I think the summary on this article missed the point of Nielsen's article---though in fairness to the article submitter, I think Nielsen's own abstract also misses the point.
The article summary says that search engines "extract too much of the Web's value." He never gives us any criterion to make such a decision, so I assume this to be a personal opinion. Personal opinion aside, I would agree with his assertion that the "advertising arms race" inherent in the pay-for-ranking system can siphon revenue---potentially a lot of revenue---from a company. Nielsen then goes on to explain several good suggestions that companies could use to counter this outflow problem. His closing idea---that successful websites need to learn how to make people come back, not how to keep them on the page for hours---is, I believe, correct. Wikipedia is a good example of this, as others have mentioned; I'm also a favor of howstuffworks.com.
I don't know why Nielsen hid a good idea in so much scaremongering language; I suspect he felt it necessary to be heard above the regular Internet "blog noise" (we're discussing the article, so I guess it worked). But scaremongering aside, this is a pretty informative article.
>> try to figure out why rich and smart people are leaving the united states and only poor people or silly are coming in....
Obviously, someone forgot to take down our help wanted ad...
I worked a nine-month internship with a software company that writes satellite tracking software. One of the first projects I worked on was to re-work our hard-coded compiler control software--written in C#--to use an XML "script" to control the compiler operations. I'd never touched C# before, and I'd only worked with XML on one other short project.
Employing some techniques I'd learned from a semester of "programming theory"--a course that relied heavily on ML but assumed you'd learn the language yourself as the semester went on--I banged out a functional-style codebase using first-class functions, one function per grammar element in our scripting language. I then hammered out a script that did what our previous hard-coded engine had done and a DTD to validate the script (the DTD was superfluous, but hey, I'd just taught myself everything I needed to know about XML from two websites, so I figured I'd put it to good use). Final verdict: better than the original.
Could I have executed that bit of magic without a Comp. Sci degree? Hard to say. Would a technical curriculum that taught me XML and C# have also suggested to me that using functional-programming style to mirror the data-driven design of the language in the parser itself makes the parser easier to maintain by creating a one-to-one conceptual mapping between adding phrases to the grammar and adding new functions to the parser? I suspect not; I think that seeing such conceptual interrelations is a skill that only comes from experience--or a good science course. At the end of the day, identifying, deriving, and verifying patterns is what any science--Computer Science included--is all about. I somehow doubt that I'd see that if I'd been taught XML and C#, but never general programming theory or functional programming.
Of course, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data..." but anecdotes can be fun.
It's not quite as good as a Wayback archive, but you may be able to find part of what you're looking for in Exhibit 2 of the cease-and-desist itself, so thoughtfully provided by Mr. Papasian:
I guess we can't go to the moon now because of the deadly moon dust, imagine what would have happened if we discovered it before landing on the moon?
Fun fact: NASA researchers knew that the moon was covered in a fine layer of dust before the Apollo missions began. This was determined by an analysis of the albedo of the surface, as well as the behavior of impact craters generated by the Ranger missions and their Soviet counterparts.
What they didn't know was how thick the dust layer was, or the details of its composition. But since there are no erosion processes on the moon, a hypothesis existed that the dust could be a uniformly-distributed, miles-deep ocean of light, loosely-compressed particulate matter. This is why the lunar landers had large, dish-shaped landing pads--to distribute their weight and prevent them from sinking. Humans, unfortunately, don't have large landing pads, and many scientists feared that the first human crew to set foot on the lunar surface would simply be swallowed up by the dust. There were small sighs of relief in multiple places in the country when Armstrong stepped out of the lander and the lunar surface held his weight.
When doing something truly great, you have to plan well. You have to take time for forethought, consider possible contingencies, run through the "what-if" scenarios, and push as best you can to the outer limits of knowledge. But we are mortal, and our knowledge is finite. After all the planning is done, you still have to step out of the bloody capsule and plant your boot on the moon before you truly know that it will work.
On a somewhat related note: If you're ever in Washington, DC and have occasion to go to the National Archives building, you can read a speech that was never given by President Nixon. This was the speech he planned to give in the event that the Apollo astronauts loaded back into the lander, pushed the launch button, and had nothing happen: no rocket ignition, no takeoff, no trip home. How do you tell America that three of its sons are stranded on the moon with no hope of rescue? We never had to find out. But I don't doubt that a question like that went through the minds of every astronaut, engineer, and administrator working on the Apollo program at some point, and they went anyway.
Having two shuttles blow up in over a hundred missions hasn't changed the risk that was present, is present, and will probably always be present in exploration. There has been a decent and respectful time of mourning for the astronauts who died and reflection on the causes of the tragedy. I, for one, am glad to see America getting up off its bruised butt and reaching for the stars again.
Re:Useability; A mouse is the wrong shape
on
3D Mouse
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Could we get a link to the research you have mentioned? I'd be interested in looking at it, but I worry that a google search for "mouse" and "bat" isn't going to return anything helpful...;)
They're quite interested in the rest of the world. You can find the European-targeted website describing the device here. I am quite surprised that this website claims it is not yet available in Europe, however; I was under the impression that the iBot had already been cleared for the European market. It's on its way as soon as the FDA-equivalent organizations clear it, I would surmise.
I will echo your concern about the design of the website though. C'mon, if you're going to put an American flag at the bottom of your site, and you have a European site, make the flag hyperlinked!
did they somehow also enter a 3D-model of how the building weakens radio signals, and use that in order to create three 3D-shapes at the point of intersection the transmitter can be located?
This is just off the top of my head, but if you're referring to the Carnegie Mellon project, CMU has been working for several years to get 100% wi-fi coverage across the entire campus. This work includes a complete analysis of each room of each buildings' wireless signal strengths to all visible routers, to assure that there are no dead-zones. So your hypothesis has merit; it is possible that the researchers used this information to construct an interpolated map of signal strengths and can calculate indoor positions in this manner.
If this is the case, then I worry about the project when someone playing soccer in a hallway accidentally bumps a router...
...considering how long it takes to build a $5 billion Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier...
Actually, that's a good question: How long does it take to build a Nimitz-class?
I wanted to go to the commissioning ceremony, but it's booked. I wish I'd thought about it sooner... my mother saw part of the construction going on while she was in a meeting down there, and it would've been a treat for her to see the finished product. She mentioned it was very distracting--trying to pay attention to a planning meeting is difficult when you're trying to comprehend the fact that yes, people are building a floating airport out there, yes, it's a thousand times the scale of any individual worker on it, and yes, it will work.
My hat's off to the Newport News shipwrights... in times of technological miracles, you do a job that can still make people stop and say ``whoa.''
As a rising junior in a technical college, here's what worked for me:
Unless the school mandates you bring a computer to campus, you may want to wait a few months before purchasing anything. Many campuses now have very good technology available for campus-wide use (computer clusters, public printers, etc.)... look into what the school offers. This allows the student to get a feel for what sort of technology will be useful. It also helps if the campus is a one-OS campus, so that the student doesn't get stuck with something incompatible.
In the same vein as ``Look at what the school offers...'' Be sure to check with the college and see if it has a computer store with technology discounts offered. You can save a bundle here... for example, some schools partner with Microsoft and other software companies to offer products like Microsoft Office for $10 through site licenses for all students. The same may apply to hardware... remember, you have a student in the family now, and plenty of people are willing to give students free stuff (see ``college is expensive'' comment above)!
I use a Palm III for all my organizational needs, but whatever works for the student is the best choice. College is a place where one will determine what works best for oneself... if your college-bound youth organizes best using a pencil and some conveniently-placed scraps of notebook paper in all pockets, let them go with it! They should be old enough now to determine what works for them, so if they've had an opportunity to use an electronic organizer before and turned it down, they aren't likely to pick it up now. It's not necessary for college survival; in fact, I've only seen two Palm users trade electronic business cards three times in my two years, and two of them were with me;)
Buy behind the tech curve. College can be expensive, and your student isn't likely to need the absolute top-of-the-line to do book reports or surf the web. Even if he or she is majoring in a technical field, the software and hardware used is likely to be provided by the campus if it's required for courses, so the only major advantage gained would probably be the ability to work in the privacy of their own dorm room. On the other hand, more modern technology means the computer can run the latest games, which could lead to more slacking off. Personally, I feel I've saved myself a lot of time by never having a computer capable of running the latest and greatest in time-wasting technology, but your milage may vary. My advice is to stay away from the most powerful machine, and use the money to invest in extra memory or a better warranty.
The single most useful feature of my PDA is the planner alarm... I wouldn't be able to maintain a schedule without it. I never got into the habit of checking my paper planner regularly, and I have a real serious tendency to let the rest of my day slip my mind when I get into a project... my Palm III's little chirp (custom-made with some MIDI software, so I never confuse it with someone else's PDA) sucks me back into reality and keeps me from missing meetings or jobs for sheer forgetfulness. I love being able to let my mind focus totally on the now, knowing my "assistant" will notify me when I should be doing something else.
When I first got my Palm, it was my toy... but now it's my tool. I've been able to afford my PDA on a student's salary by always buying behind the tech curve (still on a Palm III, use WriteRights from Fellowes to preserve screen life). I only sync about once a month, and on full-backup (Palm overwrites computer)... that way I never have to ask myself "Now where did I put that phone number?" I could lose some data if my Palm dies, but there's always paper if I have to...
So I'm one of those people who keeps his public life in a little belt pouch on his hip. It frees me from having to keep it in my head all the time... in fact, the faceplate on my Palm III pretty much says it all.
I generally agree with this poster's entiments. However, the question that immediately comes to my mind is this: what should those in America do about it? Perhaps one of the reasons Americans often take such blank attitudes to world politics is that we screw up so badly when we get involved. Geez, the USA has one Vietnam confilct and the whole country's scared.
However, one does have to ask where we draw the line. Let's say America decides tomorrow that the situation in Afghanistan is abonimable. Bush dispatches the Pacific armed forces to beat them to a bloody pulp and institute a new government--probably a puppet democracy, since it's easier to guarantee they are doing what America wants them to do. Now assuming that the whole scenario I just described works... that the US military does not find itself totally unequipped for war against the Taliban, that the country isn't bombed into an unlivable hell, that the country doesn't collapse into a US military rulership... what then? Other Arab nations will probably feel threatened at such a brazen display of arrogance and hypocrisy on the part of America, to simply go in and tell a nation how its people should live (oh wait, isn't that what the Taliban is doing? Of course, it's THEIR nation). America would have a dependent nation filled with racial and ethnic animosities to attempt to handle. And it would set a precedent for world policemanship that the United States cannot afford.
I'm not saying America doesn't do this already. However, I'm not sure it's been a good idea in the past, and I think history has shown us that it's not wise to interfere in a situation like this. Yes, it shall pass. Nazi Germany fell, and a government like the Taliban cannot sustain itself for long if the people of Afghanistan have any shred of a backbone. How long can you oppress 50% of your population before the women just slit their husbands' throats and establish a matriarchy?
Yeah, the Taliban is really screwing up Afghanistan (at least in the eyes of this devil westerner). Yeah, Americans don't seem to care. I think the reason is that they can't afford to. You can only watch evil for so long before your inability to stop it makes you either jaded or insane.
Keep in mind when reading news reports like this one that the words used are often chosen to hype up the article. NASA may have spent $97 million researching and developing the design to discover that it was non-viable. Had they not spent the money, they would not have known the solution wouldn't work. Also, $97 million doesn't just disappear down a hole; I suspect that the knowledge gained in this project may lead to other developments.
As always, the whole story is not told without sufficient research. That's why I trust my elected officials to know the details for me |:)
I'm sorry to show off my ignorance, but does anyone know of any legal actions that were taken against the parents of the shooters in the Columbine massacre? I mean, that's how America's legal system works, right? Your kids screw up, they're underage, you take the blame, right?
I'm just curious, because that's where I would have placed the blame. It sounds cruel--it probably is cruel--and I have some limited sympathy for the parents whose children took their own lives after abruptly ending the lives of so many others, but I just can't stop asking myself: how did these kids build pipe bombs and modify shotguns in their own homes and their parents never noticed anything amiss?
This was a terrible tragedy, and I hope it never happens again. But as an avid game-player, I have to say that I have never observed any link between violent games and violent behavior. If someone has to be sued, let it be the people whose negligence allowed extremely disturbed children to arm themselves with lethal weaponry and vent their demons on their peers.
This is a very good point, and one I feel FIRST does its best to overcome. Dean Kamen, for one, continues to encourage those to whom he speaks to seek out the disadvantaged children, not the ones already interested in math and science. In a recent lecture to the Richmond Joint Engineer's Council, Dean stressed that it was the responsibility of the engineers to reach out to those who don't know about what they do; preaching to the choir only does so much good.
I don't know much about the Intel program, but I feel that FIRST sets itself up fairly well to seek out disadvantaged students through a grass-roots approach. The most prestigious award in the FIRST competition is the Chairman's Award, given to a team who best promotes the spirit of the FIRST competition. This award is given to teams who mentor other teams, as well as teams who went through hell to get into the competition. It helps keep everyone focused on the primary goal of FIRST at this time: to reach out to every school system, so that every student has an opportunity to participate.
One serious obstacle that I see is the cost to compete. At at least US$5000 for each team to enter one competition (which does not include travel costs, extra parts, or uniforms), teams have to pull major corporate sponsorship to participate at all. That is actually part of the competition; students are supposed to learn how to convince money sources that they have a worthwhile project, just as real engineers have to convince people to fund their ideas. However, I think that any drop in this cost--while extremely difficult to accomplish--would pull in more teams. Most teams spend upwards of US$15000 to compete, and there is no question that richer teams get many advantages over poorer teams. However, I think that dropping that minimum cost would really help pull in more teams.
The only problem is that it may be impossible to do.
This was the second year of competition for the GSGIS Mech Techs (team 422), whose website can be found here. Also, many team websites can be found on FIRST's page.
For those who think this is Battlebots for high-schoolers, you should really do some research; FIRST does their best to be as far removed from Battlebot-style games as possible. This year, for example, the game involved a radical new concept: four robots on the field at a time, all on the same team. You all shared the same score (with one exception), so if something went wrong for your teammate, you took the hit with them. In the end, it was in everyone's best interest to make sure that every team built the best, most reliable robot possible. This is meant to simulate real-world engineering challenges; as Dean explains, companies like Coca-cola do better than their competitors by creating better products and advertising more, not by blowing up PepsiCo's international headquarters. In the real world, teamwork is the only way to get things done, and if you go out and destroy the competition there is no-one to team up with.
While I was at one of the regional competitions, I saw a great example of this. There was a team who had basically been logistically screwed; their parts didn't arrive in time, they didn't have enough help from their community (in terms of engineers), and their robot was even shipped upside-down! They put out an SOS over e-mail before the competition, and when they arrived there were three teams (ours included) lined up to help them out. Their robot wasn't the best out there, but it went from completely unfinished to running in a few hours. At the end of the comp, they won a judges' special award for having the courage to swallow their pride and ask for help. Everyone cheered.
In real life, teamwork is more important than competition. If only the nations of the world could learn that lesson...
If they're really an advanced alien species, let's see them prove it: interface the human operating system with their technology. The things we could learn from such a project would be incredible.
Well, not for those in whom the attempt "crashes..."
I just want to say that... oh wait, give me a moment, I have to go get something out of my closet...
[step, step, step, step]
[creeeeeak]
[rummage, rummage, rummage...]
hmm, I haven't needed these in years... where are they?
[rummage, rummage, rummage]
Ah, here we are....
[slam!
[step, step, step, step]
[zzzzzzziiip!]
Okay, now that I'm in my oh-so-comfortable asbestos underwear, I'm ready to weigh into the holy war. Before I start my completely objective analysis of this situation, I must state--as the author of the Slashdot article stated indirectly by his choice of words--that I am totally subjective; I have been an avid Apple fan for years; my first computer was an Apple ][c, and I and am even posting this from one of those forgettable numbered Macs from the Gil Amelio era (Power Mac 7500/100 in fact). I like my Mac...no, I love my Mac; I love the way a Mac chimes on boot, smiles at you when it finds its startup files, and even apologizes for system errors. It's mushy and not "technically efficient" (that's arguable, by the way), but it's humanizing. It is that look and feel that has kept me attached to Apple even when I recognized that I could get more things more cheaply by getting a PC. In fact, the only thing that kept a PC out of my life is the fact that I would have had to deal with that Gawdoffle Windows 95 GUI... I hate that GUI. I prefer DOS to that GUI; at least I understand the DOS commands. "F8 refreshes the window..." ah yes, that's easy to remember.
Regardless of the laws, Look and Feel (L&F) is a vital element of the computer experience. It is the interface that ties the most critical element of the computing system--the user--to the computer itself. I was actually a little surprised that Apple would clamp down on others imitating their L imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery, and it is some of the cheapest advertising Apple could get.
However, I can fully understand; in those years of chaos when many believed Apple would take the plunge, its L&F was almost all that was holding the company together. IMHO, they are understandably paranoid about plagarism of those ethereal elements that make a Macintosh user experience what it is... and no, I'm not talking about the extension conflicts!
Now that Apple seems on an upswing, I think it could possibly afford to let something as little as an Aqua-like skin slide. But then again, since L&F is so hard to objectively define, maybe Apple is safest by being paranoid about its interface. As for the legal ramifications of all of this, I'll let the courts decide; that's what I pay them for.
Hard to believe theres only been 100 launches. Seems like more that that, especially when you think of the timescale.
Actually, only a hundred launches seems about right. We sometimes forget in our post-spacerace society exactly how complex, difficult, and downright dangerous these missions are. That's why every single mission-that's right, every one- has its own mission patch (by the way, you can see STS-92's patch at this location. They call them "missions" for a reason: they are as intricate and dangerous as any military action. The slightest mistake can cost billions of dollars and even irreplaceable human lives, as has already been demonstrated in our history. To see just how complex this stuff is, check the source.
Star Trek and other sci-fi makes this stuff look too easy; space travel is the hardest thing humans do. Okay, maybe maintaining world peace is the hardest, but space travel is right up there!
Take care,
Mark
P.S: If you think missions are hard, look at the history of extra-vehicular activities. Hmmm...bundling myself up like a kid in winter and stepping out into a near-zero pressure environment where the sunlight alone could vaporize me in an instant... sounds like fun!
Ah, the age-old question; "sure it moves by itself, but is it alive?"
I do not think that Tilden's machines are alive. However, I think that they are just about as close to artificial life as we have ever seen. It all comes down to a question of how one defines life.
Personally, I use the unpredictability of living creatures as part of my definition. Now, Tilden's machines do things that not even he can explain. For example, once they solve a problem (getting over a hill, finding a target, etc), if you return them to the problem situation, they solve it much more quickly then they did the first time. This is certainly not a behavior seen in digital robots, and even rarely seen in learning machines. Tilden thinks that some sort of residual waveform in the robot's "brain" allows it to solve the problem again, but not even he can explain it completely.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the summary on this article missed the point of Nielsen's article---though in fairness to the article submitter, I think Nielsen's own abstract also misses the point.
The article summary says that search engines "extract too much of the Web's value." He never gives us any criterion to make such a decision, so I assume this to be a personal opinion. Personal opinion aside, I would agree with his assertion that the "advertising arms race" inherent in the pay-for-ranking system can siphon revenue---potentially a lot of revenue---from a company. Nielsen then goes on to explain several good suggestions that companies could use to counter this outflow problem. His closing idea---that successful websites need to learn how to make people come back, not how to keep them on the page for hours---is, I believe, correct. Wikipedia is a good example of this, as others have mentioned; I'm also a favor of howstuffworks.com.
I don't know why Nielsen hid a good idea in so much scaremongering language; I suspect he felt it necessary to be heard above the regular Internet "blog noise" (we're discussing the article, so I guess it worked). But scaremongering aside, this is a pretty informative article.
Hm. That's weird. I hold down F5, and all that happens is the little beveled, transparent "speaker volume" window appears and cranks to maximum.
Well, if the kid's exploit doesn't work, I guess the prosecutor has no case.
>> try to figure out why rich and smart people are leaving the united states and only poor people or silly are coming in ....
Obviously, someone forgot to take down our help wanted ad...
I worked a nine-month internship with a software company that writes satellite tracking software. One of the first projects I worked on was to re-work our hard-coded compiler control software--written in C#--to use an XML "script" to control the compiler operations. I'd never touched C# before, and I'd only worked with XML on one other short project.
Employing some techniques I'd learned from a semester of "programming theory"--a course that relied heavily on ML but assumed you'd learn the language yourself as the semester went on--I banged out a functional-style codebase using first-class functions, one function per grammar element in our scripting language. I then hammered out a script that did what our previous hard-coded engine had done and a DTD to validate the script (the DTD was superfluous, but hey, I'd just taught myself everything I needed to know about XML from two websites, so I figured I'd put it to good use). Final verdict: better than the original.
Could I have executed that bit of magic without a Comp. Sci degree? Hard to say. Would a technical curriculum that taught me XML and C# have also suggested to me that using functional-programming style to mirror the data-driven design of the language in the parser itself makes the parser easier to maintain by creating a one-to-one conceptual mapping between adding phrases to the grammar and adding new functions to the parser? I suspect not; I think that seeing such conceptual interrelations is a skill that only comes from experience--or a good science course. At the end of the day, identifying, deriving, and verifying patterns is what any science--Computer Science included--is all about. I somehow doubt that I'd see that if I'd been taught XML and C#, but never general programming theory or functional programming.
Of course, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data..." but anecdotes can be fun.
It's not quite as good as a Wayback archive, but you may be able to find part of what you're looking for in Exhibit 2 of the cease-and-desist itself, so thoughtfully provided by Mr. Papasian:
http://www.walmart-foundation.org/walmart.pdf
I guess we can't go to the moon now because of the deadly moon dust, imagine what would have happened if we discovered it before landing on the moon?
Fun fact: NASA researchers knew that the moon was covered in a fine layer of dust before the Apollo missions began. This was determined by an analysis of the albedo of the surface, as well as the behavior of impact craters generated by the Ranger missions and their Soviet counterparts.
What they didn't know was how thick the dust layer was, or the details of its composition. But since there are no erosion processes on the moon, a hypothesis existed that the dust could be a uniformly-distributed, miles-deep ocean of light, loosely-compressed particulate matter. This is why the lunar landers had large, dish-shaped landing pads--to distribute their weight and prevent them from sinking. Humans, unfortunately, don't have large landing pads, and many scientists feared that the first human crew to set foot on the lunar surface would simply be swallowed up by the dust. There were small sighs of relief in multiple places in the country when Armstrong stepped out of the lander and the lunar surface held his weight.
When doing something truly great, you have to plan well. You have to take time for forethought, consider possible contingencies, run through the "what-if" scenarios, and push as best you can to the outer limits of knowledge. But we are mortal, and our knowledge is finite. After all the planning is done, you still have to step out of the bloody capsule and plant your boot on the moon before you truly know that it will work.
On a somewhat related note: If you're ever in Washington, DC and have occasion to go to the National Archives building, you can read a speech that was never given by President Nixon. This was the speech he planned to give in the event that the Apollo astronauts loaded back into the lander, pushed the launch button, and had nothing happen: no rocket ignition, no takeoff, no trip home. How do you tell America that three of its sons are stranded on the moon with no hope of rescue? We never had to find out. But I don't doubt that a question like that went through the minds of every astronaut, engineer, and administrator working on the Apollo program at some point, and they went anyway.
Having two shuttles blow up in over a hundred missions hasn't changed the risk that was present, is present, and will probably always be present in exploration. There has been a decent and respectful time of mourning for the astronauts who died and reflection on the causes of the tragedy. I, for one, am glad to see America getting up off its bruised butt and reaching for the stars again.
Could we get a link to the research you have mentioned? I'd be interested in looking at it, but I worry that a google search for "mouse" and "bat" isn't going to return anything helpful... ;)
They're quite interested in the rest of the world. You can find the European-targeted website describing the device here. I am quite surprised that this website claims it is not yet available in Europe, however; I was under the impression that the iBot had already been cleared for the European market. It's on its way as soon as the FDA-equivalent organizations clear it, I would surmise.
I will echo your concern about the design of the website though. C'mon, if you're going to put an American flag at the bottom of your site, and you have a European site, make the flag hyperlinked!
It's a good first step... ... next, it would have to know kung fu.
This is just off the top of my head, but if you're referring to the Carnegie Mellon project, CMU has been working for several years to get 100% wi-fi coverage across the entire campus. This work includes a complete analysis of each room of each buildings' wireless signal strengths to all visible routers, to assure that there are no dead-zones. So your hypothesis has merit; it is possible that the researchers used this information to construct an interpolated map of signal strengths and can calculate indoor positions in this manner.
If this is the case, then I worry about the project when someone playing soccer in a hallway accidentally bumps a router...
Actually, that's a good question: How long does it take to build a Nimitz-class?
I wanted to go to the commissioning ceremony, but it's booked. I wish I'd thought about it sooner... my mother saw part of the construction going on while she was in a meeting down there, and it would've been a treat for her to see the finished product. She mentioned it was very distracting--trying to pay attention to a planning meeting is difficult when you're trying to comprehend the fact that yes, people are building a floating airport out there, yes, it's a thousand times the scale of any individual worker on it, and yes, it will work.
My hat's off to the Newport News shipwrights... in times of technological miracles, you do a job that can still make people stop and say ``whoa.''
As a rising junior in a technical college, here's what worked for me:
That's my input. Good luck to the college-bound.
The single most useful feature of my PDA is the planner alarm... I wouldn't be able to maintain a schedule without it. I never got into the habit of checking my paper planner regularly, and I have a real serious tendency to let the rest of my day slip my mind when I get into a project... my Palm III's little chirp (custom-made with some MIDI software, so I never confuse it with someone else's PDA) sucks me back into reality and keeps me from missing meetings or jobs for sheer forgetfulness. I love being able to let my mind focus totally on the now, knowing my "assistant" will notify me when I should be doing something else.
When I first got my Palm, it was my toy... but now it's my tool. I've been able to afford my PDA on a student's salary by always buying behind the tech curve (still on a Palm III, use WriteRights from Fellowes to preserve screen life). I only sync about once a month, and on full-backup (Palm overwrites computer)... that way I never have to ask myself "Now where did I put that phone number?" I could lose some data if my Palm dies, but there's always paper if I have to...
So I'm one of those people who keeps his public life in a little belt pouch on his hip. It frees me from having to keep it in my head all the time... in fact, the faceplate on my Palm III pretty much says it all.
"My other brain is organic."
However, one does have to ask where we draw the line. Let's say America decides tomorrow that the situation in Afghanistan is abonimable. Bush dispatches the Pacific armed forces to beat them to a bloody pulp and institute a new government--probably a puppet democracy, since it's easier to guarantee they are doing what America wants them to do. Now assuming that the whole scenario I just described works... that the US military does not find itself totally unequipped for war against the Taliban, that the country isn't bombed into an unlivable hell, that the country doesn't collapse into a US military rulership... what then? Other Arab nations will probably feel threatened at such a brazen display of arrogance and hypocrisy on the part of America, to simply go in and tell a nation how its people should live (oh wait, isn't that what the Taliban is doing? Of course, it's THEIR nation). America would have a dependent nation filled with racial and ethnic animosities to attempt to handle. And it would set a precedent for world policemanship that the United States cannot afford.
I'm not saying America doesn't do this already. However, I'm not sure it's been a good idea in the past, and I think history has shown us that it's not wise to interfere in a situation like this. Yes, it shall pass. Nazi Germany fell, and a government like the Taliban cannot sustain itself for long if the people of Afghanistan have any shred of a backbone. How long can you oppress 50% of your population before the women just slit their husbands' throats and establish a matriarchy?
Yeah, the Taliban is really screwing up Afghanistan (at least in the eyes of this devil westerner). Yeah, Americans don't seem to care. I think the reason is that they can't afford to. You can only watch evil for so long before your inability to stop it makes you either jaded or insane.
Take your pick.
Take care,
Mark
Keep in mind when reading news reports like this one that the words used are often chosen to hype up the article. NASA may have spent $97 million researching and developing the design to discover that it was non-viable. Had they not spent the money, they would not have known the solution wouldn't work. Also, $97 million doesn't just disappear down a hole; I suspect that the knowledge gained in this project may lead to other developments.
As always, the whole story is not told without sufficient research. That's why I trust my elected officials to know the details for me |:)
Take care,
Mark
I'm sorry to show off my ignorance, but does anyone know of any legal actions that were taken against the parents of the shooters in the Columbine massacre? I mean, that's how America's legal system works, right? Your kids screw up, they're underage, you take the blame, right?
I'm just curious, because that's where I would have placed the blame. It sounds cruel--it probably is cruel--and I have some limited sympathy for the parents whose children took their own lives after abruptly ending the lives of so many others, but I just can't stop asking myself: how did these kids build pipe bombs and modify shotguns in their own homes and their parents never noticed anything amiss?
This was a terrible tragedy, and I hope it never happens again. But as an avid game-player, I have to say that I have never observed any link between violent games and violent behavior. If someone has to be sued, let it be the people whose negligence allowed extremely disturbed children to arm themselves with lethal weaponry and vent their demons on their peers.
Take care,
Mark
Hmmm... it's a good idea, until human nature comes into play.
Assuming you could convince just about everyone on the internet to put their e-mail address on one website, which government would administer it?
Might I suggest the DNS be www.bigbrother.net?
Take care,
Mark
This is a very good point, and one I feel FIRST does its best to overcome. Dean Kamen, for one, continues to encourage those to whom he speaks to seek out the disadvantaged children, not the ones already interested in math and science. In a recent lecture to the Richmond Joint Engineer's Council, Dean stressed that it was the responsibility of the engineers to reach out to those who don't know about what they do; preaching to the choir only does so much good.
I don't know much about the Intel program, but I feel that FIRST sets itself up fairly well to seek out disadvantaged students through a grass-roots approach. The most prestigious award in the FIRST competition is the Chairman's Award, given to a team who best promotes the spirit of the FIRST competition. This award is given to teams who mentor other teams, as well as teams who went through hell to get into the competition. It helps keep everyone focused on the primary goal of FIRST at this time: to reach out to every school system, so that every student has an opportunity to participate.
One serious obstacle that I see is the cost to compete. At at least US$5000 for each team to enter one competition (which does not include travel costs, extra parts, or uniforms), teams have to pull major corporate sponsorship to participate at all. That is actually part of the competition; students are supposed to learn how to convince money sources that they have a worthwhile project, just as real engineers have to convince people to fund their ideas. However, I think that any drop in this cost--while extremely difficult to accomplish--would pull in more teams. Most teams spend upwards of US$15000 to compete, and there is no question that richer teams get many advantages over poorer teams. However, I think that dropping that minimum cost would really help pull in more teams.
The only problem is that it may be impossible to do.
Take care,
Mark
This was the second year of competition for the GSGIS Mech Techs (team 422), whose website can be found here. Also, many team websites can be found on FIRST's page.
For those who think this is Battlebots for high-schoolers, you should really do some research; FIRST does their best to be as far removed from Battlebot-style games as possible. This year, for example, the game involved a radical new concept: four robots on the field at a time, all on the same team. You all shared the same score (with one exception), so if something went wrong for your teammate, you took the hit with them. In the end, it was in everyone's best interest to make sure that every team built the best, most reliable robot possible. This is meant to simulate real-world engineering challenges; as Dean explains, companies like Coca-cola do better than their competitors by creating better products and advertising more, not by blowing up PepsiCo's international headquarters. In the real world, teamwork is the only way to get things done, and if you go out and destroy the competition there is no-one to team up with.
While I was at one of the regional competitions, I saw a great example of this. There was a team who had basically been logistically screwed; their parts didn't arrive in time, they didn't have enough help from their community (in terms of engineers), and their robot was even shipped upside-down! They put out an SOS over e-mail before the competition, and when they arrived there were three teams (ours included) lined up to help them out. Their robot wasn't the best out there, but it went from completely unfinished to running in a few hours. At the end of the comp, they won a judges' special award for having the courage to swallow their pride and ask for help. Everyone cheered.
In real life, teamwork is more important than competition. If only the nations of the world could learn that lesson...
Take care,
Mark
If they're really an advanced alien species, let's see them prove it: interface the human operating system with their technology. The things we could learn from such a project would be incredible.
Well, not for those in whom the attempt "crashes..."
Take care,
Mark
I just want to say that... oh wait, give me a moment, I have to go get something out of my closet...
[step, step, step, step]
[creeeeeak]
[rummage, rummage, rummage...]
hmm, I haven't needed these in years... where are they?
[rummage, rummage, rummage]
Ah, here we are....
[slam!
[step, step, step, step]
[zzzzzzziiip!]
Okay, now that I'm in my oh-so-comfortable asbestos underwear, I'm ready to weigh into the holy war. Before I start my completely objective analysis of this situation, I must state--as the author of the Slashdot article stated indirectly by his choice of words--that I am totally subjective; I have been an avid Apple fan for years; my first computer was an Apple ][c, and I and am even posting this from one of those forgettable numbered Macs from the Gil Amelio era (Power Mac 7500/100 in fact). I like my Mac...no, I love my Mac; I love the way a Mac chimes on boot, smiles at you when it finds its startup files, and even apologizes for system errors. It's mushy and not "technically efficient" (that's arguable, by the way), but it's humanizing. It is that look and feel that has kept me attached to Apple even when I recognized that I could get more things more cheaply by getting a PC. In fact, the only thing that kept a PC out of my life is the fact that I would have had to deal with that Gawdoffle Windows 95 GUI... I hate that GUI. I prefer DOS to that GUI; at least I understand the DOS commands. "F8 refreshes the window..." ah yes, that's easy to remember.
Regardless of the laws, Look and Feel (L&F) is a vital element of the computer experience. It is the interface that ties the most critical element of the computing system--the user--to the computer itself. I was actually a little surprised that Apple would clamp down on others imitating their L imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery, and it is some of the cheapest advertising Apple could get.
However, I can fully understand; in those years of chaos when many believed Apple would take the plunge, its L&F was almost all that was holding the company together. IMHO, they are understandably paranoid about plagarism of those ethereal elements that make a Macintosh user experience what it is... and no, I'm not talking about the extension conflicts!
Now that Apple seems on an upswing, I think it could possibly afford to let something as little as an Aqua-like skin slide. But then again, since L&F is so hard to objectively define, maybe Apple is safest by being paranoid about its interface. As for the legal ramifications of all of this, I'll let the courts decide; that's what I pay them for.
Take care,
Mark
Mark P.S: If you think missions are hard, look at the history of extra-vehicular activities. Hmmm...bundling myself up like a kid in winter and stepping out into a near-zero pressure environment where the sunlight alone could vaporize me in an instant... sounds like fun!
Ah, the age-old question; "sure it moves by itself, but is it alive?"
I do not think that Tilden's machines are alive. However, I think that they are just about as close to artificial life as we have ever seen. It all comes down to a question of how one defines life.
Personally, I use the unpredictability of living creatures as part of my definition. Now, Tilden's machines do things that not even he can explain. For example, once they solve a problem (getting over a hill, finding a target, etc), if you return them to the problem situation, they solve it much more quickly then they did the first time. This is certainly not a behavior seen in digital robots, and even rarely seen in learning machines. Tilden thinks that some sort of residual waveform in the robot's "brain" allows it to solve the problem again, but not even he can explain it completely.
Sounds pretty unpredictable to me.