I picked up Singstar ABBA for the PS3. With the most recent patch, it can play the old PS2 Singstar discs, and the same microphones work for it. My wife's more likely to play it when it's up in our family room than down on the PS2 in the basement. (Hey, I like hearing her sing, she's good.)
Uranium hexafluoride gas in a bulb of fused silica. Gets not red hot, or white hot, but ultraviolet hot... and silica's very transparent to UV. Circulate liquid hydrogen on the outside to cool it, and throw the gaseous hydrogen out the back as your exhaust. You can't make hydrogen radioactive in such circumstances, so the exhaust is completely non-polluting.
I've seen back-of-the-envelope calculations that give an ISP in the thousands, letting you get a thousand tons or more into orbit in one shot.
I've been using Linux since 1995. I remember when people said Linux would never be more than a toy. Then they said it was capable of some neat things, but would never be used in a business. Then they said it could be used for small things in a business, but it'd never scale to the high end. Now, it's fine in a server role, but will never be any good as a desktop...
They Hunger was a good Half-Life mod, and they're working on a new one with the Source engine: They Hunger: Lost Souls. They haven't updated their progress in a while, but I still have hope.
You could almost even make it work in the game world. When you get hold of one of the games, it rotates off into the wall, like the secret rooms in every old movie. An empty arcade machine pops out, so someone else can play it. It can still look kinda like the real world, but everyone can still get a chance at the fun stuff.
Of course, the question of why this would be compelling remains hard to answer.
Ya know, I did, and you're right - she did say that. I salute you. However, what she said can actually be accurate - I've been using Linux since 1995, and early Linux was nowhere near as easy-to-use as modern Windows XP. If she was using Linux from even five years ago as a base point, what she said could easily be right.
Picking the worst possible interpretation of an email when you can't see tone-of-voice is a recipe for, well, the kind of flamewars that have erupted over this very exchange.
It's quite another to go off all half-cocked and make accusations with serious legal implications.
Yeah, saying "I am not sure what you are doing is legal... I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows" is pretty hardcore.
Or, um, not. Strongly worded, but actually not an 'accusation'. Rather, a declaration of intent to find out if something illegal was going on. Would that the RIAA were as hardcore as she was...
My Palm Treo 650 can be locked so you can't use it w/o a password. Except you can always hit the "Make Emergency Call" button and, well, make an emergency call. (There was actually a small security issue with this.)
I'm reasonably sure these guys have thought of at least that. I'm still not sure it's a useful idea, but I doubt that particular objection will hold.
Now the kids know that 1) the teacher is an idiot and 2) the teacher values obedience over correctness.
They now know that the teacher didn't know something in particular about computers and software. (I'm a geek, and I know there's plenty about how kids use computers today that I have no clue about, or only the most general notion.) It's not a surprise that she doesn't know everything - I'm pretty sure the kids were already aware that she's a human being. The question is, does she know about the topics she's teaching about and the techniques for successfully teaching them? Nothing presented so far hints that the answer is 'no'.
And as for "2", that's quite a jump, considering even the blogger parent acknowledges the kid was being 'disruptive'. If Linux (or software in general) wasn't the topic under discussion, then temporarily taking away the discs and directing attention back to the class - which is what seems to have happened - isn't "valuing obedience over correctness".
So, at most, the kids know the teacher has limited operating system knowledge, and she wants the kids to focus on the class. She did jump to conclusions based on the knowledge she had, but she addressed her message to the parent, and appears to be capable of learning when she finds out she's mistaken. That alone puts her above the 90th percentile among humans.
80GB PS3 - $399
Extra controller - $50
Standard 120GB laptop SATA drive - call it $80, can be much less
Headphones - okay, $75.
External adapter so you can use that 80GB drive to back up the 120GB one - $15
Call it $620, though you might get as low as $600 or so. Or you could throw in a 320GB SATA drive. Plus, the PS3's a Blu-ray player. The up-front cost's more, sure, but the PS3 actually includes most of the 'accessories' you'd want.
Still, I agree that's a tough sell in this economy, either way. PCs can be a lot more productive, but they just aren't oriented for multi-player, social games that people in the same room, at the same party, can play.
From what I can gather, they're pulling in rather low-level data - essentially 'listening in' on the very lowest level of pattern-recognition that's applied to the data coming in from the optic nerve. That's certainly interesting, but a whole lot more processing happens at higher levels before you 'see' anything. (C.f. people who lose sight early on due to eye problems, and have sight restored later - their brains can't do much with the information at first.)
Dreams appear to be based on the 'noise' coming in, but a lot of interpretation is applied (and without imposed constraints of consistency or logic). A common game/prank involves people asking yes/no questions about an alleged dream, but the answers they get are based on some simple scheme like "yes if the last word in the question they ask ends in a consonant". Surprisingly detailed 'stories' get constructed... by the person asking the questions. (Here's what appears to be an online version.) Actual dreams seem to be built in an analogous way, with the subconscious 'asking questions' of the senses (which are just feeding in 'static') and weaving an experience out of them.
I'd guess that 'eavesdropping' on dreams via this means would only get the kind of swirling colors and such you 'see' when you close your eyes.
Actually, no. There are a-life systems that don't have any explicit target or 'fitness function', and yet display increasing complexity and even ecologies. (I wrote a version myself just to play with it, and reproduced the results myself. Even a couple minor new ones.)
It's a very unusual kind of GA, I'll grant. But it seems to be a GA nevertheless.
The 'default' body plan for mammals is female. Left to itself, an embryo will develop (mostly) female unless specific steps are taken at specific times. Developing a male means (a) suppressing female development paths, and (b) initiating male development paths. (And yes, those are two separate steps. Sometimes (a) doesn't happen even though (b) does, and you get hermaphrodism.
It's rare, but you can get things like Swyer syndrome, where an apparently normal girl gets to be around sixteen and has never had a period or other signs of puberty. Examination reveals the girl has no functional ovaries and actually has a Y chromosome.
(This has other implications, so far as I can see. When something's more complicated to make, that means there are more ways for it to go wrong...)
Smacking the side of the computer also can work to get things running, but that doesn't mean it's actually a useful tool. Here, go educate yourself. (But what does he know, he's just the guy who got someone to give up Zarqawi's location...)
Program components may not be living things, but they do run autonomously. They perform actions, frequently without any input from me. They seem to do things and interact with other components on their own - why not describe it as such?
As Dijkstra put it, "...because persons exist and act in time..." And his claim was that using 'operational reasoning' was a 'waste of mental effort', and he used his domino problem to illustrate a problem where 'operational reasoning' is particularly ill-suited.
However, not all problems are like that, and humans have - in essence - hardware-accelerated modules for performing time-and-agent-based operational reasoning. Dijkstra was half-right: "refusal to exploit this power of down-to-earth mathematics amounts to intellectual and technological suicide", but also half-wrong - not all problems succumb so directly and easily to "down-to-earth mathematics", and not using the human talent for 'operational reasoning' is also "intellectual and technological suicide".
Linux just grew on servers, until it was another reasonable and unremarkable option, indeed the best choice for many areas. Linux on the desktop will be the same way. It's not particularly remarkable now for netbooks, and it'll spread. Note: I'm not claiming 'desktop dominance', any more than Linux has 'server dominance'. But it'll be no big deal to run Linux on a desktop.
Here's how I put it in one of my email.sigs: "I remember when people said Linux would never be more than a toy. Then they said it was capable of some neat things, but would never be used in a business. Then they said it could be used for small things in a business, but it'd never scale to the high end. Now, it's fine in a server role, but will never be any good as a desktop..."
I'm not picking it up immediately, of course. I'll be getting it for xmas. That may not inflate their early sales figures, but they've got a sale lined up.
Maybe I'll convert a DVD to play on my Treo, or install a game and then apply a no-CD patch. Maybe I'll go really crazy install a game on an extra computer just so it can be more convenient to play sometimes.
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I picked up Singstar ABBA for the PS3. With the most recent patch, it can play the old PS2 Singstar discs, and the same microphones work for it. My wife's more likely to play it when it's up in our family room than down on the PS2 in the basement. (Hey, I like hearing her sing, she's good.)
Uranium hexafluoride gas in a bulb of fused silica. Gets not red hot, or white hot, but ultraviolet hot... and silica's very transparent to UV. Circulate liquid hydrogen on the outside to cool it, and throw the gaseous hydrogen out the back as your exhaust. You can't make hydrogen radioactive in such circumstances, so the exhaust is completely non-polluting.
I've seen back-of-the-envelope calculations that give an ISP in the thousands, letting you get a thousand tons or more into orbit in one shot.
I've been using Linux since 1995. I remember when people said Linux would never be more than a toy. Then they said it was capable of some neat things, but would never be used in a business. Then they said it could be used for small things in a business, but it'd never scale to the high end. Now, it's fine in a server role, but will never be any good as a desktop...
Since it was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, does this ruling only apply in New York, Vermont, and Connecticut?
Just ask this guy. (But what does he know, he only got results like info on Zarqawi's location, not revenge.)
They Hunger was a good Half-Life mod, and they're working on a new one with the Source engine: They Hunger: Lost Souls. They haven't updated their progress in a while, but I still have hope.
Trying it on someone else's computer? You really can't imagine that to be possible?
Why do you want to be so angry with her?
Of course, the question of why this would be compelling remains hard to answer.
Picking the worst possible interpretation of an email when you can't see tone-of-voice is a recipe for, well, the kind of flamewars that have erupted over this very exchange.
In neither of the blog posts I read did I see anything that said she claimed to have used Linux. What's your source?
Yeah, saying "I am not sure what you are doing is legal... I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows" is pretty hardcore.
Or, um, not. Strongly worded, but actually not an 'accusation'. Rather, a declaration of intent to find out if something illegal was going on. Would that the RIAA were as hardcore as she was...
I'm reasonably sure these guys have thought of at least that. I'm still not sure it's a useful idea, but I doubt that particular objection will hold.
They now know that the teacher didn't know something in particular about computers and software. (I'm a geek, and I know there's plenty about how kids use computers today that I have no clue about, or only the most general notion.) It's not a surprise that she doesn't know everything - I'm pretty sure the kids were already aware that she's a human being. The question is, does she know about the topics she's teaching about and the techniques for successfully teaching them? Nothing presented so far hints that the answer is 'no'.
And as for "2", that's quite a jump, considering even the blogger parent acknowledges the kid was being 'disruptive'. If Linux (or software in general) wasn't the topic under discussion, then temporarily taking away the discs and directing attention back to the class - which is what seems to have happened - isn't "valuing obedience over correctness".
So, at most, the kids know the teacher has limited operating system knowledge, and she wants the kids to focus on the class. She did jump to conclusions based on the knowledge she had, but she addressed her message to the parent, and appears to be capable of learning when she finds out she's mistaken. That alone puts her above the 90th percentile among humans.
Extra controller - $50
Standard 120GB laptop SATA drive - call it $80, can be much less
Headphones - okay, $75.
External adapter so you can use that 80GB drive to back up the 120GB one - $15
Call it $620, though you might get as low as $600 or so. Or you could throw in a 320GB SATA drive. Plus, the PS3's a Blu-ray player. The up-front cost's more, sure, but the PS3 actually includes most of the 'accessories' you'd want.
Still, I agree that's a tough sell in this economy, either way. PCs can be a lot more productive, but they just aren't oriented for multi-player, social games that people in the same room, at the same party, can play.
Dreams appear to be based on the 'noise' coming in, but a lot of interpretation is applied (and without imposed constraints of consistency or logic). A common game/prank involves people asking yes/no questions about an alleged dream, but the answers they get are based on some simple scheme like "yes if the last word in the question they ask ends in a consonant". Surprisingly detailed 'stories' get constructed... by the person asking the questions. (Here's what appears to be an online version.) Actual dreams seem to be built in an analogous way, with the subconscious 'asking questions' of the senses (which are just feeding in 'static') and weaving an experience out of them.
I'd guess that 'eavesdropping' on dreams via this means would only get the kind of swirling colors and such you 'see' when you close your eyes.
Actually, no. There are a-life systems that don't have any explicit target or 'fitness function', and yet display increasing complexity and even ecologies. (I wrote a version myself just to play with it, and reproduced the results myself. Even a couple minor new ones.)
It's a very unusual kind of GA, I'll grant. But it seems to be a GA nevertheless.
It's rare, but you can get things like Swyer syndrome, where an apparently normal girl gets to be around sixteen and has never had a period or other signs of puberty. Examination reveals the girl has no functional ovaries and actually has a Y chromosome.
(This has other implications, so far as I can see. When something's more complicated to make, that means there are more ways for it to go wrong...)
Smacking the side of the computer also can work to get things running, but that doesn't mean it's actually a useful tool. Here, go educate yourself. (But what does he know, he's just the guy who got someone to give up Zarqawi's location...)
As Dijkstra put it, "...because persons exist and act in time..." And his claim was that using 'operational reasoning' was a 'waste of mental effort', and he used his domino problem to illustrate a problem where 'operational reasoning' is particularly ill-suited.
However, not all problems are like that, and humans have - in essence - hardware-accelerated modules for performing time-and-agent-based operational reasoning. Dijkstra was half-right: "refusal to exploit this power of down-to-earth mathematics amounts to intellectual and technological suicide", but also half-wrong - not all problems succumb so directly and easily to "down-to-earth mathematics", and not using the human talent for 'operational reasoning' is also "intellectual and technological suicide".
When it comes to the ultimate origin of the universe, I'm fine with saying "I dunno.". Maybe one day we will know.
Here's how I put it in one of my email .sigs: "I remember when people said Linux would never be more than a toy. Then they said it was capable of some neat things, but would never be used in a business. Then they said it could be used for small things in a business, but it'd never scale to the high end. Now, it's fine in a server role, but will never be any good as a desktop..."
I'm not picking it up immediately, of course. I'll be getting it for xmas. That may not inflate their early sales figures, but they've got a sale lined up.
...but try to avoid using COBOL." - Nicholas M. Moffitt
Maybe I'll convert a DVD to play on my Treo, or install a game and then apply a no-CD patch. Maybe I'll go really crazy install a game on an extra computer just so it can be more convenient to play sometimes.
I gotcher cite right here.