While I agree it is good to keep this child well-rounded and be wary of pushing him too hard, there are other things to keep in mind.
My biggest problem over the course of my education was not being pushed hard enough. I've never had to study hard for anything, and even slacking off, I tend to get good grades (mostly A's, some B's).
I now have great difficulty focusing my abilities enough to truly use them to their fullest extent.
Besides, the list of football and basketball should be supplemented with trips to the Opera, and if you have the budget, the Smithsonian.
Yes, but just try to prove the correctness of your program.
Can you test every possible combinations of input and machine conditions? Even just all combinations of input? Tested your program 10,000 times? Test it 10,000 more times.
You can never be certain that you've caught every runtime error or bug (assuming a complicated program).
I believe you meant 3.something meter radius... there are plenty of telescopes larger than 4 meter diameter meters now... including the one shown in the NOVA the previous poster mentioned: the MMT on top of Mt. Hopkins
(the 6.something meter mirror was cast at the Mirror Lab here at UA!)
It's called sampling... you don't care when you're getting a count of stars in a galaxy when you're off by a few hundred million... it's the order of magnitude that counts...
when you're counting ballots, a statistical description is unacceptable... note the mis-call of florida by the network's exit polling...
The problem is not in the counseling itself, it's in the act of segregating a group of people and treating them differently.
Not only differently, but negatively, since clinical treatment is seen as a sign that there is something significantly wrong with an individual, and seriously lessens the individual's perceived value.
Children and teens take every opportunity to exploit the difference of others to attack others and to protect their own fragile self-image. When you take individuals who are already perceived as different, when difference is a negative, and you send these people to counselling, you do irreperable harm.
Now, not only is the person seen as different, but that difference has been noticed by an authority figure, and the authority figure has given weight to the idea that the person is somehow bad for being who they are.
Social workers mean well, but their work can often backfire in a society which doesn't embrace their efforts.
I have no problem with movies that get science wrong. A certain amount of leeway is fine in order to portray an interesting story.
Unfortunately, hollywood has started making movies which are all about the science. They play up how "accurate" the science is, and make it an integral part of the plotline. BUT THEY GET IT HORRIBLY HORRIBLY WRONG!!!
Star Wars was never meant to be about science. They never even try to explain the cool tech they have. And that's fine, it falls under the category "not important to the plot to try to explain."
Talk about frivolous.... if I check slashdot every 15 minutes for the next 70 years (should I be so lucky...) then what do I have at the end... carpal tunnel!
This guy at least has a trashed website to show for his time/effort...
Actually it is a very good argument. If we were discussing cars, for example, and we lived in separate countries, would it make sense for me to tout a car that was only available in mine?
If something is not available to you, it is irrelevant, regardless of how good it may be.
If you choose your OS based on browser availability, then, no, it is no longer an irrelevant point. But choosing an OS based solely on the availability of one application seems to me to be a little silly.
Well I like your new take on the monkeys in a room anecdote, but there is quite a bit of difference between these two situations.
For "privileged" vantage points, there are 360 degrees of possible azimuthal sight lines, times 180 for longitudinal (I know I'm not using very good terminoligy here, but you get the idea).
That's quite a bit of space to have a specific sight line (directly perpendicular to the plane of a binary star system's orbit for example) but not nearly as large as a random Hamlet. A work of literature as complicated as Hamlet will NEVER be randomly generated by a pack of monkeys, unless you want to wait many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe. We have many examples of star systems and galaxies, however, for which we view them nearly perpendicularly (or more likely, since any azimuthal angle is equivalent the probability is higher) along their plane.
Add the variety to the universe coupled with our mind's excellent image processing, which is eager to find order in chaos, and you find pictures such as this one.
Of course it doesn't bother me. There could be a billion such objects in the universe, which we don't notice as special because they lack this chance alignment, making it look like a skull from our perspective.
In a universe as vast as ours, chance alignments are inevitable.
Considering the number of Aircraft carriers, destroyers, merchant vessels, and the like we dumped in there during WWII, MIR is like a speck of cosmic dust in comparison.
It's a nice thought, but the ocean is really FAR FAR too large a system to be affected by MIR's impact... if it were, consider what the Bikini Atoll atom bomb tests in the 50's would have done.
Interest compensates the loaner for risking the money they "didn't need anyway." If I have $1000, and you come to me with this wide-eyed internet startup idea, and I'm not looking to get anything back from it, I'm not likely to loan you the money. If, on the other hand, I loan my money out to a bunch of different people, chances are not all of them will fail, and the interest I charge will be proportional to the probability that I get a return.
In this way we allow the people with ideas to bring their ideas/dreams to fruition, when they don't otherwise have the resources to do so.
Let's be realistic. EVERY company wants to be microsoft. Why do you think monopoly laws exist? It's the natural goal of every company to maximize profit, which is much easier to do when that pesky competition is eliminated.
They've dealt with this issue on the Kernel mailing list, and I believe the problem is that it would prevent the kernel's distribution in other countries which still don't allow the export/import/use of crypto. Since nobody wants to cut out potential users of Linux, crypo will have to remain an extra patch.
Obviously file operations to a ram disk are faster than their hard-drive counterparts. But my point is that programs which cache data optimize for the 99% who are caching to a high-latency medium, not memory. Most programs also tend to do their own second layer of caching in memory, as well as the OS's buffering of file operations. Both of these optimizations are harmed by reducing the overall amount of available ram, and thus using a ramdisk probably does more harm than good (unless you are rich enough to just buy 10x the ram you could possibly ever need).
The problem with allocating that much ram to just hold cache for a web browser or similar program is that they're designed to expect that disk cache to be very VERY slow.
So you'd be better off just using that memory to allow the OS to buffer disk accesses and your programs to do their own in-memory caching than to have it act as a ramdisk.
I'm sorry, but half the fun of being a geek is getting to speculate about what the next best thing is going to be...
Apple is shooting itself in the foot by not allowing rumors to spread... everybody knows to take these things with a grain of salt, but they still allow you to get excited about the product.
Since the VLT source appears to be slashdotted, another good place to look is the Astronomy Picture of the Day, which has a Hubble pic of the comet up today.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree it is good to keep this child well-rounded and be wary of pushing him too hard, there are other things to keep in mind.
My biggest problem over the course of my education was not being pushed hard enough. I've never had to study hard for anything, and even slacking off, I tend to get good grades (mostly A's, some B's).
I now have great difficulty focusing my abilities enough to truly use them to their fullest extent.
Besides, the list of football and basketball should be supplemented with trips to the Opera, and if you have the budget, the Smithsonian.
Doug
Yes, but just try to prove the correctness of your program.
Can you test every possible combinations of input and machine conditions? Even just all combinations of input? Tested your program 10,000 times? Test it 10,000 more times.
You can never be certain that you've caught every runtime error or bug (assuming a complicated program).
Doug
In a word, no.
The instruments on Hubble are very very sensitive, capturing as many photons as possible. It's really designed for a completely different problem.
Looking at the earth, sun, or moon would SEVERELY damage the Hubble's optics, probably rendering much of its systems inoperable.
Doug
There's a big difference between finding a
security hole in someone's system, and immediately
notifying the sysadmins so they can close
it.
Hijacking an email server, and committing
thousands of cases of fraud is another.
Email is worthless if we cannot trust that the
apparent author is the true one.
Doug
Very good point. By that argument, quality control people, and business consultants don't work at all
;)
Well maybe they're right about that last one
Doug
All I know about mirrors I learned from my countless mirror lab tours ;)
Doug
I believe you meant 3.something meter radius... there are plenty of telescopes larger than 4 meter diameter meters now... including the one shown in the NOVA the previous poster mentioned: the MMT on top of Mt. Hopkins
(the 6.something meter mirror was cast at the Mirror Lab here at UA!)
Doug
It's called sampling... you don't care when you're getting a count of stars in a galaxy when you're off by a few hundred million... it's the order of magnitude that counts...
when you're counting ballots, a statistical description is unacceptable... note the mis-call of florida by the network's exit polling...
Doug
The problem is not in the counseling itself, it's in the act of segregating a group of people and treating them differently.
Not only differently, but negatively, since clinical treatment is seen as a sign that there is something significantly wrong with an individual, and seriously lessens the individual's perceived value.
Children and teens take every opportunity to exploit the difference of others to attack others and to protect their own fragile self-image. When you take individuals who are already perceived as different, when difference is a negative, and you send these people to counselling, you do irreperable harm.
Now, not only is the person seen as different, but that difference has been noticed by an authority figure, and the authority figure has given weight to the idea that the person is somehow bad for being who they are.
Social workers mean well, but their work can often backfire in a society which doesn't embrace their efforts.
Doug
But seriously, CAT5 is a must... wireless is nice, but expensive, and really not ready for prime time.
Plus it's FAR easier to add wireless reciever points later then it is to wire the entire building with cat5.
I have no problem with movies that get science wrong. A certain amount of leeway is fine in order to portray an interesting story.
Unfortunately, hollywood has started making movies which are all about the science. They play up how "accurate" the science is, and make it an integral part of the plotline. BUT THEY GET IT HORRIBLY HORRIBLY WRONG!!!
Star Wars was never meant to be about science. They never even try to explain the cool tech they have. And that's fine, it falls under the category "not important to the plot to try to explain."
Doug
Talk about frivolous.... if I check slashdot every 15 minutes for the next 70 years (should I be so lucky...) then what do I have at the end... carpal tunnel!
This guy at least has a trashed website to show for his time/effort...
I agree completely. Right now Americans judge things in english units, and possibly convert them to metric.
Until people are so comfortable with metric units that they can use them directly, english units will prevail.
Doug
Actually it is a very good argument. If we were discussing cars, for example, and we lived in separate countries, would it make sense for me to tout a car that was only available in mine?
If something is not available to you, it is irrelevant, regardless of how good it may be.
If you choose your OS based on browser availability, then, no, it is no longer an irrelevant point. But choosing an OS based solely on the availability of one application seems to me to be a little silly.
Doug
Well I like your new take on the monkeys in a room anecdote, but there is quite a bit of difference between these two situations.
For "privileged" vantage points, there are 360 degrees of possible azimuthal sight lines, times 180 for longitudinal (I know I'm not using very good terminoligy here, but you get the idea).
That's quite a bit of space to have a specific sight line (directly perpendicular to the plane of a binary star system's orbit for example) but not nearly as large as a random Hamlet. A work of literature as complicated as Hamlet will NEVER be randomly generated by a pack of monkeys, unless you want to wait many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe. We have many examples of star systems and galaxies, however, for which we view them nearly perpendicularly (or more likely, since any azimuthal angle is equivalent the probability is higher) along their plane.
Add the variety to the universe coupled with our mind's excellent image processing, which is eager to find order in chaos, and you find pictures such as this one.
Doug
Of course it doesn't bother me. There could be a billion such objects in the universe, which we don't notice as special because they lack this chance alignment, making it look like a skull from our perspective.
In a universe as vast as ours, chance alignments are inevitable.
Doug
Considering the number of Aircraft carriers, destroyers, merchant vessels, and the like we dumped in there during WWII, MIR is like a speck of cosmic dust in comparison.
It's a nice thought, but the ocean is really FAR FAR too large a system to be affected by MIR's impact... if it were, consider what the Bikini Atoll atom bomb tests in the 50's would have done.
Doug
Interest compensates the loaner for risking the money they "didn't need anyway." If I have $1000, and you come to me with this wide-eyed internet startup idea, and I'm not looking to get anything back from it, I'm not likely to loan you the money. If, on the other hand, I loan my money out to a bunch of different people, chances are not all of them will fail, and the interest I charge will be proportional to the probability that I get a return.
In this way we allow the people with ideas to bring their ideas/dreams to fruition, when they don't otherwise have the resources to do so.
Doug
Let's be realistic. EVERY company wants to be microsoft. Why do you think monopoly laws exist? It's the natural goal of every company to maximize profit, which is much easier to do when that pesky competition is eliminated.
Doug
They've dealt with this issue on the Kernel mailing list, and I believe the problem is that it would prevent the kernel's distribution in other countries which still don't allow the export/import/use of crypto. Since nobody wants to cut out potential users of Linux, crypo will have to remain an extra patch.
Doug
Obviously file operations to a ram disk are faster than their hard-drive counterparts. But my point is that programs which cache data optimize for the 99% who are caching to a high-latency medium, not memory. Most programs also tend to do their own second layer of caching in memory, as well as the OS's buffering of file operations. Both of these optimizations are harmed by reducing the overall amount of available ram, and thus using a ramdisk probably does more harm than good (unless you are rich enough to just buy 10x the ram you could possibly ever need).
Doug
The problem with allocating that much ram to just hold cache for a web browser or similar program is that they're designed to expect that disk cache to be very VERY slow.
So you'd be better off just using that memory to allow the OS to buffer disk accesses and your programs to do their own in-memory caching than to have it act as a ramdisk.
Doug
I'm sorry, but half the fun of being a geek is getting to speculate about what the next best thing is going to be...
Apple is shooting itself in the foot by not allowing rumors to spread... everybody knows to take these things with a grain of salt, but they still allow you to get excited about the product.
Doug
Since the VLT source appears to be slashdotted, another good place to look is the Astronomy Picture of the Day, which has a Hubble pic of the comet up today.
Doug
They probably want to be able to brag about "X million copies of our latest beta were downloaded."
Doug