Ouch, that brings back fond and painful memeories. That is one feature which has been lost, and I still miss it. I have been a long-time Word Perfect user, from back in the DOS 4.0 days when it was owned by WordPerfect Corp. I did my first real work under WP 5.0/5.1, and the WYSIWYG page view was terrific. I could get a visual representation of my entire book chapter/manuscript, 32 pages at a glance, to make sure I had a consistent look to the document, no errant indentations, margin changes, odd pagination changes, font changes, strange-looking page lengths,... it was great.
WP 6.0 for Win 3.1 didn't have that feature, and I really missed it. I still do, now that I'm using WP 10.0 on Win98. I can do a two-page view, but that's it. Scrolling through a 200-page manuscript two pages at a time is pretty sub-optimal for getting an overview picture.
What a terrible story! Regardless of what the actual situation is, and who is or is not switching, this guy spun an entire premise based on data that is worse than useless. After soaking up some anecdotal evidence about who is switching, he made just about every mistake possible in conducting a poll (preselected pool, lousy response rate, etc.), then draws conclusions based on a miniscule sample size! He got only 15 responses (quoting from the article):
"The 15 responses were as follows:
* Upgrading from OS 9 (5)
* Switching from another operating system (10)
Where things got interesting was the platform people were switching away from. Despite the implication of Apple's switch campaign, that users are coming from Windows, the majority of the defections were from Linux, or from a combination of Windows and Linux or another version of Unix:
* Switching from Windows only (1)
* Switching from Windows to OS X for personal use, but still using Windows at work (2)
* Switching from dual-boot Windows/Linux, or separate machines for the two operating systems (2)
* Switching from Linux (5)"
And so, from the response of 5, count 'em, *5* Linux-only users, he concludes that Linux is more of a target than Windows users. If only two more Windows users had responded to his "poll", the conclusions would have been quite different. What a worthless article. It remindes me of the old story about the behavioral scientist who, after studying rats, said, "33% of white rats consistently prefer Swiss cheese to Cheddar, 33% prefer Cheddar to Swiss, and 33% have unknown preference, because my third rat ran away without tasting either one."
>>>>Ignoring the big huge plothole of "so this engineer dude knocks up holograms complete with personality and ship wide movement capability in his spare time while in then takes the federation another what, FIVE HUNDRED YEARS to get to the same point???" >>>>>
That initially struck me as odd, too, but there appears to be a lot of alien technology that the NX-01 is coming across which the humans have no clue how to reproduce, like shields, tractor beams, holodecks, holographic people. Some of this they independently discover/buy/reverse engineer by Kirk's time (shields, some tractor beams), some have to wait for Picard (holodecks), some have to wait for that mewling, whining weakling Janeway (holographic people).
Remember also, that this guy only had to program his "crew" to deal with the not-terribly challenging environment of a dead ship stuck on an isolated world, where 98% of the people they encountered were other programs controlled by the same machine. Sort of like the Eliza version of holographic AI.
None of which has anything to do with the fact that Wil Wheaton has got his priorities completely in order, and strikes me as a pretty level-headed, sensible guy. Of course, they're the ones who go postal when it all gets to be too much, so we should be glad he doesn't actually own a phaser.
I proposed to my girlfriend when we were both in college, and I had very little money. I was going to go to graduate school, and knew I wouldn't have any money for a long time. The ring was a modestly sized garnet, in a simple gold setting, $50 at Sears. Up to that time, it was probably the most money I'd every spent on jewelry.
She loved it, because of what it represented. She knew I had more prospects than money, and she was able to see the ring for what it meant, rather than what it was composed of chemically. She told me that she was glad I hadn't blown a ton of dough on a big ring I couldn't really afford, because she didn't want to start our married life in debt for something that wouldn't add to quality of life the way a car, house, blender, etc. would. Our wedding was great, our marriage has been wonderful. I would be a shabby imitation of myself if I didn't have her in my life.
She got a lot of really great reactions to the ring, surprisingly. A red stone for an engagement ring is unusual enough to be eye-catching. It's a dark red garnet, and a lot of people asked if it was a ruby. She's not ashamed of her ring, and always told them that it's a garnet, a semi-precious stone. I suppose there's a certain cache in that, a ring who's value is so purely symbolic, because she often saw women with big diamond rings in platinum settings get jealous.
We've been married 11 years, now. Our third child, a little girl, was born 8 weeks ago, and our two boys are bright, energetic, handsome kids. Our love is flourishing. As for the ring, my wife accidentally dropped it over the railing from the third tier at Wrigley Field a month after we were married, still not used to wearing it. By some miracle, we found it on the pavement outside the park; one of the prongs holding the garnet in place got bent, but the stone was OK. After a few years, the thin gold band was wearing through, and the bent prong would catch on fabric, and she had to be really careful with it. For our 5 year anniversary, I suggested we get her a higher quality ring. OK, but she wouldn't hear of replacing her garnet. We had the stone reset in a better quality band, flanked with a pair of small diamonds. We'd saved up some money, despite both of us being in graduate school at that point, and went with diamonds for an aesthic reason - they set off the garnet and made it appear even more dark and lustrous.
When I finished my PhD, and got a postdoc position, with my first salary that didn't start with a "1", I wanted to adorne my wife, to gild the lily, give her something beatuiful and extravagant and utterly impractical, to make up for the years of more practical and useful gifts. She selected small diamond stud earrings... because our new baby boy kept grabbing at the long, dangling earrings she typically wore. Sensible, even in her extravagances. What a wife.
I got a real job three years ago, and we moved and bought a house. For our 10th anniversary, we were still broke from buying the house. For our 11th anniversary, our 4-week old baby let us sleep for 6 hours straight. It was wonderful. After a few raises and promotions, I've got some money now. I suggested to my wife that we get her some more jewelry, maybe some rubies or emeralds to set off her eyes. With a kiss and a hug, she handed me a stack of brochures about savings plans for college tuition, and said that there were more important things. What a wife.
With 300+ comments already attached to this/. topic, I know nobody is going to read this. It's like those sand paintings that are created in order to celebrate what *is*, not in the expectation that they will be responded to, or become a permanat exhibit. I just wanted to declare to the world that the quality of your love is so very much more important than the chemical composition of the ring that symbolizes it.
The real cost in orbital maneuvering is getting into orbit in the first place. If the lift cost goes from $10,000/kg to $100/kg, it would be worth it to get dropped off at a less convenient position, and adjust the orbit as needed. Remember, just because you used the elevator to get off Earth doesn't mean you have to leave the rockets at home. Hauling a bunch of attitude adjustment fuel wouldn't be a big deal at those cheap lift prices.
For that matter, if getting the sats from the elevator to their proper orbits becomes a common problem, you could have a fleet of high-orbit unmanned vehicles whose sole job would be to take satellites off the elevator and ferry them to where the are supposed to go, more or less, and let the sats handle just their own fine tuning once they're in place.
I just bought a SS40G, based on an Athlon XP chip. The heatpipe-based CPU cooler is nice, but its design seems to be based on the assumption that the box will be flat on the desktop, with the CPU fins/tubes flat, level and below the radiator fins/tubes. Not a bad assumption, I suppose, but the upshot is that if you tip it back (so the front is raised), then the heatpipes don't work properly, and the fan has to kick up to higher speeds = more noise. I suspect that if you tried to run it on its side, or upside down, you'd have some major cooling issues. YMMV.
(Actually, I'm starting to wonder if mine is defective, because it seems to be running hotter than any of the reviews would suggest. The AnandTech review did mention QC problems...)
This occurs to me every time the topic of voice activation comes up... do you really want everyone within earshot hearing who you're calling, or worse, what number you're actually dialing? Picture it... you're in parking lot of your office and say to your phone, "Gloria Stitz, call". Maybe no one knows that Gloria is your beautiful, lonely neighbor, trapped in a loveless marriage, and no one would be able to put two and two together, based on the fact that you're calling her in the middle of the day, when the kids are at school and your wife is at her Pilates class. On the other hand, though....
combine clocked/-less sections on same chip?
on
Clockless Computing
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The article talks about an advantage of clockless chips being the fact that you can do away with all of the overhead in sending out the clock signal to the various parts of the chip. It also discusses what kind data processing activities are more suited for clocked vs. clockless chips. To get a best-of-both-worlds chip design, what about farming out various responsibilities on the chip to clockless sub-sections? The analogy I have in mind is when I drop my laundry off at the dry cleaners. I am on a tight schedule, and I have a lot of things to do in a certain sequence, while the dry cleaners collects laundry and does it at various rates during the course of the day. This particular laundry of mine can be done at any point over the next 4 days, and held afterwards, just so long as I have the finished product exactly when I need it, Thursday at 4:15 p.m. Different people assign different limits on the time-sensitivity of their laundry. The clocked sections can drop off their data for processing, and pick it up when they need it, and what happens inbetween is up to the clockless subchip, which does more-or-less FIFO, but can be flexible based on the time-sensitivity of the task.
A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm
Example given in "I, Robot": a guy wants to rush into a malfunctioning nuclear reactor to keep it from going critical, even though the act of saving the city will probably cost him his life. A robot without the Zeroth Law in place will prevent him from rushing into harm's way, and a million people die. The Zeroth Law allows the robot to make the call that, in this case, allowing someone to harm themselves is OK.
A lot of the other concerns with Asimov's Three* Laws of Robotics that the other posters are listing (robots not properly protecting themselves, or obeying the wrong humans, or otherwise interfering with normal human activities) are discussed in Bicentennial Man, also by Master Asimov.
The same house can cost 2x, 3x or 4x to build, depending on where you build it, becasue of local codes, materials costs, etc. Also, the difficulty/expense of building the house is influenced by location in another way. If the area where you live has strong, tightly knit unions (plumbers, carpenters, etc.), then you may not even be *able* to get your work done in a timely manner. If there just aren't many non-union plumbers, etc. in your town, and the union doesn't like its members to work on building jobs without a GC, then getting the work done will take forever. The GC's most important role may just be as an insider, a familiar name that can grease the skids in getting work, inspections, etc. scheduled. What you'd be paying for in that case is the guy's connections and knowledge of the labor environment.
I've got a Palm M505 with a folding keyboard and Documents To Go. The keyboard is about the size of a laptop's, I can open and start working on my documents at the touch of a button, without any annoying extended boot time. Together, they weigh a fraction of what a laptop weighs, take up about 10% of the space, and last about 6 hours of continuous use. The M500 (b&w) would last longer, but I was unwilling to forgo color. Total price: $450+$100. I could have gotten the same functionality from an M100, at $100.
The screen size is too small, but until someone comes up with an accordion-folding screen, super portability means "small screen".
The article doesn't say what kind of stem cells they used for their research... embryonic? adult-derived? cord blood? From a scientific standpoint, it doesn't much matter, but from an ethical standpoint, it makes all the difference in the world.
"Is there any kind of polling or feedback - especially any whos results are public - to see what customers think about this?"
Sure, see if WalMart still has this deal going in six months. If they keep selling Lindows PCs, then the sales are high enough and customer complaints are low enough to make it worthwhile. If they discontinue the program, then it was vice versa. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and nothing is more public that a discontinued product line.
Brendans of the world unite!
on
P2P Roaming Chat
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Oh, hell, I know this is offtopic, but how often do I get to see the launch of something called BrendanLand? I mean, guys named Bob or Tom or Glen get to see their name so much it becomes old hat, an annoyance, even. Brendans are few and far between (at least in the US).
BrendanLand... one of my oldest and most bizarre idle whims come to life....
"How important is it to learn something that can be reproduced very little effort and a calculator? I never learned how to use a slide rule or how to take apart an engine. I can't harvest crops or process textiles. If all the worlds technology were to disappear, I would be completely useless."
Nothing is more sad and depressing than watching an adult, a full-grown, taxpaying adult, struggling to figure out wether the jumbo "economy" size box of laundry detergent is really cheaper than buying two of the smaller boxes, all because they have no real math skills to calculate the unit cost. Standing there, stuck and useless without a calculator, without enough fingers to count on, the mysteries of basic algebra which would have saved them remain mysteries, and they have to shuffle along on their befuddled way, a member of the math-challenged underclass. My credit card has an 18% annual fee, compounded monthly on my outstanding balance as a monthly pro-rate... uh, that's like, math, right? I guess I'll just keep writing the checks until they tell me to stop, becasue I never was any good at math.
Calculators shouldn't be used at all in any math class. The early classes that require laborious long division, etc., are *supposed* to be giving you experience at doing long division, etc. The geometry and algebra classes that use symbols and substitutions are *supposed* to be giving you experience at using substitutions and symbolic calculations. When you get up into calculus, the whole point of the instruction is so you can make the complex calculations symbolically (area under a curve or volume of a rotated curve or whatever), rather than plugging and chugging. The use of a calculator in any of these circumstances circumvents the purpose of the class, which is to develop wetware math skills. In a physics or engineering class, OTOH, the use of a calculator *doesn't* subvert the instruction, because there, the math is a tool to be used, not the entire point of the class.
Regardless of how expert you become at the use of a tricycle, you shouldn't pretend that it is in some way an adequate substitute for learning how to ride a bicycle.
"I counted no less than 30 different names mentioned explicitely (not used as units) in this paper."
Hah! In my last book chapter, I had over one *hundred* references, and I cited *everybody* by name! And that was just the senior authors... if you include all those poor bastards who got buried in the "et al."s, it goes up over three hundred individuals! Top that if you can!
"*ANYONE* who shared at least 50% of their genes (brothers, sisters, children), were ALSO sterilized."
I seem to recall a similar practice carried out by some tribe or other here in our own, pleasant little universe. Fo a particularly egrigious crime, you, and anyone related to you within one degree (parents, children, aunts, uncles, first cousins, neices and nephews) were all put to death. This was, as I recall, supposed to prevent a single crime from turning into a generations-long clan feud, by the simple expediency of eliminating anyone who'd care enough about you to go to war for you, so nobody has any interest in perpetuating a cycle of revenge.
Re:Heatpipe not new, and not "innovative"
on
Shuttle SS40G Mini-PC
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The Qube, as well as the laptops, game consoles, etc., aren't really designed so you can (or should) get in under the hood. The shuttle system is a barebones, pick-your-parts, assemble it yourself system. A heatpipe is pretty unusual in that application.
"You had one year in college, so I can only assume you were 18. In which case, it's a pretty safe bet you would've broken up within 3 or 4 years anyway."
Well, I met my future wife when we lived in the same dorm freshman year (1987-88) at the University of Chicago. Dated through college (with one breakup), married after graduation in '91 (BA and BA), stayed married through my grad school, her grad school (MILS, U of Michigan, '94), more of my grad school (PhD, Michigan State, '96), two postdocs and my current real job, a new house and a new coast to live on. We have two boys, a girl due any day now, and I love her more with each passing month.
What should you give your daughter to take to college? Forget all the shitty junk that you think would be cool. It'll all end up in a desk drawer within a year, never to be seen again. The most "subversive" thing you can give her is a clear sense of her own self-worth, as a person, as a student, as a woman, as a voter, as a taxpayer, as a child of God (whichever one *she* happens to believe in)... she'll be so rock-solid compared to all those completely screwed up freshmen, she won't even have to wear black to project ultimate cool. Nothing is more subversive than a freshman who doesn't take any shit from anyone.
p.s. Also, guidance councellors are there to provide you with advice on how you should arrange your classes, major, etc. You don't *have* to take their advice, but you should think carefully before rejecting it.
Wether their cooling chips work or not, the company deserves some credit for a) posting a fairly informative FAQ (with references to peer-reviewed pub), b) making that FAQ available in a text-only version which will hopefully not get slashdotted again, c) using the following sentence: "However, the equipment needed to build chips capable of being accurately tested for cooling is expensive, and a royal pain to set up and calibrate.", d) giving our the name and e.mail of their two contacts, a suit *and* a geek.
The DoD gets all sorts of technologies and equipment from their private sector contractors, from planes and tanks to software and shoes... some works, some doesn't. MS is no different here than any other contractor who's product is pretty much so-so on quality....OK for day-to-day applications, but not good enough to trust anybody's life to. Along comes a better, cheaper product from someone else, and they start whining and bitching and fighting to keep the contract. They can't say how much better their product is because if it were actually better, the DoD wouldn't be considering a switch in the first place. So, bad-mouth the competition, hope they buy it and hope you keep the contract.
Obviously written three weeks ago...
on
Future Computers
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· Score: 1
... before all of the allegations of fraud by Hendrik Schon surfaced. The picture of him on page 2 of the article is the same one as on Lucent's webpage, and the disucssion of his groundbreaking molecular transistor work (p. 3) is presented straight. It throws a pall over the whole article, at least for those susceptible to cynicism.
I rode my bike 2 miles each way from home to lab every day, rain, snow or shine on Michigan State's campus when I was in graduate school. What finally did me in was that in an attempt to avoid a patch of ice, I slid into an even bigger patch of ice, and took a header. A spiral fracture in one of the bones in my left hand kept me off the bike for a few weeks, and in driving to work, I realized how nice it was not to be out in the weather all the time.
I think about that everytime I'm tempted to get a motorcycle, and it's gotta be a major concern for Segway sales. Maybe these will be like all those motorcycles in garages all over America, taken out a few times a year for a joyride when the weather is nice, and you know you won't be dtopping to pick up any groceries on the way home, but not relied on for any serious transportation needs.
[According To The Economist, NASA Is An Industrial Subsidy In Disguise]
[The Economist] By Ben Pratchett
I grew up with the romantic notion that NASA is not merely a government agency, but an organization dedicated to bravely propelling the human race forward into a glorious future of scientific advancement and discovery. But after reading a recent article in The Economist, I have no choice but to question that idealistic view.
According to this piece, which ran, I believe, in the April 9 issue, NASA exists largely to provide an economic boost to the American aerospace industry, particularly Boeing. NASA gets away with this thinly veiled pork-barrel politicking, the piece contended, by distracting the public with "bread-and-circus" space missions that emphasize thrills over genuinely useful scientific discovery.
Case in point: the tremendously wasteful expense of sending humans into space. A robotic probe costs far less to launch than a human, does the work far more reliably and efficiently, lasts centuries with no food or air, and never needs to be brought back. But the massive public interest in manned space flight and the human drama it offers renders all that moot.
Consider the hoopla surrounding John Glenn's return flight to space. He got a ticker-tape parade and front-page coverage, but what did science actually gain? Meanwhile, how often does your favorite newscaster mention the Hubble telescope, a genuinely useful yet far less compelling tool of exploration?
The article noted that a reassessment of NASA's motives and goals is especially relevant now. As we speak, one of Christa MacAuliffe's fellow teachers is undergoing training to ride the shuttle in what the media are portraying as "the mission Christa never got to carry out." With all due respect to the families of the victims of the Challenger disaster, can we really justify the tremendous expense for what essentially amounts to a touching, movie-of-the-week photo-op? What exactly do we plan to learn from this shuttle mission? Will it lead to scientific advances that remotely begin to justify the exorbitant costs?
It's too bad the folks in Washington aren't likely to heed the lessons of this article, because it's time we started making NASA accountable for its wasteful, PR-driven expenditures.
[Oooh, Look At Me, I Read The Economist!]
[Ooh, I Read The Economist] By Glen Schraft
Eeeeeeuuuuuwww! The Economist says! The Economist says! I read The Economist! Aren't I cool? Aren't you impressed with me?
What do you read? Time? Newsweek? Those are for people who can't handle a real news magazine like the one I read. That's because you're not as smart or sophisticated as me.
On weekends, I like to sit out on my porch in my wicker chair with my bifocals and my subscription copy of The Economist . Then, when I go to a professor's wine-and-cheese party later that night, I can casually mention all the fancy stuff I read about NASA and Venezuela and Gen. Pervez Musharraf in my fancy magazine and impress everybody.
Question: Do you think I'm smarter than everyone else because I read The Economist, or do I read The Economist because I'm smarter than everyone else? Now, there's a conundrum! I should mail that one in to The Economist and see what they think!
Oh, no! My brain just got larger! Help! I need more knowledge to fill up the new brains! Get me the new issue of The Economist at once! I can't live if I'm even remotely unaware of anything that is happening in the universe! I must have my weekly issue of The Economist, or I risk de-evolving into the sort of mouth-breathing rabble by which I am surrounded daily!
I say, old chap, here comes Lord Smartingford of Braintonshire! Shall we dine upon a nice cup of tea, then? We can discuss the economy, and the global situ-AYYY-tion, and ever so many other matters! I am so very versed in such matters, reading as do I The Economist, just as soon as the postman delivers it by the estate, don't you know. I find that only the right cracking coverage of The E-CON-omist keeps me jolly-well informed and all that, wouldn't you agree? Mmm, yes, I did think you would!
Slashdot Mirror
"(WP-5.1 had a VGA preview WYSIWYG option.)"
... it was great.
Ouch, that brings back fond and painful memeories. That is one feature which has been lost, and I still miss it. I have been a long-time Word Perfect user, from back in the DOS 4.0 days when it was owned by WordPerfect Corp. I did my first real work under WP 5.0/5.1, and the WYSIWYG page view was terrific. I could get a visual representation of my entire book chapter/manuscript, 32 pages at a glance, to make sure I had a consistent look to the document, no errant indentations, margin changes, odd pagination changes, font changes, strange-looking page lengths,
WP 6.0 for Win 3.1 didn't have that feature, and I really missed it. I still do, now that I'm using WP 10.0 on Win98. I can do a two-page view, but that's it. Scrolling through a 200-page manuscript two pages at a time is pretty sub-optimal for getting an overview picture.
What a terrible story! Regardless of what the actual situation is, and who is or is not switching, this guy spun an entire premise based on data that is worse than useless. After soaking up some anecdotal evidence about who is switching, he made just about every mistake possible in conducting a poll (preselected pool, lousy response rate, etc.), then draws conclusions based on a miniscule sample size! He got only 15 responses (quoting from the article):
"The 15 responses were as follows:
* Upgrading from OS 9 (5)
* Switching from another operating system (10)
Where things got interesting was the platform people were switching away from. Despite the implication of Apple's switch campaign, that users are coming from Windows, the majority of the defections were from Linux, or from a combination of Windows and Linux or another version of Unix:
* Switching from Windows only (1)
* Switching from Windows to OS X for personal use, but still using Windows at work (2)
* Switching from dual-boot Windows/Linux, or separate machines for the two operating systems (2)
* Switching from Linux (5)"
And so, from the response of 5, count 'em, *5* Linux-only users, he concludes that Linux is more of a target than Windows users. If only two more Windows users had responded to his "poll", the conclusions would have been quite different. What a worthless article. It remindes me of the old story about the behavioral scientist who, after studying rats, said, "33% of white rats consistently prefer Swiss cheese to Cheddar, 33% prefer Cheddar to Swiss, and 33% have unknown preference, because my third rat ran away without tasting either one."
>>>>Ignoring the big huge plothole of "so this engineer dude knocks up holograms complete with personality and ship wide movement capability in his spare time while in then takes the federation another what, FIVE HUNDRED YEARS to get to the same point???"
>>>>>
That initially struck me as odd, too, but there appears to be a lot of alien technology that the NX-01 is coming across which the humans have no clue how to reproduce, like shields, tractor beams, holodecks, holographic people. Some of this they independently discover/buy/reverse engineer by Kirk's time (shields, some tractor beams), some have to wait for Picard (holodecks), some have to wait for that mewling, whining weakling Janeway (holographic people).
Remember also, that this guy only had to program his "crew" to deal with the not-terribly challenging environment of a dead ship stuck on an isolated world, where 98% of the people they encountered were other programs controlled by the same machine. Sort of like the Eliza version of holographic AI.
None of which has anything to do with the fact that Wil Wheaton has got his priorities completely in order, and strikes me as a pretty level-headed, sensible guy. Of course, they're the ones who go postal when it all gets to be too much, so we should be glad he doesn't actually own a phaser.
I proposed to my girlfriend when we were both in college, and I had very little money. I was going to go to graduate school, and knew I wouldn't have any money for a long time. The ring was a modestly sized garnet, in a simple gold setting, $50 at Sears. Up to that time, it was probably the most money I'd every spent on jewelry.
/. topic, I know nobody is going to read this. It's like those sand paintings that are created in order to celebrate what *is*, not in the expectation that they will be responded to, or become a permanat exhibit. I just wanted to declare to the world that the quality of your love is so very much more important than the chemical composition of the ring that symbolizes it.
She loved it, because of what it represented. She knew I had more prospects than money, and she was able to see the ring for what it meant, rather than what it was composed of chemically. She told me that she was glad I hadn't blown a ton of dough on a big ring I couldn't really afford, because she didn't want to start our married life in debt for something that wouldn't add to quality of life the way a car, house, blender, etc. would. Our wedding was great, our marriage has been wonderful. I would be a shabby imitation of myself if I didn't have her in my life.
She got a lot of really great reactions to the ring, surprisingly. A red stone for an engagement ring is unusual enough to be eye-catching. It's a dark red garnet, and a lot of people asked if it was a ruby. She's not ashamed of her ring, and always told them that it's a garnet, a semi-precious stone. I suppose there's a certain cache in that, a ring who's value is so purely symbolic, because she often saw women with big diamond rings in platinum settings get jealous.
We've been married 11 years, now. Our third child, a little girl, was born 8 weeks ago, and our two boys are bright, energetic, handsome kids. Our love is flourishing. As for the ring, my wife accidentally dropped it over the railing from the third tier at Wrigley Field a month after we were married, still not used to wearing it. By some miracle, we found it on the pavement outside the park; one of the prongs holding the garnet in place got bent, but the stone was OK. After a few years, the thin gold band was wearing through, and the bent prong would catch on fabric, and she had to be really careful with it. For our 5 year anniversary, I suggested we get her a higher quality ring. OK, but she wouldn't hear of replacing her garnet. We had the stone reset in a better quality band, flanked with a pair of small diamonds. We'd saved up some money, despite both of us being in graduate school at that point, and went with diamonds for an aesthic reason - they set off the garnet and made it appear even more dark and lustrous.
When I finished my PhD, and got a postdoc position, with my first salary that didn't start with a "1", I wanted to adorne my wife, to gild the lily, give her something beatuiful and extravagant and utterly impractical, to make up for the years of more practical and useful gifts. She selected small diamond stud earrings... because our new baby boy kept grabbing at the long, dangling earrings she typically wore. Sensible, even in her extravagances. What a wife.
I got a real job three years ago, and we moved and bought a house. For our 10th anniversary, we were still broke from buying the house. For our 11th anniversary, our 4-week old baby let us sleep for 6 hours straight. It was wonderful. After a few raises and promotions, I've got some money now. I suggested to my wife that we get her some more jewelry, maybe some rubies or emeralds to set off her eyes. With a kiss and a hug, she handed me a stack of brochures about savings plans for college tuition, and said that there were more important things. What a wife.
With 300+ comments already attached to this
However, their is a wide-spread superstition that opals are bad luck unless surrounded by diamonds.
I kid you not.
Also, opals are pretty fragile, sensitive to shocks and rapid temperature changes. They crack easily.
The real cost in orbital maneuvering is getting into orbit in the first place. If the lift cost goes from $10,000/kg to $100/kg, it would be worth it to get dropped off at a less convenient position, and adjust the orbit as needed. Remember, just because you used the elevator to get off Earth doesn't mean you have to leave the rockets at home. Hauling a bunch of attitude adjustment fuel wouldn't be a big deal at those cheap lift prices.
For that matter, if getting the sats from the elevator to their proper orbits becomes a common problem, you could have a fleet of high-orbit unmanned vehicles whose sole job would be to take satellites off the elevator and ferry them to where the are supposed to go, more or less, and let the sats handle just their own fine tuning once they're in place.
A word of advice: don't tip the box.
I just bought a SS40G, based on an Athlon XP chip. The heatpipe-based CPU cooler is nice, but its design seems to be based on the assumption that the box will be flat on the desktop, with the CPU fins/tubes flat, level and below the radiator fins/tubes. Not a bad assumption, I suppose, but the upshot is that if you tip it back (so the front is raised), then the heatpipes don't work properly, and the fan has to kick up to higher speeds = more noise. I suspect that if you tried to run it on its side, or upside down, you'd have some major cooling issues. YMMV.
(Actually, I'm starting to wonder if mine is defective, because it seems to be running hotter than any of the reviews would suggest. The AnandTech review did mention QC problems...)
This occurs to me every time the topic of voice activation comes up... do you really want everyone within earshot hearing who you're calling, or worse, what number you're actually dialing? Picture it... you're in parking lot of your office and say to your phone, "Gloria Stitz, call". Maybe no one knows that Gloria is your beautiful, lonely neighbor, trapped in a loveless marriage, and no one would be able to put two and two together, based on the fact that you're calling her in the middle of the day, when the kids are at school and your wife is at her Pilates class. On the other hand, though....
The article talks about an advantage of clockless chips being the fact that you can do away with all of the overhead in sending out the clock signal to the various parts of the chip. It also discusses what kind data processing activities are more suited for clocked vs. clockless chips. To get a best-of-both-worlds chip design, what about farming out various responsibilities on the chip to clockless sub-sections? The analogy I have in mind is when I drop my laundry off at the dry cleaners. I am on a tight schedule, and I have a lot of things to do in a certain sequence, while the dry cleaners collects laundry and does it at various rates during the course of the day. This particular laundry of mine can be done at any point over the next 4 days, and held afterwards, just so long as I have the finished product exactly when I need it, Thursday at 4:15 p.m. Different people assign different limits on the time-sensitivity of their laundry. The clocked sections can drop off their data for processing, and pick it up when they need it, and what happens inbetween is up to the clockless subchip, which does more-or-less FIFO, but can be flexible based on the time-sensitivity of the task.
But the Zeroth Law takes precedence:
A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm
Example given in "I, Robot": a guy wants to rush into a malfunctioning nuclear reactor to keep it from going critical, even though the act of saving the city will probably cost him his life. A robot without the Zeroth Law in place will prevent him from rushing into harm's way, and a million people die. The Zeroth Law allows the robot to make the call that, in this case, allowing someone to harm themselves is OK.
A lot of the other concerns with Asimov's Three* Laws of Robotics that the other posters are listing (robots not properly protecting themselves, or obeying the wrong humans, or otherwise interfering with normal human activities) are discussed in Bicentennial Man, also by Master Asimov.
The same house can cost 2x, 3x or 4x to build, depending on where you build it, becasue of local codes, materials costs, etc. Also, the difficulty/expense of building the house is influenced by location in another way. If the area where you live has strong, tightly knit unions (plumbers, carpenters, etc.), then you may not even be *able* to get your work done in a timely manner. If there just aren't many non-union plumbers, etc. in your town, and the union doesn't like its members to work on building jobs without a GC, then getting the work done will take forever. The GC's most important role may just be as an insider, a familiar name that can grease the skids in getting work, inspections, etc. scheduled. What you'd be paying for in that case is the guy's connections and knowledge of the labor environment.
I've got a Palm M505 with a folding keyboard and Documents To Go. The keyboard is about the size of a laptop's, I can open and start working on my documents at the touch of a button, without any annoying extended boot time. Together, they weigh a fraction of what a laptop weighs, take up about 10% of the space, and last about 6 hours of continuous use. The M500 (b&w) would last longer, but I was unwilling to forgo color. Total price: $450+$100. I could have gotten the same functionality from an M100, at $100.
The screen size is too small, but until someone comes up with an accordion-folding screen, super portability means "small screen".
The article doesn't say what kind of stem cells they used for their research... embryonic? adult-derived? cord blood? From a scientific standpoint, it doesn't much matter, but from an ethical standpoint, it makes all the difference in the world.
"Is there any kind of polling or feedback - especially any whos results are public - to see what customers think about this?"
Sure, see if WalMart still has this deal going in six months. If they keep selling Lindows PCs, then the sales are high enough and customer complaints are low enough to make it worthwhile. If they discontinue the program, then it was vice versa. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and nothing is more public that a discontinued product line.
Oh, hell, I know this is offtopic, but how often do I get to see the launch of something called BrendanLand? I mean, guys named Bob or Tom or Glen get to see their name so much it becomes old hat, an annoyance, even. Brendans are few and far between (at least in the US).
BrendanLand... one of my oldest and most bizarre idle whims come to life....
"How important is it to learn something that can be reproduced very little effort and a calculator? I never learned how to use a slide rule or how to take apart an engine. I can't harvest crops or process textiles. If all the worlds technology were to disappear, I would be completely useless."
Nothing is more sad and depressing than watching an adult, a full-grown, taxpaying adult, struggling to figure out wether the jumbo "economy" size box of laundry detergent is really cheaper than buying two of the smaller boxes, all because they have no real math skills to calculate the unit cost. Standing there, stuck and useless without a calculator, without enough fingers to count on, the mysteries of basic algebra which would have saved them remain mysteries, and they have to shuffle along on their befuddled way, a member of the math-challenged underclass. My credit card has an 18% annual fee, compounded monthly on my outstanding balance as a monthly pro-rate... uh, that's like, math, right? I guess I'll just keep writing the checks until they tell me to stop, becasue I never was any good at math.
Calculators shouldn't be used at all in any math class. The early classes that require laborious long division, etc., are *supposed* to be giving you experience at doing long division, etc. The geometry and algebra classes that use symbols and substitutions are *supposed* to be giving you experience at using substitutions and symbolic calculations. When you get up into calculus, the whole point of the instruction is so you can make the complex calculations symbolically (area under a curve or volume of a rotated curve or whatever), rather than plugging and chugging. The use of a calculator in any of these circumstances circumvents the purpose of the class, which is to develop wetware math skills. In a physics or engineering class, OTOH, the use of a calculator *doesn't* subvert the instruction, because there, the math is a tool to be used, not the entire point of the class.
Regardless of how expert you become at the use of a tricycle, you shouldn't pretend that it is in some way an adequate substitute for learning how to ride a bicycle.
"I counted no less than 30 different names mentioned explicitely (not used as units) in this paper."
Hah! In my last book chapter, I had over one *hundred* references, and I cited *everybody* by name! And that was just the senior authors... if you include all those poor bastards who got buried in the "et al."s, it goes up over three hundred individuals! Top that if you can!
"*ANYONE* who shared at least 50% of their genes (brothers, sisters, children), were ALSO sterilized."
I seem to recall a similar practice carried out by some tribe or other here in our own, pleasant little universe. Fo a particularly egrigious crime, you, and anyone related to you within one degree (parents, children, aunts, uncles, first cousins, neices and nephews) were all put to death. This was, as I recall, supposed to prevent a single crime from turning into a generations-long clan feud, by the simple expediency of eliminating anyone who'd care enough about you to go to war for you, so nobody has any interest in perpetuating a cycle of revenge.
The Qube, as well as the laptops, game consoles, etc., aren't really designed so you can (or should) get in under the hood. The shuttle system is a barebones, pick-your-parts, assemble it yourself system. A heatpipe is pretty unusual in that application.
"You had one year in college, so I can only assume you were 18. In which case, it's a pretty safe bet you would've broken up within 3 or 4 years anyway."
Well, I met my future wife when we lived in the same dorm freshman year (1987-88) at the University of Chicago. Dated through college (with one breakup), married after graduation in '91 (BA and BA), stayed married through my grad school, her grad school (MILS, U of Michigan, '94), more of my grad school (PhD, Michigan State, '96), two postdocs and my current real job, a new house and a new coast to live on. We have two boys, a girl due any day now, and I love her more with each passing month.
What should you give your daughter to take to college? Forget all the shitty junk that you think would be cool. It'll all end up in a desk drawer within a year, never to be seen again. The most "subversive" thing you can give her is a clear sense of her own self-worth, as a person, as a student, as a woman, as a voter, as a taxpayer, as a child of God (whichever one *she* happens to believe in)... she'll be so rock-solid compared to all those completely screwed up freshmen, she won't even have to wear black to project ultimate cool. Nothing is more subversive than a freshman who doesn't take any shit from anyone.
p.s. Also, guidance councellors are there to provide you with advice on how you should arrange your classes, major, etc. You don't *have* to take their advice, but you should think carefully before rejecting it.
Wether their cooling chips work or not, the company deserves some credit for a) posting a fairly informative FAQ (with references to peer-reviewed pub), b) making that FAQ available in a text-only version which will hopefully not get slashdotted again, c) using the following sentence: "However, the equipment needed to build chips capable of being accurately tested for cooling is expensive, and a royal pain to set up and calibrate.", d) giving our the name and e.mail of their two contacts, a suit *and* a geek.
The DoD gets all sorts of technologies and equipment from their private sector contractors, from planes and tanks to software and shoes ... some works, some doesn't. MS is no different here than any other contractor who's product is pretty much so-so on quality....OK for day-to-day applications, but not good enough to trust anybody's life to. Along comes a better, cheaper product from someone else, and they start whining and bitching and fighting to keep the contract. They can't say how much better their product is because if it were actually better, the DoD wouldn't be considering a switch in the first place. So, bad-mouth the competition, hope they buy it and hope you keep the contract.
... before all of the allegations of fraud by Hendrik Schon surfaced. The picture of him on page 2 of the article is the same one as on Lucent's webpage, and the disucssion of his groundbreaking molecular transistor work (p. 3) is presented straight. It throws a pall over the whole article, at least for those susceptible to cynicism.
"Anyone try riding a bicycle on ice?"
I rode my bike 2 miles each way from home to lab every day, rain, snow or shine on Michigan State's campus when I was in graduate school. What finally did me in was that in an attempt to avoid a patch of ice, I slid into an even bigger patch of ice, and took a header. A spiral fracture in one of the bones in my left hand kept me off the bike for a few weeks, and in driving to work, I realized how nice it was not to be out in the weather all the time.
I think about that everytime I'm tempted to get a motorcycle, and it's gotta be a major concern for Segway sales. Maybe these will be like all those motorcycles in garages all over America, taken out a few times a year for a joyride when the weather is nice, and you know you won't be dtopping to pick up any groceries on the way home, but not relied on for any serious transportation needs.
www.theonion.com
Point-Counterpoint: The Space Program
[According To The Economist, NASA Is An Industrial Subsidy In Disguise]
[The Economist]
By Ben Pratchett
I grew up with the romantic notion that NASA is not merely a government agency, but an organization dedicated to bravely propelling the human race forward into a glorious future of scientific advancement and discovery. But after reading a recent article in The Economist, I have no choice but to question that idealistic view.
According to this piece, which ran, I believe, in the April 9 issue, NASA exists largely to provide an economic boost to the American aerospace industry, particularly Boeing. NASA gets away with this thinly veiled pork-barrel politicking, the piece contended, by distracting the public with "bread-and-circus" space missions that emphasize thrills over genuinely useful scientific discovery.
Case in point: the tremendously wasteful expense of sending humans into space. A robotic probe costs far less to launch than a human, does the work far more reliably and efficiently, lasts centuries with no food or air, and never needs to be brought back. But the massive public interest in manned space flight and the human drama it offers renders all that moot.
Consider the hoopla surrounding John Glenn's return flight to space. He got a ticker-tape parade and front-page coverage, but what did science actually gain? Meanwhile, how often does your favorite newscaster mention the Hubble telescope, a genuinely useful yet far less compelling tool of exploration?
The article noted that a reassessment of NASA's motives and goals is especially relevant now. As we speak, one of Christa MacAuliffe's fellow teachers is undergoing training to ride the shuttle in what the media are portraying as "the mission Christa never got to carry out." With all due respect to the families of the victims of the Challenger disaster, can we really justify the tremendous expense for what essentially amounts to a touching, movie-of-the-week photo-op? What exactly do we plan to learn from this shuttle mission? Will it lead to scientific advances that remotely begin to justify the exorbitant costs?
It's too bad the folks in Washington aren't likely to heed the lessons of this article, because it's time we started making NASA accountable for its wasteful, PR-driven expenditures.
[Oooh, Look At Me, I Read The Economist!]
[Ooh, I Read The Economist]
By Glen Schraft
Eeeeeeuuuuuwww! The Economist says! The Economist says! I read The Economist! Aren't I cool? Aren't you impressed with me?
What do you read? Time? Newsweek? Those are for people who can't handle a real news magazine like the one I read. That's because you're not as smart or sophisticated as me.
On weekends, I like to sit out on my porch in my wicker chair with my bifocals and my subscription copy of The Economist . Then, when I go to a professor's wine-and-cheese party later that night, I can casually mention all the fancy stuff I read about NASA and Venezuela and Gen. Pervez Musharraf in my fancy magazine and impress everybody.
Question: Do you think I'm smarter than everyone else because I read The Economist, or do I read The Economist because I'm smarter than everyone else? Now, there's a conundrum! I should mail that one in to The Economist and see what they think!
Oh, no! My brain just got larger! Help! I need more knowledge to fill up the new brains! Get me the new issue of The Economist at once! I can't live if I'm even remotely unaware of anything that is happening in the universe! I must have my weekly issue of The Economist, or I risk de-evolving into the sort of mouth-breathing rabble by which I am surrounded daily!
I say, old chap, here comes Lord Smartingford of Braintonshire! Shall we dine upon a nice cup of tea, then? We can discuss the economy, and the global situ-AYYY-tion, and ever so many other matters! I am so very versed in such matters, reading as do I The Economist, just as soon as the postman delivers it by the estate, don't you know. I find that only the right cracking coverage of The E-CON-omist keeps me jolly-well informed and all that, wouldn't you agree? Mmm, yes, I did think you would!
Fuckin' prick.