I simply got tired of having to restart Firefox every few hours. I run lots of tabs with useful state and I got tired of the endless memory growth. I'd routinely quit Firefox and watch over a gig of memory get returned.
Opera somehow manages the same thing in far less memory (and greater speed). If it had the webdeveloper toolbar I'd never look back- it's the only thing that keeps me using Firefox at work, even though 90% of my browsing is Opera now.
They're having fits. Since the rovers can steer every wheel this can be overcome. (Ditto 6 wheel drive: when they started losing a front wheel drive motor when climbing Husband Hill they were able to drive in reverse using only 5 drive wheels and dragging the other.) See for example the February 6 update on Spirit
Spirit completed two diagnostic tests of the dynamic brakes on sol 735 (Jan. 27, 2006) after the team detected a dynamic brake fault associated with the left-front and right-rear steering actuators on Sol 733. The tests were copies of tests that were run after a similar anomaly on sol 265 for Spirit. Also on sol 735, the rover performed a small wheel wiggle after its drive to test the dynamic brakes. The wheel wiggle steered the wheels slightly, then steered them straight. No dynamic brake warnings were observed. The intermittent behavior of the relay status that controls the dynamic brakes, as well as the results of the diagnostic activities, are consistent with the behavior observed after the sol 265 anomaly. The team continued with the same resolution, which was to instruct the rover to ignore the dynamic brake error status. Driving has continued with normal steering function.
If you read Squyres' book, he knew that 90 days was totally doable, but wasn't sure about much longer. The original plan was for 30 days, but he figured they couldn't get any science at all in that short a time and they needed funding for at least 90. Dust buildup on the solar panels was going to cripple the rovers quickly since they couldn't figure out a good way to clean the panels.
They never expected the Martians to clean the panels off periodically. (Dust devils, actually) Check out some of the recent photos- the panels are amazingly clean, far better than they ever hoped. Even so, the rovers aren't in good shape- Spirit has no teeth left on the RAT and has several steering motors with issues, Opportunity has major problems with it's robotic arm and how the mini-TES is still working without nighttime heat is unknown.
I think I have permanant scars from that thing- or maybe those are from that other hand/eye coordination building technique I learned a year or two later.... Image available at http://www.geocities.com/big_al_1401/c64joy.jpg
I don't know about anyone else, but there's no way I'm clicking on that link
I've always wondered why seriously disabled people can't use a mouse controlled by the tongue? Google returns a couple of prototypes, but nothing commercial. I'd think something like this would be ideal- IIRC most quads have use of their facial/mouth muscles and coupled with a speech recognition program would allow virtually full use of a computer. (Assuming you could work with both at the same time.)
Dokeos is an Open Source courseware system. (e.g. Blackboard, Sakai, Moodle) It has a simple, web-based SCORM lesson builder which allows you to build scripted lessons from content on the system such as documents, links, tests, etc. It will import Hot Potatoes tests as well, and many SCORM lessons from other systems.
Reload is a SCORM editor. This might be a bit beyond what your people want, but it will build quite complex lessons from various bits of content
I can't answer for the "How many friends does it take"- it's obviously somewhere between a dorm room and a concert hall.
As far as classes, as far I understand it from various workshops (IANAL) you can use music (and films) in class under fair use provided the following conditions are met
Formal college course (i.e., listed in course catalog. You can't declare "This is MUSC998, Cool Concert!")
It must be part of the course. You can't tell everyone to listen to an album you like just because you're a chemistry prof.
For entire works, the professor has to be in the class at the time. This one is violated *all* the time, since faculty will often show a movie or documentary if they know they'll be out of town that day.
You can use it for one semester. After tbat, pay or choose something else. Constantly violated by film profs of course.
You have to take precautions against students keeping permanent copies. iTunes sharing would be wonderful for this but for the five user limit on attaching to a library- faculty don't want to have to deal with a streaming server and iTunes is dead simple. Hey Steve: how about making a special copy of iTunes for faculty with a much higher limit? Lock it to a machine to prevent everyone from getting a copy.
You have to limit access to students in the course. I spend a lot of time making sure faculty know where the "Private access (site accessible only to people on the User list)" button is on the course management system.
You have a lot more freedom with short clips as opposed to whole works.
Anyone with a better understanding of academic fair use is welcome to chime in.
Back a couple of EDUCAUSEs ago, I went to a talk by a RIAA laywer about legal downloading vs. illegal. He was happily showing off iTunes and downloading some Rolling Stones tunes to play for the 200+ people in attendance. (The talk actually wasn't all that bad- he was trying to get the idea across that legal ways to get and share digital music now existed.)
After the talk, I went up with a single question- "Did you clear public performance rights for that? iTunes downloads are for personal use only."
He instantly answered that he had, but given that he was a RIAA laywer, who knows? I'd put money that he formally hadn't, but had just assumed either being from RIAA or fair use covered it. My faculty use stuff from iTunes commonly in their classes- technically they can't except under some strict conditions, but my counsel has been to go ahead provided they take reasonable steps to make sure it stays inside the class.
I think you're being too restrictive here: it's entirely possible to have a game where there's an involved, engaging story and a sense of place without feeling you're on rails.
A bunch of examples I can think of
Morrowind
Planetscape Torment
System Shock 2
Deus Ex
Marathon
The latter three are on rails to some extent since each level is somewhat mission oriented, but there's an evolving story in all of the above that's quite engaging. You can ignore the main plot line in Morrowind for at least 50 hours of playtime, yet the overall theme really adds to the sense of the world.
As far as story killing game flow, unless your a pure FPS player who just wants uber frags, that's absurd. All of the above took you out of the story for *long* periods to explain what's going on. Without that (to me at least) most games seem flat. Doom? Let's see: kill a monster. Kill another. Hmm, dark corner- there's going to be an ambush. Whoopie. If that's "Game flow" you can keep it- I'll take the plot.
Assuming those are the only two skin colors, sure.
In the local area, they are. (Note I specified "Given the local population". I'm in small town central Virginia) The Hispanic population is growing but still in the very low single digits. The Asian population is so low that one of the professors the other day was talking to me about being the only one around. (We were discussing mixed race families, since my kids are biracial.)
Most are over 35- there's a clump all around 40. (Just had my 40th) Little computer experience, but we get lots of transfers from other places
I used to be a chemist.
Network manager was a musician
Server manager was a safety officer at a local corporation
Media services and one of the help desk are ex-military
12 people in our department. (Small woman's college)
CIO: White female
Academic tech: white male (me)
Media Services: black male
Network manager: white male
Server manager: black male
Programmers: two white males, one white female
Staff support: white female
Hardware: white female
Help Desk: one white female, one black male
Total: 9 white, 3 black, 7 men, 5 women.
Seems pretty balanced to me given the local population. Then again, we tend to hire people with little experience and promote from within. (CIO started as a secretary years ago, server manager began as a help desk grunt, etc.)
Just carry a deck of playing cards with you everywhere. If you're ever lost, start playing solitare. Someone will be along in five minutes or so to tell you to move the black jack to the red queen.
I, for one, really really do not like the idea of this card. It's a debit MasterCard that's also used to provide access to campus facilities. Sorry, but that just seems like too valuable of a number to just be swiping through your random card reader around campus. I could see a "man-in-the-middle" style of compromise on this system (passively recording the debit card numbers for later use).
Too late, already been done. Note BB's response to the security issues- this is one of the major problems I have with them.
I set up Dokeos where I work. (Randolph-Macon Woman's College) We've been running it for three years now with few problems. Doesn't have every feature of BB or WebCT, but it's getting there feature-wise, it's free, the developer community is pretty responsive and it's *very* simple to modify. I've been able to hack in numerous little features and integrate with a half-dozen other campus systems with very little effort.
Better known than Dokeos and Moodle in the US is the Sakai project This is a big collaboration between a bunch of research-1 schools (MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana) with about $6 million in backing from the Mellon foundation. I might have used this in place of Dokeos if it existed when I installed it, but then again maybe not. It's a much more top-down piece of design as opposed to the very bottom up Dokeos and Moodle.
I gave a talk at a conference over the summer about Open Source CMSs and the trends. BB/WebCT/Angel and the like should be very, very scared, at least for their core CMS products. There's been little real innovation in them in the past few years so the OS ones have a static target to shoot for and lots of schools are really, really sick of the companies backing them. Blackboard contacted the Sakai project heads about a collaboration- the response was "We've not interested in working with you." BB will survive by diversifying and moving to financial services- they sell a one-card system (doors, meals, vending machine, bookstore, etc) that is also a credit card, and they get a cut of every purchase. That's what is going to keep them alive, since BB the product itself is in trouble.
When you purchase software, how much security are you buying? Is it reasonable to expect software to resist any and all attacks? What's the cybercrime equivalent of jiggling the handle, and what's the equivalent of driving a Mack truck into the door? I don't think we even really know enough to set clear, defined situations like we have with regular locks.
Our campus library uses Keso locks. These are special high security locks with the pins on the side. They've paid extra for these, doubly so since the key blanks aren't easy to get.
A rather well known magician explained to me the other day a way to defeat any Keso lock with minimal skill and a few objects that can be easily obtained. This is a systematic flaw in the Keso design and I don't think it can be corrected. (He'd probably know better than me)
Is Sargent Keso liable if someone uses this trick to get through the library doors? The expectation would certainly be that a high security lock should be harder to pick. How about software? Do I have a better case against a company who claims "industrial strength security" products when I buy SecureFoo and then get hacked?
I have an O'Reilly t-shirt that I wear around here, and I've gotten comments from some of the local folks about being also being a huge fan.
Sadly, they aren't talking about the computer books, unless the 50-year-old guy at the gas station counter is a laid off DEC guy.
Re:get out of industry and into education
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'll second the comment. Academia offers low pay and crappy benefits for the most part, but you have a tremendous amount of flexibility and possible advancement opportunities
Me? I was hired to be the "instructional tech guy". What did that mean? Well, in a nutshell nobody really knew exactly, so I could do what I wanted. I've got a reasonably clued boss who trusts me when I say "I think we need to do X", so at various times it's meant
Moving us to an Open Source course management system, ePortfolio, and image database.
Doing all the integration to get the above to talk to each other and various closed source systems
Training faculty to use all the stuff
Writing custom apps in everything from VB (spit) to PHP to Actionscript
Video and photo editing
Designing tech for classrooms
Writing grants to pay for all of the above
And a host of other random things
In other words, whatever I felt was interesting to play with that day. Couple that with an interesting intellectual atmosphere (Where else can you ask around about negative yield curves and get good answers?) and the freedom to add to that. (I've invited James Randi to speak on campus next week[1]) Oh yeah, and no TPS reports. About the only thing I have to do to justify my actions is write a few paragraphs once per year.
As far as advancement, we tend to hire total noobs with good attitudes. My boss (head of IT) started as a secretary with a high school education. Moved up to the Help Desk, started working on her BS, started managing the Help Desk, moved over to the admin support staff...
Yeah, it can get annoying at times with the petty politics, but for all you hear about prima-donna professors I'll take them anyday over typical corporate minions. (I've worked both sides)
[1] If you're in central Virginia, it's the 5th of October and it's free. Check his schedule for details
Try explaining to your National Guard tank crew what your theoretical chemistry PhD work is about. "Umm, well, my dissertation title is Methods in Hartree-Fock Molecular Dynamics. That clear enough? No. Ok, how about 'I sit in front of a computer'"?
Umm, perhaps, but in Armor school the basic rule we were taught was "kill the tank with the most antennas on it". Radios may not be weapons per se, but they are arguably the most important object on the battlefield.
This was one of the biggest advantages NATO had over the Warsaw Pact back in the (good?) old days. *Everyone* was taught how to use a radio, and theoretically *everyone* knew how to call for artillery. OTOH, the Warsaw Pact folks only had radios for officers- kill the tank with the antennas, and command&control went away
IIAAT (I am an academic technologist) and hand-raising is almost worthless in a classroom. Why? Anonimity and response rates
People don't like to feel stupid, especially in front of their peers. If a professor is trying to find out if her students know something and asks for hands, you get three different groups
The kid in the front row who knows everything, or at least thinks he does
The people who wait to see what #1 answers and then agree with him
The ones who won't raise their hands in any case for fear of being called an idiot.
Clickers let the professor get high response rate with anonymity. There's a lot of hate on/. for these things, but used properly (and I've seen it done many times) they're a great tool
Did they have anything to say about the substance of the article?
Of course. It's the usual ID claptrap that's been refuted hundreds of times. Skeptic had two pages of scientific rebuttal, as well as pointing to a more detailed rebuttal
Slashdot Mirror
Opera somehow manages the same thing in far less memory (and greater speed). If it had the webdeveloper toolbar I'd never look back- it's the only thing that keeps me using Firefox at work, even though 90% of my browsing is Opera now.
They never expected the Martians to clean the panels off periodically. (Dust devils, actually) Check out some of the recent photos- the panels are amazingly clean, far better than they ever hoped. Even so, the rovers aren't in good shape- Spirit has no teeth left on the RAT and has several steering motors with issues, Opportunity has major problems with it's robotic arm and how the mini-TES is still working without nighttime heat is unknown.
I think I have permanant scars from that thing- or maybe those are from that other hand/eye coordination building technique I learned a year or two later.... Image available at http://www.geocities.com/big_al_1401/c64joy.jpg
I don't know about anyone else, but there's no way I'm clicking on that link
I've always wondered why seriously disabled people can't use a mouse controlled by the tongue? Google returns a couple of prototypes, but nothing commercial. I'd think something like this would be ideal- IIRC most quads have use of their facial/mouth muscles and coupled with a speech recognition program would allow virtually full use of a computer. (Assuming you could work with both at the same time.)
Reload is a SCORM editor. This might be a bit beyond what your people want, but it will build quite complex lessons from various bits of content
As far as classes, as far I understand it from various workshops (IANAL) you can use music (and films) in class under fair use provided the following conditions are met
Anyone with a better understanding of academic fair use is welcome to chime in.
After the talk, I went up with a single question- "Did you clear public performance rights for that? iTunes downloads are for personal use only."
He instantly answered that he had, but given that he was a RIAA laywer, who knows? I'd put money that he formally hadn't, but had just assumed either being from RIAA or fair use covered it. My faculty use stuff from iTunes commonly in their classes- technically they can't except under some strict conditions, but my counsel has been to go ahead provided they take reasonable steps to make sure it stays inside the class.
A bunch of examples I can think of
The latter three are on rails to some extent since each level is somewhat mission oriented, but there's an evolving story in all of the above that's quite engaging. You can ignore the main plot line in Morrowind for at least 50 hours of playtime, yet the overall theme really adds to the sense of the world.
As far as story killing game flow, unless your a pure FPS player who just wants uber frags, that's absurd. All of the above took you out of the story for *long* periods to explain what's going on. Without that (to me at least) most games seem flat. Doom? Let's see: kill a monster. Kill another. Hmm, dark corner- there's going to be an ambush. Whoopie. If that's "Game flow" you can keep it- I'll take the plot.
I heard Serena Williams was eaten in straight sets in Australia
In the local area, they are. (Note I specified "Given the local population". I'm in small town central Virginia) The Hispanic population is growing but still in the very low single digits. The Asian population is so low that one of the professors the other day was talking to me about being the only one around. (We were discussing mixed race families, since my kids are biracial.)
Not everyone lives in California.
I used to be a chemist.
Network manager was a musician
Server manager was a safety officer at a local corporation
Media services and one of the help desk are ex-military
CIO: White female
Academic tech: white male (me)
Media Services: black male
Network manager: white male
Server manager: black male
Programmers: two white males, one white female
Staff support: white female
Hardware: white female
Help Desk: one white female, one black male
Total: 9 white, 3 black, 7 men, 5 women.
Seems pretty balanced to me given the local population. Then again, we tend to hire people with little experience and promote from within. (CIO started as a secretary years ago, server manager began as a help desk grunt, etc.)
Just carry a deck of playing cards with you everywhere. If you're ever lost, start playing solitare. Someone will be along in five minutes or so to tell you to move the black jack to the red queen.
Major Major Major Major thinks they're a bunch of pikers for worrying about it...
Too late, already been done. Note BB's response to the security issues- this is one of the major problems I have with them.
Better known than Dokeos and Moodle in the US is the Sakai project This is a big collaboration between a bunch of research-1 schools (MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Indiana) with about $6 million in backing from the Mellon foundation. I might have used this in place of Dokeos if it existed when I installed it, but then again maybe not. It's a much more top-down piece of design as opposed to the very bottom up Dokeos and Moodle.
I gave a talk at a conference over the summer about Open Source CMSs and the trends. BB/WebCT/Angel and the like should be very, very scared, at least for their core CMS products. There's been little real innovation in them in the past few years so the OS ones have a static target to shoot for and lots of schools are really, really sick of the companies backing them. Blackboard contacted the Sakai project heads about a collaboration- the response was "We've not interested in working with you." BB will survive by diversifying and moving to financial services- they sell a one-card system (doors, meals, vending machine, bookstore, etc) that is also a credit card, and they get a cut of every purchase. That's what is going to keep them alive, since BB the product itself is in trouble.
When you purchase software, how much security are you buying? Is it reasonable to expect software to resist any and all attacks? What's the cybercrime equivalent of jiggling the handle, and what's the equivalent of driving a Mack truck into the door? I don't think we even really know enough to set clear, defined situations like we have with regular locks.
Our campus library uses Keso locks. These are special high security locks with the pins on the side. They've paid extra for these, doubly so since the key blanks aren't easy to get.
A rather well known magician explained to me the other day a way to defeat any Keso lock with minimal skill and a few objects that can be easily obtained. This is a systematic flaw in the Keso design and I don't think it can be corrected. (He'd probably know better than me)
Is Sargent Keso liable if someone uses this trick to get through the library doors? The expectation would certainly be that a high security lock should be harder to pick. How about software? Do I have a better case against a company who claims "industrial strength security" products when I buy SecureFoo and then get hacked?
He uses the M for his SF stuff and drops it for his more mainstream fiction.
Sadly, they aren't talking about the computer books, unless the 50-year-old guy at the gas station counter is a laid off DEC guy.
Me? I was hired to be the "instructional tech guy". What did that mean? Well, in a nutshell nobody really knew exactly, so I could do what I wanted. I've got a reasonably clued boss who trusts me when I say "I think we need to do X", so at various times it's meant
In other words, whatever I felt was interesting to play with that day. Couple that with an interesting intellectual atmosphere (Where else can you ask around about negative yield curves and get good answers?) and the freedom to add to that. (I've invited James Randi to speak on campus next week[1]) Oh yeah, and no TPS reports. About the only thing I have to do to justify my actions is write a few paragraphs once per year.
As far as advancement, we tend to hire total noobs with good attitudes. My boss (head of IT) started as a secretary with a high school education. Moved up to the Help Desk, started working on her BS, started managing the Help Desk, moved over to the admin support staff...
Yeah, it can get annoying at times with the petty politics, but for all you hear about prima-donna professors I'll take them anyday over typical corporate minions. (I've worked both sides)
[1] If you're in central Virginia, it's the 5th of October and it's free. Check his schedule for details
Try explaining to your National Guard tank crew what your theoretical chemistry PhD work is about. "Umm, well, my dissertation title is Methods in Hartree-Fock Molecular Dynamics. That clear enough? No. Ok, how about 'I sit in front of a computer'"?
This was one of the biggest advantages NATO had over the Warsaw Pact back in the (good?) old days. *Everyone* was taught how to use a radio, and theoretically *everyone* knew how to call for artillery. OTOH, the Warsaw Pact folks only had radios for officers- kill the tank with the antennas, and command&control went away
People don't like to feel stupid, especially in front of their peers. If a professor is trying to find out if her students know something and asks for hands, you get three different groups
Clickers let the professor get high response rate with anonymity. There's a lot of hate on /. for these things, but used properly (and I've seen it done many times) they're a great tool
Of course. It's the usual ID claptrap that's been refuted hundreds of times. Skeptic had two pages of scientific rebuttal, as well as pointing to a more detailed rebuttal