacture custom-size capacitive touch panels; they're pretty simple, just glass panels with ultra-thin wires sandwiched between them in a grid.
Agreed. It's also too bad they never made any sequels to The Matrix, or any more Alien movies after Cameron's "Aliens" in 1986, or any prequels to "Star Wars" explaining the whole Clone Wars thing.
Star Trek V? There was no Star Trek V movie. They inexplicably went straight from IV (the whales movie) to VI (the one where they make peace with the Klingons).
I don't know how economically viable the idea is, but it's a good idea because it'd be a fun thing to visit. I went to the "Star Trek: The Experience" (or whatever it was called) exhibit at Hilton in Las Vegas before they closed that up, and it was a pretty amazing experience. One part that really stood out to me was when we were taken through a door onto the Enterprise-D bridge. It's a pretty amazing experience to actually stand on the bridge (even if it's in the back with all the other dumb tourists), a place we've seen countless times in the show, and it actually looks like a real place. I'd pay money to go do that again, especially if I got a little more time to walk around it, sit in the captain's chair, sit at the helm and play with the controls, etc. It'd be a lot of fun.
TNG was a great show. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't hyper-gritty and dark like everything these days seems to try to be, and it sure as hell wasn't realistic in its depiction of humans (somehow in the 24th century, humans are all extremely competent and not very prone to Jerry Springer-esque drama and idiocy), but it was great fun to watch, and the acting was good for an 80s TV show, though admittedly the first season was a little rough with some of the actors. The stories were excellent for the most part, with a few exceptions as you'd expect on a show that ran for 7 seasons. I just went back and rewatched much of the series over the last few months and enjoyed it thoroughly. I do have to admit though that I tended to avoid episodes which were 1) in the first season, 2) included Wesley as a major character (again, mostly season 1), 3) involved Lwaxana Troi, or 4) involved Q. This isn't to say all these episodes were bad though; the S1 episode "Conspiracy" for instance was one of the best episodes in the whole series.
I do have to admit, however, that probably my favorite thing about TNG is its depiction of humans. It's completely unrealistic, because it shows humans as we (or at least some of us) wish they were: competent, intelligent, considerate, thoughtful, just, and not corrupt. It shows a society I wish I could live in, but which doesn't exist, and probably never will due to human nature. But that makes it good escapist entertainment. Many times, I don't really want to watch a show/movie that shows humans as they really are. If I wanted to do that, I could watch Jerry Springer or Maury Povitch; you can see stupid humans in their full glory there. I see enough of that crap in real life; why would I want to watch more of it on TV?
Is that the same scene where the top window over the bridge shattered?
What happened to transparent aluminum? Did they forget that technology in the 24th century too?
They didn't say that the displays and controls would actually control real devices, just that the displays and controls would themselves work.
I'm pretty sure that back in the 80s when they filmed ST:TNG, none of the displays and controls actually did anything: they didn't make beeping noises, there were no actual displays, etc. All that stuff was added in post-production. The actors were just pushing on the LCARS panels at random, with nothing happening when they did. When Data read pages of text at ridiculous speed, I could be wrong but that might not have even been there, he might have been looking at a blank panel, with the cool graphics added in later.
It sounds like these guys want to refit the sets so there's actual monitors in the displays, displaying information that looks like it's from the show, and the control panels so that they're actual working touch panels where you can press the "buttons" and get beeps and maybe some realistic-looking information on the built-in displays when you do. If so, that's a pretty ambitious project, but it's quite doable with today's technology. The biggest challenge would be making the touch panels I think.
Exactly right. HSR is a waste of time, because terrorists could blow it up.
Similarly, airports and air travel is a waste of time, because terrorists could blow it up. We need to just shut down all the airports.
Similarly, bridges are a waste of time and money, because terrorists could blow up these critical points in the highway infrastructure. We need to just not have any bridges and transport people and cargo across rivers using rafts.
Similarly, government buildings, like courts and administrative offices, are all a waste of time, because terrorists could blow them up. We need to just shut down the government altogether so we can avoid terrorist attacks on these places.
Similarly, farms are a waste of time because terrorists could blow them up and eliminate our food supply. We should just shut down all farms and make everyone responsible for growing their own food individually.
This is perfectly fine advice if you really don't know where exactly you're going. However, if you're going to the exact same site you visit every single day (like gmail.com, slashdot.org, reddit.com, cnn.com, or whatever your own daily websites are), it's pointless. After visiting the same site every day, you should know what the direct html address is.
Of course, Firefox and Chrome these days put your most-visited sites right on the front page when you open a new window/tab.
If a site is so popular and so important that people do just want information from them - they wont be going via google, they'll be coming straight in.
Actually, that's not always true. There's a lot of people who use Google (or whatever the default search engine is) for everything. Even if they want to go to, say, cnn.com, they'll type "cnn" into the search bar and go there that way. Or worse, you'll find people who actually type "cnn.com" into a google search. Don't ask me why.
Even so, this doesn't mean the destination sites should be getting a cut of Google's advertising profit. If they want money, they can put up a paywall, or have their own advertising on their site.
Steve Ballmer didn't know whether Courier was any good or not, so he called in Bill Gates to look at it, and he didn't like it, so it was canned.
As for managers getting fired by investors, that doesn't happen at MS. Bill, Steve, and Paul basically control the company (though Paul doesn't really take such an active interest any more), so their word is sovereign, regardless of what any investors think. Any investors who buy into that company thinking they'll have any kind of control are morons and deserve to lose all their money.
Third-party apps are probably the ones people are most interested in having an MS machine for.