Crap. I'm looking at 4.4 megapixels worth of LCDs on my desktop right now- not a single dead pixel. (2xDell flat panel, Apple powerbook and an old Compaq iPaq) My home LCD doesn't have any either, and I wouldn't have accepted it if it did- it's a Samsung, and they have a no dead pixel policy. (Although it's not clear if it applies in the US, so I didn't get to test it.)
I used to buy Sony stuff quite a bit- my old home monitor was a Sony trinitron that lasted ~7 years. But I haven't bought anything of theirs recently- the quality just seems too bad. Samsung has gone the other way in a hurry- they used to be crap, and they're now a quality brand.
Market Forces couldn't be nominated- it's 2005, and the nominations are for 2004 works.
That said, while I like Morgan a lot, I think he really cripples himself in these sorts of awards with his sex scenes. (Haven't read MF yet- maybe he's stopped) To a 16-year-old boy, these are probably the coolest. To me, pushing 40, they're an embarrassment. "Gee, 2 pages of poorly written porn. Flip." I suspect I'm not exactly alone here. I always loved the way Zelanzy handled sex scenes- a bit of a leadup, then a comment along the lines of "You sophisticated readers aren't interested in the details"
I'm annoyed about The Algebraist- it's not coming out here in the US until *September*. WTF? I need my Banks fix, damnit.
And Dan Simmons? Please, please finish Olympos. It's almost cruel to make us wait so long- I need to know what our favorite Proust-quoting 8 ton armored semi-biological robot horseshoe crab is doing.
Oh, and Alastair Renyolds? Stop writing, please. Take a deep breath. You've got killer ideas and great talent, but speed is killing you. Redemption Ark sucked- please go back and write a *real* ending for the Revelation Space series. Check out Simmons- I'm pissed about the wait for Olympos, but I'll buy it.
I've been both a faculty member at a university and I'm now an "instructional technology" guy.
When I taught chemistry, I used a blackboard 95% of the time. I never touched Powerpoint. When I did use a computer, it was to do things that no blackboard can ever do- show 3-d models of atoms/molecules/orbitals, run simulations of things that can't be seen in a lab, etc. This is where they shine- modeling and visualization, working "what-if" scenarios, and eliminating the drudgery of long calculations. They're wonderful at enhancing communications in some cases- I can have students interact with a journalist in Bangaldesh easily, or a social worker in rural India. Easy video editing lets you build big libraries of "What to do/not to do in this situation" for people like teachers using real people and situations- we film a lot of the student teaching experiences education majors do here.
Computers can be insanely powerful teaching tools when used properly. The problem is that almost nobody does this- there's an attitude that someone moving your lecture notes from transparencies to Powerpoint is somehow useful in helping student learning. Umm, no, it's less than worthless. Teaching students to use graphing calculators? Near worthless- have them do it on paper until they're in college. The functions just aren't that complex. Multiple choice drill+kill quizzes on web sites or "educational" CD-ROMS? Almost worthless- students hate them for the most part, and it's usually simple fact based knowledge with no attempt at synthesis.
Teachers aren't taught to use this stuff effectively. Most colleges have people like me to help college professors, but there's virtually nobody past a tech support guy making $10/hour at most elementary and high schools. Until they build in education on the use of technology, expect to see this continue. It took business decades to figure out how to use computers well- education is still having problems.
Side note: I banned calculators on tests for my PChem class. I don't want numerical answers- they're useless for teaching, and foster "What equation do I need to memorize" thinking among the students. Give me the problem properly set up with all units shown- if you can do that I could care less that you can correctly hit the buttons on a calculator. I did offer to let them use slide rules (seriously)- if you can do the math on a slide rule you understand the problem. I really encourage people to do this- it was wonderful, and the students actually didn't mind.
Parenthood REALLY puts a crimp on the time you call your own.
Bingo. I had a guy in a store the other day try to sell me on some MMORPG. Umm, I've got a kid (two now)- you think I have time to do anything like that?
I saw a note where Sony wanted EQ2 to be accessible to "casual gamers", defined as people who only put in 20 hours/week. Umm, dudes, I doubt I could find 20 hours a month, and I'd only do that by neglecting either family or work.
Lately I've been either playing EKS logic games or Thief fan missions. Saveable and many playable in under 30 minutes. Given that Ian wants his bottle every 3 hours, that's about my limit.
Bush is a great president and he will not let this broadcast flag happen under his watch. I know liberal/. probably doesn't get this, but the Republicans are all about SMALLER gov't, people.
You've got to be joking. (At least, I hope you're being sarcastic) Check the second chart down. Bush has increased nondefense discretionary spending faster than Clinton by a large margin, and that's *with* a Republican dominated congress. Of course, that's not even including the *huge* growth in defense and homeland security related spending, most of it stuffed into little-reviewed supplemental appropriation bills. ("Yeah, we need another $90 billion for Iraq. Don't count it against the deficit figures, please.") Just look at the absurd Medicare prescription drug coverage bill- any true conservative would have run from this screaming.
The Republicans today are all about huge, intrusive government. They want to make sure you're a good little consumer, worship the proper god and avoid the gay. Oh yeah, and don't worry about running up the deficit to 3rd world levels- we'll never have to pay that back...
When I was first learning to fly, I looked up the NTSB accident database for the C-152. Over and over again there were reports of mid-flight engine failures. With only one exception, every crash report had a line similar to "Total fuel found in the tanks was 1.5 gallons. Unusable fuel in a C-152 is 1.5 gallons."
I made it my vow that I might die flying, but it was never going to be due to something that stupid- always dip your tanks.
I heard people raving about Titan, so I gave it a read.
It was one of the worst books I ever suffered through. Totally unbeliveable plot, uninteresting, cardboard characters, bad, bad science and a deus ex machina ending that made no sense at all. A little bit better than Peter Hamilton-level dreck, but not much.
I've avoided almost all of his stuff since, but the little I've read afterwards hasn't improved my opinion. Can a Baxter fan suggest something that might change my mind?
Building an attitude control system (a cluster of miniature rocket engines, plus control system) is nontrivial, too.
ObNit- you really, really don't want to use rocket engines for attitude control. Venting possibly condensible gases around a mirror you can't get to is a bad idea.
Hubble uses reaction wheels for attitude control. I assume the KH-es do the same. (Great bit from The Hubble Wars had a CIA spook commenting that Hubble was basically a KH-11-class spy satellite, just pointing the other way.)
There's a long history of using satire to speak unpleasant truths to people who won't otherwise listen. Read up on your Shakespeare (Lear, for example) and you'll see numerous fools who are the only people who can get away with it.
Jon is our court jester. It's truly sad that you'll see more incisive commentary on TDS than on the major news networks. I've given up on all TV news except TDS- there's no point left to the major news programs anymore.
The most telling comment I ever saw on TDS was a short clip of a british journalist grilling Tony Blair about something. Stewart's comment was something like "Where can we get some guys like this?" Lord knows the american media has just given up.
You're forgetting that your newsreader probably took 15 minutes to download those threads, plus another 2000 others you're not interested in.
Ahh, you've never even used it, have you? Threads downloaded in a few seconds, in the background for all subscribed groups in any decent newsreader. Hell, response was faster (much, much faster) with plain old rn in 1988 than it is with/. today. Pure text takes very little bandwidth.
Have you *used* Usenet in the last 10 years??? Many forums are completely overrun with ads.
Some are. Most aren't, thanks to a bunch of dedicated anti-spammers. (Think of them as/. moderators, only sane.) Most of the rest goes away when it hits the regexp-based killfile. You know, one of those things you can only dream about with a web based forum?
I cry when I consider how poor of an interface even the best web discussion forums have. Where are my kill files? (I decide what's important- not some moderator.) My intelligent threading? My color coding by topic/author/keywords/threads? Auto-quoting of replies? Keyboard only interface?
Not to mention the enormously greater speed of a good newsfeed. No clicking on links and waiting and waiting- the whole thread is there to browse instantly. Oh yeah- no passwords, logins, etc. And of course, no ads. No blinking crap. Just pure text love.
Plus, you lose the great feeling when you figure out how to forge moderation and post anywhere for the first time:^)
The entire history of web-based discussion forums is an attempt to duplicate a fraction of the features of rn- I was reading Usenet in 1988 with features web-based people can only dream about today.
Are you sure the article wasn't in the year-end issue? They typically run "joke" articles then- this years' had a great one on outsourcing childcare to India as well as a hilarious "deconstruction" of the magazine.
I ask since they've had numerious articles talking about the demographic catastrophies coming for many first-world economies as the workforce ages and fewer and fewer workers need to pay for more and more retirees, so this article seems really out of sync.
I find it interesting that folks assume I'm talking about a personal situation. I would be hard to find a place where the situation I described would be less likely to occur. I actually work in academia, at a small liberal arts college.
One of the reasons I like working where I do is that I'm free to set my own goals (within limits), work on the technology that interests me, and people care much more about function than form. Ugly but functional is fine. (Which is good, since I'm a crappy artist) There are also a lot fewer of the butt-kissing suckups in higher ed than industry- they do exist, but most are more interested in a paycheck than an interesting career.
Oh yeah, bonuses are almost nonexistant, as are raises. Although I actually got a bonus this year for working on an experimental course. First time in ten years of various higher ed jobs. $500!
At Google, this might actually be the case, but witness all the horror stories of bad management that get posted here.
Try this scenario- you bust your ass 12 hours a day/7 days a week for a year to spec, design and code Wizzyfoo. It's awesome. It does some really neat things. Two weeks before it goes live, the company decides that Wizzyfoo just isn't compatible with the new direction the company is moving in. All your work is tossed in the bin and you're assigned to a new project. No bonus for you.
Meanwhile, Bob across the aisle goofs off, posting meaningless replies at/. for most the day and goes golfing with the boss every weekend. Since he's got the ear of the boss, he manages to get a great looking demo before the suits, who decide to make it the new big thing. He gets the cash for the neat demo, even if there's nothing behind it and the product wouldn't work in reality.
Would this happen at Google? Maybe not, but if you don't think similar happens everyday in industry you're blind. The suckups and losers get rewarded, the truly good get shuffled off since they're hard to deal with.
Us. I just inherited our electronic portfolio system, which runs Apache/Tomcat/MySQL on Windows2000. We're mostly a Windows shop, and it runs fine. (Well, sorta fine, but I think that's mostly some problems with the portfolio, not A/T/M.)
I'm curious- what are these conservative values you speak of?
Smaller government? Nope. He's never vetoed a spending bill. Even excluding the military and homeland security, government expenditures are growing faster than during Clinton's terms.
Fiscal responsibility? Dear Lord in Heaven, no. His entire economic policy amounts to "Charge it!"
State's rights? Just try to pass a medical marijuana (CA) or euthanasia (OR) bill and see what happens.
Minimally interventionist foreign policy? Hmm, I can't remember the objection here. I think it ends with a "q", but I might be wrong.
Free trade? Sure, unless you need votes in a big steel state. Then forget it.
Respect for the constitution? We've got american citizens sitting in jails right now, no charges filed, no lawyers, no trial, ever. Get labeled a terrorist and you can just disappear.
I could go on for quite a while. Bush is not and has never been a conservative in the classical sense of the word. He's a radical.
Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..) The batteries lasted many hours after the landing, and the craft did cruise in standby mode for 16 days, so this should have been possible.
I'm not a rocket scientist, but my guess is that Huygens would have frozen solid by then. It's easy to keep something warm in the near-perfect vacuum of space, but it's a lot harder when you're sitting on a surface of creme brulee with a lot of atmosphere around you. Huygens had some radioisotope heaters on board- these can't be throttled up or down, so the heat needed to keep the probe warm on the surface would have cooked the probe in space
I spent wasted hours in airports this year editing the video of my kids so I could give DVDs as gifts to the grandparents. I'm amazed I could do that for more than two hours on one charge, since it's running the disk and processor flat out. Sub-6 pounds even with a gig of RAM, DVD burner, 7200RPM HD, wireless and the rest. (And that's a two year old model!)
I love Powerbooks. Apple desktops are meh, but their laptops rule.
I was reading an article a month or two ago in Scientific American about this. The net effect of global warming may well be to make the east coast of the US and the UK colder and drier, not warmer. I can't remember the exact details, but basically right now these areas are warmed by the Gulf Stream, If the Greenland and arctic ice melt, a mass of cold fresh water will drive this current below the surface, giving lower temperatures and less moist air.
Slashdot Mirror
Already done. You'll pay a lot more than for the generic 100 to a spindle CD-Rs, but they should last a lot longer.
I used to buy Sony stuff quite a bit- my old home monitor was a Sony trinitron that lasted ~7 years. But I haven't bought anything of theirs recently- the quality just seems too bad. Samsung has gone the other way in a hurry- they used to be crap, and they're now a quality brand.
That said, while I like Morgan a lot, I think he really cripples himself in these sorts of awards with his sex scenes. (Haven't read MF yet- maybe he's stopped) To a 16-year-old boy, these are probably the coolest. To me, pushing 40, they're an embarrassment. "Gee, 2 pages of poorly written porn. Flip." I suspect I'm not exactly alone here. I always loved the way Zelanzy handled sex scenes- a bit of a leadup, then a comment along the lines of "You sophisticated readers aren't interested in the details"
I'm annoyed about The Algebraist- it's not coming out here in the US until *September*. WTF? I need my Banks fix, damnit.
And Dan Simmons? Please, please finish Olympos. It's almost cruel to make us wait so long- I need to know what our favorite Proust-quoting 8 ton armored semi-biological robot horseshoe crab is doing.
Oh, and Alastair Renyolds? Stop writing, please. Take a deep breath. You've got killer ideas and great talent, but speed is killing you. Redemption Ark sucked- please go back and write a *real* ending for the Revelation Space series. Check out Simmons- I'm pissed about the wait for Olympos, but I'll buy it.
"But Mommmmm! You promised not to throw out my posters of Linus if I stopped using old pizza boxes as a mattress!"
When I taught chemistry, I used a blackboard 95% of the time. I never touched Powerpoint. When I did use a computer, it was to do things that no blackboard can ever do- show 3-d models of atoms/molecules/orbitals, run simulations of things that can't be seen in a lab, etc. This is where they shine- modeling and visualization, working "what-if" scenarios, and eliminating the drudgery of long calculations. They're wonderful at enhancing communications in some cases- I can have students interact with a journalist in Bangaldesh easily, or a social worker in rural India. Easy video editing lets you build big libraries of "What to do/not to do in this situation" for people like teachers using real people and situations- we film a lot of the student teaching experiences education majors do here.
Computers can be insanely powerful teaching tools when used properly. The problem is that almost nobody does this- there's an attitude that someone moving your lecture notes from transparencies to Powerpoint is somehow useful in helping student learning. Umm, no, it's less than worthless. Teaching students to use graphing calculators? Near worthless- have them do it on paper until they're in college. The functions just aren't that complex. Multiple choice drill+kill quizzes on web sites or "educational" CD-ROMS? Almost worthless- students hate them for the most part, and it's usually simple fact based knowledge with no attempt at synthesis.
Teachers aren't taught to use this stuff effectively. Most colleges have people like me to help college professors, but there's virtually nobody past a tech support guy making $10/hour at most elementary and high schools. Until they build in education on the use of technology, expect to see this continue. It took business decades to figure out how to use computers well- education is still having problems.
Side note: I banned calculators on tests for my PChem class. I don't want numerical answers- they're useless for teaching, and foster "What equation do I need to memorize" thinking among the students. Give me the problem properly set up with all units shown- if you can do that I could care less that you can correctly hit the buttons on a calculator. I did offer to let them use slide rules (seriously)- if you can do the math on a slide rule you understand the problem. I really encourage people to do this- it was wonderful, and the students actually didn't mind.
Parenthood REALLY puts a crimp on the time you call your own.
Bingo. I had a guy in a store the other day try to sell me on some MMORPG. Umm, I've got a kid (two now)- you think I have time to do anything like that?
I saw a note where Sony wanted EQ2 to be accessible to "casual gamers", defined as people who only put in 20 hours/week. Umm, dudes, I doubt I could find 20 hours a month, and I'd only do that by neglecting either family or work.
Lately I've been either playing EKS logic games or Thief fan missions. Saveable and many playable in under 30 minutes. Given that Ian wants his bottle every 3 hours, that's about my limit.
Hitting a non-stationary object reliably at long range (800m-1000m) is next to impossible.
I've done this any number of times at greater distances while both I and the target were moving.
Of course, it was with a tank cannon...
Bush is a great president and he will not let this broadcast flag happen under his watch. I know liberal /. probably doesn't get this, but the Republicans are all about SMALLER gov't, people.
You've got to be joking. (At least, I hope you're being sarcastic) Check the second chart down. Bush has increased nondefense discretionary spending faster than Clinton by a large margin, and that's *with* a Republican dominated congress. Of course, that's not even including the *huge* growth in defense and homeland security related spending, most of it stuffed into little-reviewed supplemental appropriation bills. ("Yeah, we need another $90 billion for Iraq. Don't count it against the deficit figures, please.") Just look at the absurd Medicare prescription drug coverage bill- any true conservative would have run from this screaming.
The Republicans today are all about huge, intrusive government. They want to make sure you're a good little consumer, worship the proper god and avoid the gay. Oh yeah, and don't worry about running up the deficit to 3rd world levels- we'll never have to pay that back...
Just sign me "Disgusted ex-Republican".
When I was first learning to fly, I looked up the NTSB accident database for the C-152. Over and over again there were reports of mid-flight engine failures. With only one exception, every crash report had a line similar to "Total fuel found in the tanks was 1.5 gallons. Unusable fuel in a C-152 is 1.5 gallons."
I made it my vow that I might die flying, but it was never going to be due to something that stupid- always dip your tanks.
I heard people raving about Titan, so I gave it a read.
It was one of the worst books I ever suffered through. Totally unbeliveable plot, uninteresting, cardboard characters, bad, bad science and a deus ex machina ending that made no sense at all. A little bit better than Peter Hamilton-level dreck, but not much.
I've avoided almost all of his stuff since, but the little I've read afterwards hasn't improved my opinion. Can a Baxter fan suggest something that might change my mind?
Keep trying guys- my block lists will just get longer...
Building an attitude control system (a cluster of miniature rocket engines, plus control system) is nontrivial, too.
ObNit- you really, really don't want to use rocket engines for attitude control. Venting possibly condensible gases around a mirror you can't get to is a bad idea.
Hubble uses reaction wheels for attitude control. I assume the KH-es do the same. (Great bit from The Hubble Wars had a CIA spook commenting that Hubble was basically a KH-11-class spy satellite, just pointing the other way.)
Jon is our court jester. It's truly sad that you'll see more incisive commentary on TDS than on the major news networks. I've given up on all TV news except TDS- there's no point left to the major news programs anymore.
The most telling comment I ever saw on TDS was a short clip of a british journalist grilling Tony Blair about something. Stewart's comment was something like "Where can we get some guys like this?" Lord knows the american media has just given up.
You're forgetting that your newsreader probably took 15 minutes to download those threads, plus another 2000 others you're not interested in.
Ahh, you've never even used it, have you? Threads downloaded in a few seconds, in the background for all subscribed groups in any decent newsreader. Hell, response was faster (much, much faster) with plain old rn in 1988 than it is with /. today. Pure text takes very little bandwidth.
Have you *used* Usenet in the last 10 years??? Many forums are completely overrun with ads.
Some are. Most aren't, thanks to a bunch of dedicated anti-spammers. (Think of them as /. moderators, only sane.) Most of the rest goes away when it hits the regexp-based killfile. You know, one of those things you can only dream about with a web based forum?
I cry when I consider how poor of an interface even the best web discussion forums have. Where are my kill files? (I decide what's important- not some moderator.) My intelligent threading? My color coding by topic/author/keywords/threads? Auto-quoting of replies? Keyboard only interface?
Not to mention the enormously greater speed of a good newsfeed. No clicking on links and waiting and waiting- the whole thread is there to browse instantly. Oh yeah- no passwords, logins, etc. And of course, no ads. No blinking crap. Just pure text love.
Plus, you lose the great feeling when you figure out how to forge moderation and post anywhere for the first time :^)
The entire history of web-based discussion forums is an attempt to duplicate a fraction of the features of rn- I was reading Usenet in 1988 with features web-based people can only dream about today.
I ask since they've had numerious articles talking about the demographic catastrophies coming for many first-world economies as the workforce ages and fewer and fewer workers need to pay for more and more retirees, so this article seems really out of sync.
One of the reasons I like working where I do is that I'm free to set my own goals (within limits), work on the technology that interests me, and people care much more about function than form. Ugly but functional is fine. (Which is good, since I'm a crappy artist) There are also a lot fewer of the butt-kissing suckups in higher ed than industry- they do exist, but most are more interested in a paycheck than an interesting career.
Oh yeah, bonuses are almost nonexistant, as are raises. Although I actually got a bonus this year for working on an experimental course. First time in ten years of various higher ed jobs. $500!
Try this scenario- you bust your ass 12 hours a day/7 days a week for a year to spec, design and code Wizzyfoo. It's awesome. It does some really neat things. Two weeks before it goes live, the company decides that Wizzyfoo just isn't compatible with the new direction the company is moving in. All your work is tossed in the bin and you're assigned to a new project. No bonus for you.
Meanwhile, Bob across the aisle goofs off, posting meaningless replies at /. for most the day and goes golfing with the boss every weekend. Since he's got the ear of the boss, he manages to get a great looking demo before the suits, who decide to make it the new big thing. He gets the cash for the neat demo, even if there's nothing behind it and the product wouldn't work in reality.
Would this happen at Google? Maybe not, but if you don't think similar happens everyday in industry you're blind. The suckups and losers get rewarded, the truly good get shuffled off since they're hard to deal with.
Us. I just inherited our electronic portfolio system, which runs Apache/Tomcat/MySQL on Windows2000. We're mostly a Windows shop, and it runs fine. (Well, sorta fine, but I think that's mostly some problems with the portfolio, not A/T/M.)
I mean sure, he espouses conservative values
I'm curious- what are these conservative values you speak of?
- Smaller government? Nope. He's never vetoed a spending bill. Even excluding the military and homeland security, government expenditures are growing faster than during Clinton's terms.
- Fiscal responsibility? Dear Lord in Heaven, no. His entire economic policy amounts to "Charge it!"
- State's rights? Just try to pass a medical marijuana (CA) or euthanasia (OR) bill and see what happens.
- Minimally interventionist foreign policy? Hmm, I can't remember the objection here. I think it ends with a "q", but I might be wrong.
- Free trade? Sure, unless you need votes in a big steel state. Then forget it.
- Respect for the constitution? We've got american citizens sitting in jails right now, no charges filed, no lawyers, no trial, ever. Get labeled a terrorist and you can just disappear.
I could go on for quite a while. Bush is not and has never been a conservative in the classical sense of the word. He's a radical.Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..) The batteries lasted many hours after the landing, and the craft did cruise in standby mode for 16 days, so this should have been possible.
I'm not a rocket scientist, but my guess is that Huygens would have frozen solid by then. It's easy to keep something warm in the near-perfect vacuum of space, but it's a lot harder when you're sitting on a surface of creme brulee with a lot of atmosphere around you. Huygens had some radioisotope heaters on board- these can't be throttled up or down, so the heat needed to keep the probe warm on the surface would have cooked the probe in space
I spent wasted hours in airports this year editing the video of my kids so I could give DVDs as gifts to the grandparents. I'm amazed I could do that for more than two hours on one charge, since it's running the disk and processor flat out. Sub-6 pounds even with a gig of RAM, DVD burner, 7200RPM HD, wireless and the rest. (And that's a two year old model!) I love Powerbooks. Apple desktops are meh, but their laptops rule.
I was reading an article a month or two ago in Scientific American about this. The net effect of global warming may well be to make the east coast of the US and the UK colder and drier, not warmer. I can't remember the exact details, but basically right now these areas are warmed by the Gulf Stream, If the Greenland and arctic ice melt, a mass of cold fresh water will drive this current below the surface, giving lower temperatures and less moist air.
Nah, they aren't /.'ed, they got Farked earlier in the day with the story on most embarrassing mistakes.
"I got the Weeners losers! HAHAHAHAHA"
Because we know that nobody on Slashdot or Fark will ever get to say "I got the Boobies!".