You'll appreciate this, and this if you liked Plans.
And, of course, if you get the chance to see them live, definitely do so. It was probably the second or third best show I've ever been to (Sufjan Stevens' performance at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra occupies #1 by a pretty wide margin)
Maybe, or maybe not. The cable could be manufactured in sections, launched up into space, and then be joined together while in orbit, as it's being lowered down to earth. It actually wouldn't be all that different from a continuously welded railtrack.
Wow. I've seen that page (and your entire site) before, although I'm pretty sure I stumbled across it on Google.
Your Antarctica pages were what initially spurred my interest in arctic and polar science. I guess I should properly thank you for that, given that it's more likely than not going to be my focus in Grad school, and a sort of long-term career goal...
Thanks for the recommendation. Khonnor sounds pretty sweet (from the 30 second samples at least!)
Electronica and (non-vocal) post-rock are both sort of coming back into the limelight thanks to the internet, for the simple reason that their audiences are somewhat smaller than for mainstream music. Pink Floyd sort of played around with the genre way back, but it wasn't until the past few years that bands like Mogwai, Amon Tobin, Boards of Candada, Explosions in the Sky, or 65daysofstatic really found the sort of fanbase to establish themselves.
If you want to poke around and look for music that suits your tastes, I highly recommend Last.FM, which is a gigantic music recommendation engine that is pretty good at finding stuff that matches your tastes. Likewise, (although on a more limited scope), Pandora is great to find new music.
Pitchfork Media is often regarded as being the bible for independent music. Be warned, however, that they're extremely pretentious, and somewhat persnickety when it comes to their reviews. They've completely panned some of my favorite albums. However, an album that gets an extremely favorable review on Pitchfork is something that is definitely worth checking out. (Also be warned of a inexplicably huge pro-Radiohead bias)
Stereogum is also another great blog for keeping track of the indie scene.
Of course, don't let this be your only guide. Friends are a great way for finding new music, and occasionally you just stumble upon something relatively unknown, and yet extremely awesome.
The manned space missions get all the attention, whilst the scientifically valuable missions (of which I am proud to say, NASA does many), receive little to no popular coverage.
This past landing of the shuttle was front-page news for about three days. Compare that to the fact that very few members of the public really seemed to know or care that NASA was going to let the Hubble crash out of orbit due to neglect.
If NASA abandoned its manned space program, it would still be able to complete its most important scientific missions, but would likely have a tough time attracting the funding to do so.
I wouldn't say that there's any sort of race, although a bit of "friendly competition" certainly wouldn't hurt either. If the operation of the Tevatron and LHC overlapped by even just a few years, I think it'd be very worthwhile even if it may be somewhat redundant.
What the "race" comes down to is funding. Europe's got LHC and ITER. The US only has the Tevatron for another year, plus the SSC's aborted fetus buried in Texas. Our current administration is afraid to fund anything evenly remotely sciency (but has no problem flushing cash down the toilet everywhere else in the budget)
And yes. I'm a undergraduate physics student worried about finding work when I graduate.
Personally, I find myself more interested in bands who play the sort of music that I enjoy. But that's just me.
Fortunately, on the other hand, most of the music I listen to is recorded by independent artists, so I don't have that dilemma nearly as much. If I go to a show, and enjoy the music, I'll almost always purchase a CD at the merch table (if I don't already own it). Doubly so if the show was cheap or free.
Think of it like tipping your waiter/waitress for delivering good service.
Dylan's argument wasn't necessarily about the poor bit depth or resolution of CDs, but, rather in the production of modern albums. Most music today is recorded at extremely loud levels, completely destroying the dynamic range of the recording (which is something that can very easily be quantified).
If you take a look at the waveforms of an album recorded 30 years ago, and compare it to something from a similar genre today, you'll spot the difference immediately. The loud recording results in the high and low bits of the waveform getting "squashed", resulting in a very obvious sort of distortion.
The difference between the quietest and loudest pert of the music also becomes much smaller. Anyone who's listened to classical music for even a short period of time can appreciate why this is a bad thing.
Vinyl doesn't necessarily suffer from this problem as badly, as it is an analogue medium, and doesn't have strictly defined maximum or minimum amplitudes. Likewise, some have argued that vinyls that get mastered today have the volume turned down a notch.
All but the very first CDs have serious amplitude problems. One of the only CDs I can think of that was mastered at fairly low levels is 'Brothers in Arms' by Dire Straits. Every time I listen to it, I have to turn the volume up a notch, but the audio quality is vastly superior.
Ironically, this is one of the primary reasons for the existence of the RIAA. They did a decent job for a while with vinyl, but never established any sort of standard for CDs. And we all know the rest of the story....
I wouldn't say that the music has changed at all. Some musicians work best in the medium of the album (Pink Floyd, The Beatles, etc..), whereas some musicians work best in the context of individual songs (one-hit-wonders, and 90% of the "top 40" artists).
I would say that (for the past few years at least), good solid albums have stuck out more in my mind than individual singles have. This is especially true among independent artists.
A few somewhat recent albums that I've enjoyed as a whole (in no particular order)
The Crane Wife by The Decemberists
Boxer by The National
Plans by Death Cab For Cutie
Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer by Of Montreal
The Magic Position by Patrick Wolf
Funeral by The Arcade Fire
Cassadaga by Bright Eyes
"Cross" by Justice
A Weekend in the City by Bloc Party
Illinois by Sufjan Stevens
Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird
Like the Linen by Thao Nugyen
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel (10 years old, but arguably one of the most influential albums of those 10 years)
and the list goes on.... There have been quite a few high-profile "popular" albums released by popular artists such as Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Justin Timberlake, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, all of which are very much intended to be played as an entire album.
At a show I recently went to, I bought the band's CD on a whim because I enjoyed the show. As the guy handed it to me (he was the band's bassist), he encouraged me to copy it, share it, email it, or "do whatever you want to get the word out." The side you don't hear is that most small artists owe much their very existence to the internet.
So, no. The album is far from dead. Even though popular music has almost completely gone to shit in the US, the independent music scene is arguably the best it's ever been.
Frankly, I think this article is somewhat a load of junk. Learning how to use a library isn't exactly difficult, even when resorting to the "traditional" card catalog method. If students aren't able to learn the basics of using a library, there's something else *severely* wrong with the educational system.
That said, there *ARE* plenty of ways that libraries can be made more accessible to the younger generation.
For instance, the library at the university I attend requires that their reference staff be accessible by e-mail or Instant Message during their desk hours. With more and more journals and databases being online, this makes perfect sense.
I've used the Instant Message service countless times, and it's amazingly convenient.
Last year, I worked on a paper dealing with a somewhat obscure topic. The reference desk librarian wasn't able to find any journals or anthologies off the top of his head that addressed the topic, and told me he'd get back to me in a day. By the next morning, he had e-mailed several professors who he thought might be familiar with the topic, who in turn referred me to two graduate students who had written papers on similar topics, who then happily supplied me with the list of sources they had consulted.
Libraries don't need to be 'hip'. They need to be accessible.
Of course, stimulating the intellectual curiosity necessary to get people into libraries is a different ballgame entirely. (We also do have a 'popular reading' section, that in addition to popular books and movies, contains scholarly works that tie in closely to books or films, which can be a fascinating follow-up to books like The DaVinci Code or Freakonomics)
"Clickers" are rarely used properly, and I really don't understand the purpose of giving an entire class of students tablets so that they can write out responses in paragraph form. Couldn't the same thing be accomplished *much* more easily with pencil and paper?
For that matter, what sort of university curriculum requires students to do busywork or writing (apart from Exams) during class?
You can also already do 3 of the 4 things you mentioned above with an overhead projector. A bottle of windex helps with the fourth. PDFs of overheads are insanely easy to create with any network-aware copy machine (which are pretty quickly becoming ubiquitous on college campuses)
The biggest problem I've seen with the tablet/smarboard + projector system is that you've got very little area to project stuff onto. A typical projector doesn't have anywhere remotely near the resolution that a traditional blackboard offers you (not to mention that the blackboard often takes up the entire length of the room, as opposed to a tiny portion of it.) The "sliding" chalkboards that most universities use give even a further advantage by essentially doubling the amount of stuff that can be presented.
For math and the sciences, this is often ESSENTIAL. Try walking students through a moderately complicated proof using a projector.
Earlier this year, I spoke on a student panel at my university as the "token student IT employee" in front of a group of Uni administrators, IT administrators, and professors. I spoke my mind, and told them that the school's implementation of IT services in the classroom was abysmal, and causing the educational value of the lectures to plummet, to the point where I was considering transferring to another school. I gave a few examples, and actually got quite a few mumbles from the audience to the effect of "you know, he's right...".
The look on my boss's face was priceless. I'm still not sure how I held onto my job after that.
There are plenty of ways that technology can be used to supplement lectures in a beneficial way. It's great for my Psychology professor to throw up a few slides on the screen to quickly show a few graphs of the results of an experiment she's talking about. Video clips can also be valuable (and often times offer a nice interruption to the drone of a dry lecture). However, once technology starts being used to replace traditional teaching methods, or things that could be done just as easily with "traditional" means, it absolutely falls flat on its face. After a long string of bad experiences, I'm not going to register for another powerpoint-based class ever again, unless I have no other option.
Can we please stop issuing story after story on this thing until it actually comes out?
I'm a big fan of Apple's products, and have been almost exclusively using apple PCs since the 90s. Granted, I'm not loaded with cash, and don't rush to the nearest store anytime Apple releases a product (the longevity of their machines perhaps the biggest selling point for me. My 1999 450mhz PowerMac G4 is still chugging along, running the latest release of OS X 10.4. It's outlived my car.)
But I digress. The level of press coverage the iPhone is receiving is insane and disproportionate. I could easily deal with a flurry of press coverage around the time of the announcement, and shortly after the release (reviews, and first impressions). However, the level of hype and idle speculation building up is absurd for a product that hasn't even been released yet.
Yes. I appreciate that the iPhone is one of the first smartphones to get a properly-designed UI that wasn't created by a group of telco accountants (anybody who's ever had to deal with Verizon's "standard" UI knows exactly what I'm talking about). It could even very well revolutionize the mobile phone industry, (finally) bringing it into the data age.
It's also extremely expensive, and there's no way in hell I'll be able to afford one, or even remotely justify the cost. Remember that the iPod didn't achieve massive widespread popularity until the prices dropped considerably.
However, none of this has happened yet. It hasn't been released. Let's just hold onto our horses, wait a week, and conclusively answer these questions once the damn thing is in stores. You're all setting yourselves up for a massive letdown.
Let's not forget that the Tevatron (Fermilab's big accelerator) is scheduled to be shut down in 2009.
I'd love for the scientists at Fermilab to make this sort of breakthrough before the LHC goes live, as it'd be a huge morale booster for American physicists. Such a high-profile discovery would also attract the attention necessary to help solve the NSF's funding woes.
For a quick history lesson, Square did the same thing for the Mario franchise way back in 1996, with Super Mario RPG. It is widely regarded to be one of the best Mario games, and one of the best RPGs ever produced.
The fun bit is that it appealed both to first-time RPG players, and to experienced RPG veterans.
Now, if only Square (and the rest of the industry) would get its act together, and start releasing games for multiple consoles, I'll be a very happy man.
I agree with you 100%. The US is a nation of immigrants, and it's insanely hypocritical to keep the immigration caps as low as they are, especially with the costs of domestic labor skyrocketing through the roof.
People of any nationality should be given a legal and reasonable path of immigration to the US, as long as they are willing to work, and attempt to integrate into the society. Considering the poor (by American standards) conditions that most illegals put up with to live and work in the US, it's pretty clear that there are a TON of people who WANT to be part of our society. Denying them that right is nothing short of inhumane. Considering that most illegals are already able to find employment that pays enough for them to subsist, it's not exactly like the US is going to turn into a refugee camp, and, if anything, will help the US economy by preventing the outsourcing of manufacturing and agriculture to other countries. It's also not exactly like the US is overcrowded -- we have more good land down south, and out west than we know what to do with.
The problem is, that, unlike yourself, many many Americans ARE bigots towards Latin Americans (and overwhelmingly so). The current immigration restrictions are more likely than not a result of this sort of person.
My local newspaper's website offers a comments section, much like most blogs offer. Whenever a story about immigration is posted, it is immediately flooded with some of the most potent and passionate bigotry I've ever seen (outside of documentaries on the civil rights movement). The newspaper now disables comments for these stories. It dealt a serious blow to my faith in humanity.
The locale of this newspaper? New Jersey. I would say that it's not unreasonable to peg over 50% of Jersey's population as being direct decendants of Ellis Island immigrants from the 19th and 20th centuries.
This is pretty much par for the course in the mobile phone industry, where customers are nickel-and-dimed for every single service or feature that they use.
These are, after all, the same people who charge more to send a text message than they do to make a 5-minute phone call.
Part of the big hype surrounding the iPhone is that it will trigger a change in the market, where the telcos compete in terms of features, usability, and quality of service. Right now, the market's completely stagnant despite the technology being in place to take it much, much further.
And it's not exactly that there haven't been good phone designs. Nokia and Sony have both put out some pretty nifty designs that have been completely overlooked by American audiences, or (more likely) intentionally crippled by the telcos. Verizon's UI is too awful to describe with mere words.
There's actually a very good (and legitimate) reason for this (and a HUGE Caveat Emptor to anybody using these programs to reset their ink counters).
On printers with permanent printheads (Epson, Canon, among others), attempting to print from an empty cartridge will, over time, cause a significant amount of damage to the printhead (sort of analogous to running an unprimed pump for too long of a time). Because the printheads are, after all, permanent, you could inadvertently break the printer. (And no, this isn't FUD. I've seen this happen)
Older HP cartridges would happily try to "print" long after they had ran out of ink, for the simple reason that the printhead was built into the cartridges.
Also, a few years back, I remember reading an article that mentioned that most ink manufacturers have stopped printing the specific volume of ink contained in each cartridge. They investigated, and discovered that the volume of ink tended to deviate quite a bit from cartridge to cartridge. Apparently, filling the cartridges is a fairly imprecise science, and the printers are programmed to report "empty" after a pre-set amount of ink has been printed, which will leave ink left-over in some cartridges, but not all.
That all being said, generic cartridges for Epson and Canon printers are something like $5 a pop, which I feel is more than reasonable. If you're leary of generic ink, Brand-name Canon and Kodak cartridges aren't as horrifyingly expensive as their competitors.
Or you could buy a laser printer if the majority of your printing is in Black & White. I have a 10-year-old HP LaserJet that still works as well as it did the day I purchased it (8ppm, adequately high resolution). I print a lot, and on average, I think I only have to replace the cartridge once every two years.
I'm sorry, but the "not enough people wanted them" argument just doesn't hold any water.
Anybody who expected pure electric cars to be an instant runaway hit is completely delusional. As with any new, unproven (and expensive) technology, the initial adoption rate is going to be extremely low.
If the technology's any good, the adoption rate should increase exponentially, driving the prices down with it, as economies of scale kick in. From what I understand (and from what the grandparent poster mentioned), the first round of tests went phenomenally well.
GM killing of their electric car programs absolutely *reeks* of corruption. I have absolutely zero sympathy for the failing US automakers because of this sort of corruption and incompetence.
That all being said, a plug-in hybrid makes a heck of a lot more sense than an EV. Given today's gas prices, I'm *shocked* that nobody's brought one to the market. I do 90% of my driving close to home, and could easily get by running in electric mode. However, I also do want to be able to leave the confines of my small town a few times per month.
Businesses could also easily attract customers by adding outlets near parking spaces. Here in Alaska, cars needs to be kept "warm", and are equipped with a series of heaters on the engine block, fuel line, and antifreeze tank to survive the -40F winters. Virtually every parking space has an electric outlet next to it for this purpose. As long as there are enough people using plug-in electrics, the infrastructure "problem" is moot -- it's been done before, and it's really not as big of an issue as people make it out to be.
That all said, we should also be pursuing research on carbon-neutral fuels (NOT CORN!), as well as alternative vehicle propulsion schemes. The compressed-air idea is a very cool one, and sounds like it'd be crazy enough to work.
I believe that an economist somewhere found that low-income families were considerably more likely to own big TVs, or subscribe to premium channels.
Personally, I've been happy with the cheapest cable subscription possible, plus my Netflix plan. Great for catching the occasional show on the major networks, and watching *good* movies.
Simply switch 'sex' with 'violence', and you get a pretty good idea of how the US and Europe differ from each other.
I can fully appreciate Europe's aversion to violent games and movies, given that not one, but two horrific wars engulfed their continent in the past 100 years. I hope you can appreciate why they don't want that to happen again, especially when Europe's doing as well as it is at the moment.
On the other hand, 400 years later, the US is still run by a group of heavily repressed Puritans, dead set on banning any form of cussing or sexual innuendo over the airwaves.
Violence kills people. Sex doesn't. And even at that, it comes down to a key cultural difference between the US and Europe. We're all the products of different experiences, circumstances, and upbringings; the sooner we all realize this, the sooner we'll be able to finally start getting along.
Spin your "studios" off, and back into independent units with a good degree of autonomy.
Maxis and Westwood were both fantastic on their own, and produced a whole bunch of innovative and fun games. Since being absorbed into the EA empire, they haven't produced a single new idea (not to mention that C&C Generals was outright offensive)
Slashdot Mirror
You'll appreciate this, and this if you liked Plans.
And, of course, if you get the chance to see them live, definitely do so. It was probably the second or third best show I've ever been to (Sufjan Stevens' performance at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra occupies #1 by a pretty wide margin)
Maybe, or maybe not. The cable could be manufactured in sections, launched up into space, and then be joined together while in orbit, as it's being lowered down to earth. It actually wouldn't be all that different from a continuously welded railtrack.
Wow. I've seen that page (and your entire site) before, although I'm pretty sure I stumbled across it on Google.
Your Antarctica pages were what initially spurred my interest in arctic and polar science. I guess I should properly thank you for that, given that it's more likely than not going to be my focus in Grad school, and a sort of long-term career goal...
Thanks for the recommendation. Khonnor sounds pretty sweet (from the 30 second samples at least!)
Electronica and (non-vocal) post-rock are both sort of coming back into the limelight thanks to the internet, for the simple reason that their audiences are somewhat smaller than for mainstream music. Pink Floyd sort of played around with the genre way back, but it wasn't until the past few years that bands like Mogwai, Amon Tobin, Boards of Candada, Explosions in the Sky, or 65daysofstatic really found the sort of fanbase to establish themselves.
If you want to poke around and look for music that suits your tastes, I highly recommend Last.FM, which is a gigantic music recommendation engine that is pretty good at finding stuff that matches your tastes. Likewise, (although on a more limited scope), Pandora is great to find new music.
Pitchfork Media is often regarded as being the bible for independent music. Be warned, however, that they're extremely pretentious, and somewhat persnickety when it comes to their reviews. They've completely panned some of my favorite albums. However, an album that gets an extremely favorable review on Pitchfork is something that is definitely worth checking out. (Also be warned of a inexplicably huge pro-Radiohead bias)
Stereogum is also another great blog for keeping track of the indie scene.
Of course, don't let this be your only guide. Friends are a great way for finding new music, and occasionally you just stumble upon something relatively unknown, and yet extremely awesome.
It works for NASA all the time :-)
The manned space missions get all the attention, whilst the scientifically valuable missions (of which I am proud to say, NASA does many), receive little to no popular coverage.
This past landing of the shuttle was front-page news for about three days. Compare that to the fact that very few members of the public really seemed to know or care that NASA was going to let the Hubble crash out of orbit due to neglect.
If NASA abandoned its manned space program, it would still be able to complete its most important scientific missions, but would likely have a tough time attracting the funding to do so.
I wouldn't say that there's any sort of race, although a bit of "friendly competition" certainly wouldn't hurt either. If the operation of the Tevatron and LHC overlapped by even just a few years, I think it'd be very worthwhile even if it may be somewhat redundant.
What the "race" comes down to is funding. Europe's got LHC and ITER. The US only has the Tevatron for another year, plus the SSC's aborted fetus buried in Texas. Our current administration is afraid to fund anything evenly remotely sciency (but has no problem flushing cash down the toilet everywhere else in the budget)
And yes. I'm a undergraduate physics student worried about finding work when I graduate.
Personally, I find myself more interested in bands who play the sort of music that I enjoy. But that's just me.
Fortunately, on the other hand, most of the music I listen to is recorded by independent artists, so I don't have that dilemma nearly as much. If I go to a show, and enjoy the music, I'll almost always purchase a CD at the merch table (if I don't already own it). Doubly so if the show was cheap or free.
Think of it like tipping your waiter/waitress for delivering good service.
Dylan's argument wasn't necessarily about the poor bit depth or resolution of CDs, but, rather in the production of modern albums. Most music today is recorded at extremely loud levels, completely destroying the dynamic range of the recording (which is something that can very easily be quantified).
If you take a look at the waveforms of an album recorded 30 years ago, and compare it to something from a similar genre today, you'll spot the difference immediately. The loud recording results in the high and low bits of the waveform getting "squashed", resulting in a very obvious sort of distortion.
The difference between the quietest and loudest pert of the music also becomes much smaller. Anyone who's listened to classical music for even a short period of time can appreciate why this is a bad thing.
Vinyl doesn't necessarily suffer from this problem as badly, as it is an analogue medium, and doesn't have strictly defined maximum or minimum amplitudes. Likewise, some have argued that vinyls that get mastered today have the volume turned down a notch.
All but the very first CDs have serious amplitude problems. One of the only CDs I can think of that was mastered at fairly low levels is 'Brothers in Arms' by Dire Straits. Every time I listen to it, I have to turn the volume up a notch, but the audio quality is vastly superior.
Ironically, this is one of the primary reasons for the existence of the RIAA. They did a decent job for a while with vinyl, but never established any sort of standard for CDs. And we all know the rest of the story....
I would say that (for the past few years at least), good solid albums have stuck out more in my mind than individual singles have. This is especially true among independent artists.
A few somewhat recent albums that I've enjoyed as a whole (in no particular order)
and the list goes on.... There have been quite a few high-profile "popular" albums released by popular artists such as Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Justin Timberlake, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, all of which are very much intended to be played as an entire album.
At a show I recently went to, I bought the band's CD on a whim because I enjoyed the show. As the guy handed it to me (he was the band's bassist), he encouraged me to copy it, share it, email it, or "do whatever you want to get the word out." The side you don't hear is that most small artists owe much their very existence to the internet.
So, no. The album is far from dead. Even though popular music has almost completely gone to shit in the US, the independent music scene is arguably the best it's ever been.
Once.
Frankly, I think this article is somewhat a load of junk. Learning how to use a library isn't exactly difficult, even when resorting to the "traditional" card catalog method. If students aren't able to learn the basics of using a library, there's something else *severely* wrong with the educational system.
That said, there *ARE* plenty of ways that libraries can be made more accessible to the younger generation.
For instance, the library at the university I attend requires that their reference staff be accessible by e-mail or Instant Message during their desk hours. With more and more journals and databases being online, this makes perfect sense.
I've used the Instant Message service countless times, and it's amazingly convenient.
Last year, I worked on a paper dealing with a somewhat obscure topic. The reference desk librarian wasn't able to find any journals or anthologies off the top of his head that addressed the topic, and told me he'd get back to me in a day. By the next morning, he had e-mailed several professors who he thought might be familiar with the topic, who in turn referred me to two graduate students who had written papers on similar topics, who then happily supplied me with the list of sources they had consulted.
Libraries don't need to be 'hip'. They need to be accessible.
Of course, stimulating the intellectual curiosity necessary to get people into libraries is a different ballgame entirely. (We also do have a 'popular reading' section, that in addition to popular books and movies, contains scholarly works that tie in closely to books or films, which can be a fascinating follow-up to books like The DaVinci Code or Freakonomics)
"Clickers" are rarely used properly, and I really don't understand the purpose of giving an entire class of students tablets so that they can write out responses in paragraph form. Couldn't the same thing be accomplished *much* more easily with pencil and paper?
For that matter, what sort of university curriculum requires students to do busywork or writing (apart from Exams) during class?
You can also already do 3 of the 4 things you mentioned above with an overhead projector. A bottle of windex helps with the fourth. PDFs of overheads are insanely easy to create with any network-aware copy machine (which are pretty quickly becoming ubiquitous on college campuses)
The biggest problem I've seen with the tablet/smarboard + projector system is that you've got very little area to project stuff onto. A typical projector doesn't have anywhere remotely near the resolution that a traditional blackboard offers you (not to mention that the blackboard often takes up the entire length of the room, as opposed to a tiny portion of it.) The "sliding" chalkboards that most universities use give even a further advantage by essentially doubling the amount of stuff that can be presented.
For math and the sciences, this is often ESSENTIAL. Try walking students through a moderately complicated proof using a projector.
Earlier this year, I spoke on a student panel at my university as the "token student IT employee" in front of a group of Uni administrators, IT administrators, and professors. I spoke my mind, and told them that the school's implementation of IT services in the classroom was abysmal, and causing the educational value of the lectures to plummet, to the point where I was considering transferring to another school. I gave a few examples, and actually got quite a few mumbles from the audience to the effect of "you know, he's right...".
The look on my boss's face was priceless. I'm still not sure how I held onto my job after that.
There are plenty of ways that technology can be used to supplement lectures in a beneficial way. It's great for my Psychology professor to throw up a few slides on the screen to quickly show a few graphs of the results of an experiment she's talking about. Video clips can also be valuable (and often times offer a nice interruption to the drone of a dry lecture). However, once technology starts being used to replace traditional teaching methods, or things that could be done just as easily with "traditional" means, it absolutely falls flat on its face. After a long string of bad experiences, I'm not going to register for another powerpoint-based class ever again, unless I have no other option.
Can we please stop issuing story after story on this thing until it actually comes out?
I'm a big fan of Apple's products, and have been almost exclusively using apple PCs since the 90s. Granted, I'm not loaded with cash, and don't rush to the nearest store anytime Apple releases a product (the longevity of their machines perhaps the biggest selling point for me. My 1999 450mhz PowerMac G4 is still chugging along, running the latest release of OS X 10.4. It's outlived my car.)
But I digress. The level of press coverage the iPhone is receiving is insane and disproportionate. I could easily deal with a flurry of press coverage around the time of the announcement, and shortly after the release (reviews, and first impressions). However, the level of hype and idle speculation building up is absurd for a product that hasn't even been released yet.
Yes. I appreciate that the iPhone is one of the first smartphones to get a properly-designed UI that wasn't created by a group of telco accountants (anybody who's ever had to deal with Verizon's "standard" UI knows exactly what I'm talking about). It could even very well revolutionize the mobile phone industry, (finally) bringing it into the data age.
It's also extremely expensive, and there's no way in hell I'll be able to afford one, or even remotely justify the cost. Remember that the iPod didn't achieve massive widespread popularity until the prices dropped considerably.
However, none of this has happened yet. It hasn't been released. Let's just hold onto our horses, wait a week, and conclusively answer these questions once the damn thing is in stores. You're all setting yourselves up for a massive letdown.
Let's not forget that the Tevatron (Fermilab's big accelerator) is scheduled to be shut down in 2009.
I'd love for the scientists at Fermilab to make this sort of breakthrough before the LHC goes live, as it'd be a huge morale booster for American physicists. Such a high-profile discovery would also attract the attention necessary to help solve the NSF's funding woes.
No wireless. Less space than a truck full of Nomads. Lame.
For a quick history lesson, Square did the same thing for the Mario franchise way back in 1996, with Super Mario RPG. It is widely regarded to be one of the best Mario games, and one of the best RPGs ever produced.
The fun bit is that it appealed both to first-time RPG players, and to experienced RPG veterans.
Now, if only Square (and the rest of the industry) would get its act together, and start releasing games for multiple consoles, I'll be a very happy man.
I agree with you 100%. The US is a nation of immigrants, and it's insanely hypocritical to keep the immigration caps as low as they are, especially with the costs of domestic labor skyrocketing through the roof.
People of any nationality should be given a legal and reasonable path of immigration to the US, as long as they are willing to work, and attempt to integrate into the society. Considering the poor (by American standards) conditions that most illegals put up with to live and work in the US, it's pretty clear that there are a TON of people who WANT to be part of our society. Denying them that right is nothing short of inhumane. Considering that most illegals are already able to find employment that pays enough for them to subsist, it's not exactly like the US is going to turn into a refugee camp, and, if anything, will help the US economy by preventing the outsourcing of manufacturing and agriculture to other countries. It's also not exactly like the US is overcrowded -- we have more good land down south, and out west than we know what to do with.
The problem is, that, unlike yourself, many many Americans ARE bigots towards Latin Americans (and overwhelmingly so). The current immigration restrictions are more likely than not a result of this sort of person.
My local newspaper's website offers a comments section, much like most blogs offer. Whenever a story about immigration is posted, it is immediately flooded with some of the most potent and passionate bigotry I've ever seen (outside of documentaries on the civil rights movement). The newspaper now disables comments for these stories. It dealt a serious blow to my faith in humanity.
The locale of this newspaper? New Jersey. I would say that it's not unreasonable to peg over 50% of Jersey's population as being direct decendants of Ellis Island immigrants from the 19th and 20th centuries.
This is pretty much par for the course in the mobile phone industry, where customers are nickel-and-dimed for every single service or feature that they use.
These are, after all, the same people who charge more to send a text message than they do to make a 5-minute phone call.
Part of the big hype surrounding the iPhone is that it will trigger a change in the market, where the telcos compete in terms of features, usability, and quality of service. Right now, the market's completely stagnant despite the technology being in place to take it much, much further.
And it's not exactly that there haven't been good phone designs. Nokia and Sony have both put out some pretty nifty designs that have been completely overlooked by American audiences, or (more likely) intentionally crippled by the telcos. Verizon's UI is too awful to describe with mere words.
There's actually a very good (and legitimate) reason for this (and a HUGE Caveat Emptor to anybody using these programs to reset their ink counters).
On printers with permanent printheads (Epson, Canon, among others), attempting to print from an empty cartridge will, over time, cause a significant amount of damage to the printhead (sort of analogous to running an unprimed pump for too long of a time). Because the printheads are, after all, permanent, you could inadvertently break the printer. (And no, this isn't FUD. I've seen this happen)
Older HP cartridges would happily try to "print" long after they had ran out of ink, for the simple reason that the printhead was built into the cartridges.
Also, a few years back, I remember reading an article that mentioned that most ink manufacturers have stopped printing the specific volume of ink contained in each cartridge. They investigated, and discovered that the volume of ink tended to deviate quite a bit from cartridge to cartridge. Apparently, filling the cartridges is a fairly imprecise science, and the printers are programmed to report "empty" after a pre-set amount of ink has been printed, which will leave ink left-over in some cartridges, but not all.
That all being said, generic cartridges for Epson and Canon printers are something like $5 a pop, which I feel is more than reasonable. If you're leary of generic ink, Brand-name Canon and Kodak cartridges aren't as horrifyingly expensive as their competitors.
Or you could buy a laser printer if the majority of your printing is in Black & White. I have a 10-year-old HP LaserJet that still works as well as it did the day I purchased it (8ppm, adequately high resolution). I print a lot, and on average, I think I only have to replace the cartridge once every two years.
I'm sorry, but the "not enough people wanted them" argument just doesn't hold any water.
Anybody who expected pure electric cars to be an instant runaway hit is completely delusional. As with any new, unproven (and expensive) technology, the initial adoption rate is going to be extremely low.
If the technology's any good, the adoption rate should increase exponentially, driving the prices down with it, as economies of scale kick in. From what I understand (and from what the grandparent poster mentioned), the first round of tests went phenomenally well.
GM killing of their electric car programs absolutely *reeks* of corruption. I have absolutely zero sympathy for the failing US automakers because of this sort of corruption and incompetence.
That all being said, a plug-in hybrid makes a heck of a lot more sense than an EV. Given today's gas prices, I'm *shocked* that nobody's brought one to the market. I do 90% of my driving close to home, and could easily get by running in electric mode. However, I also do want to be able to leave the confines of my small town a few times per month.
Businesses could also easily attract customers by adding outlets near parking spaces. Here in Alaska, cars needs to be kept "warm", and are equipped with a series of heaters on the engine block, fuel line, and antifreeze tank to survive the -40F winters. Virtually every parking space has an electric outlet next to it for this purpose. As long as there are enough people using plug-in electrics, the infrastructure "problem" is moot -- it's been done before, and it's really not as big of an issue as people make it out to be.
That all said, we should also be pursuing research on carbon-neutral fuels (NOT CORN!), as well as alternative vehicle propulsion schemes. The compressed-air idea is a very cool one, and sounds like it'd be crazy enough to work.
Hold up a second:
Making fun of medieval peasants is a bit different from making offensive jokes about a sensitive political and cultural issue.
I believe that an economist somewhere found that low-income families were considerably more likely to own big TVs, or subscribe to premium channels.
Personally, I've been happy with the cheapest cable subscription possible, plus my Netflix plan. Great for catching the occasional show on the major networks, and watching *good* movies.
Simply switch 'sex' with 'violence', and you get a pretty good idea of how the US and Europe differ from each other.
I can fully appreciate Europe's aversion to violent games and movies, given that not one, but two horrific wars engulfed their continent in the past 100 years. I hope you can appreciate why they don't want that to happen again, especially when Europe's doing as well as it is at the moment.
On the other hand, 400 years later, the US is still run by a group of heavily repressed Puritans, dead set on banning any form of cussing or sexual innuendo over the airwaves.
Violence kills people. Sex doesn't. And even at that, it comes down to a key cultural difference between the US and Europe. We're all the products of different experiences, circumstances, and upbringings; the sooner we all realize this, the sooner we'll be able to finally start getting along.
Easy.
Spin your "studios" off, and back into independent units with a good degree of autonomy.
Maxis and Westwood were both fantastic on their own, and produced a whole bunch of innovative and fun games. Since being absorbed into the EA empire, they haven't produced a single new idea (not to mention that C&C Generals was outright offensive)
For what it's worth, back in the day, AT&T's dialup offering was easily the best in the business.
I knew a few IBM engineers who did consulting work at their NOC, and they were always most impressed by AT&T out of the ISPs they worked at.