My husband's cousin had a bad reaction to the polio vaccine and is in a wheelchair because of it. But I still vaccinated my children.
If you actually read the info sheet the nurse gives you with each vaccine, you'll see there are risks. Some small percentage of the population has a bad reaction to some vaccines, and the info sheets describe what they are and what symptoms to watch for. I weighed the risks and decided in favor of vaccination.
I suppose I can thank our weekly team meetings for helping keep my handwriting skills up to snuff. I always take notes at the meetings so I can remember what we talked about and make to-do lists. Sometimes, the meetings become long and tedious, but now when I feel myself itching to look at the clock I can just remember that I'm practicing an important skill: writing on paper with a pen. And I'll know it's all worth it.
No kidding. I'm thinking of the notification systems the research group I work for developed back in the 90's - the way they worked was very similar to this patent. And we were not by any means the only player in the business of notification software.
It's not so much that, it's that our prison system is severely underfunded. SC spends less per prisoner than any other state and has a higher per capita prison population than most. We just don't have enough guards to properly enforce rules.
It's gotten so bad that the head of the Dept. of Corrections wants to let nonviolent offenders go early to save money and ease the crowding.
I've been told I look like Sarah Palin, but I am not particularly fond of her. Sure as heck wouldn't vote for her. I'm going to be very careful when I buy new glasses not to get ones that enhance the resemblance.
CSS...an almost unusable and completely unpredictable triumph of geekeneering over the less tech savvy minions
I remember building web pages back in the pre-CSS days, and let me tell you, the advent of CSS made web design about 1000x easier. No more complicated table layouts that make pages take eons to load. No more individual font tags for every single size and color change. Want to change something throughout the entire site? That'll be one massive find and replace, better hope it works. Today, you can accomplish the same thing by changing one line of text in a stylesheet.
You can stick with 1998-style web design if you want to, but I will keep my stylesheets and the creative freedom they give me, thankyouverymuch.
One example I've come across in the last few months where Flash is actually useful is for photographers' web sites. They're often paranoid about people copying the photos off their sites, yet they need to show their work so they'll get hired.
Putting their portfolios into a Flash slideshow is a good compromise. Of course, anyone who can make screenshots can still copy their photos, but it adds a little extra security.
Though, too many (IMO) go too far and have whiz-bang all-Flash sites with unnecessary bells and whistles. It's fine to use Flash for a specific purpose, but when you add animation, background music, etc. it detracts from the product being promoted (i.e. photography).
Current detectors can't even measure the mass of a neutrino yet. I think we've got a ways to go before detectors can manage complex communications.
I watched my husband help design and build a detector for his PhD research. There are a lot of scientists hard at work on the problem, but right now advances are incremental.
My office may be grey and beige, but the facilities people here have created a beautiful nature trail that is designed to be used for a calm walk through a valley near the buildings.
You don't happen to work at GE Plastics in Chicago, do you? I visited that office once and was impressed by how they imbued the typical, cubicled office with a zen-like atmosphere. It was subtle touches - the prints used for the carpets and cubicle walls, high ceilings, strategically placed windows - that made all the difference. I felt like I was in an "earth-tone" office rather than a beige and gray one.
GE Plastics in Charlotte, on the other hand, had probably the dreariest office I've ever visited. Unbroken swaths of gray carpet and cubicles, windowless beige walls without a single decoration, overhead fluorescents - it felt more like a prison than an office.
Also, take a look at the required classes outside your major at both schools. My husband, a physics major, transferred from a small liberal arts college to a large state university. The small school had a reasonable number of non-physics classes required of physics majors, enough so he could take classes that just interested him or that were relevant to his major but not required into his schedule.
The state university had a ridiculous number of required classes outside his major. They prop up a lot of the departments that would otherwise have low enrollment by making their classes required. As a result, he transferred as a senior and it still took him 2 years to graduate.
So while it can be good to have some variety in your coursework, make sure the school's requirements won't interfere with your plan.
I find light on dark color schemes really tiring on my eyes, especially for long blocks of text. I have a "make black on white" bookmarklet I use whenever I have to read a web page that uses a light on dark color scheme, to make it easier for me to read.
I believe strongly that the web is malleable, and that everyone should be able to customize his browsing experience. If you prefer giant yellow type on a black background, you should go ahead and set up your browser to facilitate that, and web sites should be designed to allow for that kind of user manipulation (standards + accessibility).
The URLs are clickable, at least on the web site and in the app I use to view my stream, called Twitterrific. It sits there on the side of my desktop, occasionally updating. I've found a lot of good and useful information and news from the links in my tweetstream.
Twitter is also more useful if the people you want to follow are already using it. In my case, they are. I can see what the top people in my field are doing and watch in on conferences and meetups that I'm unable to go to. Yes, these people all have blogs, but I don't always have time to read a bunch of lengthy blog posts. Twitter forces brevity.
I'd say that Lessig is living amidst his largest "base of support." If anyone is going to understand and champion his cause, it's the folks in the Silicon Valley area.
Dell is good at selling commodity products to businesses and value consumers.
Not even that. In my university research group we stopped buying Dells because the brand-new machines consistently arrived with so many defects (e.g. drives installed improperly) and were just difficult to work with. For example, we bought two high-end workstations that within weeks of each other. After a while we decided to move the extra memory from one to the other and discovered we couldn't because even though they were exactly the same model built and nearly the same time they used different internal components. I guess Dell found a cheaper supplier for some part and changed the innards but not the model number, or else they were assembled at 2 different factories and Dell doesn't care that there's no consistency among their manufacturers.
Just looking back at that keyboard reminds me of all the fun I had with our old C64. I remember painstakingly drawing pictures using the little bitmap shapes printed on the sides of the keys. I made my own CYOA-type games with these graphics, and a game for my little brother that drew different kinds of teddy bears.
they have merely memorized (or written down) a series of exact steps and they know that if they perform the magical steps, the magical process occurs and they get the desired output
This is a perfect description of how I deal with the DMV, the HR dept., and any other bureaucratic entity which requires me to submit paperwork.
And in the small town I live in, most driving is done because it is the only way to get from point A to point B. The existing civic infrastructure was built to accommodate people, horses, and cars in a small area of downtown. Everywhere else, it was only built to accommodate cars. Our town has no public transportation, and most of the residential areas don't even have sidewalks.
My town is not unique in the U.S. In many places, everything that's been built during the last 30 years has been designed with the assumption that people have cars, and that's how they get from place to place. You can offer them buses instead of cars, but they'll still have to drive to get to the bus stop (or else walk on the narrow shoulder of a street next to 35mph traffic), which kind of defeats the purpose. Retrofitting any other kind of alternative transportation (sidewalks, light rail, bike lanes) will be expensive and meet a great deal of political resistance.
That does make sense. A small company my friends worked for once got a phone call from the FBI (or similar organization) regarding a poorly secured Linux box they had. Apparently, someone in Russia was using it to break into banks. And my friends were supposedly experts who knew what they were doing.
I'm sure there are plenty of other Linux dabblers out there who have boxes full of holes.
Slashdot Mirror
It costs a few thousand dollars to file a patent. How many people have that lying around?
My husband's cousin had a bad reaction to the polio vaccine and is in a wheelchair because of it. But I still vaccinated my children.
If you actually read the info sheet the nurse gives you with each vaccine, you'll see there are risks. Some small percentage of the population has a bad reaction to some vaccines, and the info sheets describe what they are and what symptoms to watch for. I weighed the risks and decided in favor of vaccination.
You're a Clemson fan, aren't you? Trying to convice people Garnets are dangerous. Hmph!
It's not exactly a bubble, it's more like a void. Peter Hamilton was prescient.
I suppose I can thank our weekly team meetings for helping keep my handwriting skills up to snuff. I always take notes at the meetings so I can remember what we talked about and make to-do lists. Sometimes, the meetings become long and tedious, but now when I feel myself itching to look at the clock I can just remember that I'm practicing an important skill: writing on paper with a pen. And I'll know it's all worth it.
No kidding. I'm thinking of the notification systems the research group I work for developed back in the 90's - the way they worked was very similar to this patent. And we were not by any means the only player in the business of notification software.
Not going to argue with that. Yes, SC definitely locks up too many people.
It's not so much that, it's that our prison system is severely underfunded. SC spends less per prisoner than any other state and has a higher per capita prison population than most. We just don't have enough guards to properly enforce rules.
It's gotten so bad that the head of the Dept. of Corrections wants to let nonviolent offenders go early to save money and ease the crowding.
I've been told I look like Sarah Palin, but I am not particularly fond of her. Sure as heck wouldn't vote for her. I'm going to be very careful when I buy new glasses not to get ones that enhance the resemblance.
Good point. Just because we have power companies doesn't mean we don't need electricians.
Matter of fact, you want to make decent money and have a steady supply of work, look into becoming an electrician.
CSS...an almost unusable and completely unpredictable triumph of geekeneering over the less tech savvy minions
I remember building web pages back in the pre-CSS days, and let me tell you, the advent of CSS made web design about 1000x easier. No more complicated table layouts that make pages take eons to load. No more individual font tags for every single size and color change. Want to change something throughout the entire site? That'll be one massive find and replace, better hope it works. Today, you can accomplish the same thing by changing one line of text in a stylesheet.
You can stick with 1998-style web design if you want to, but I will keep my stylesheets and the creative freedom they give me, thankyouverymuch.
One example I've come across in the last few months where Flash is actually useful is for photographers' web sites. They're often paranoid about people copying the photos off their sites, yet they need to show their work so they'll get hired.
Putting their portfolios into a Flash slideshow is a good compromise. Of course, anyone who can make screenshots can still copy their photos, but it adds a little extra security.
Though, too many (IMO) go too far and have whiz-bang all-Flash sites with unnecessary bells and whistles. It's fine to use Flash for a specific purpose, but when you add animation, background music, etc. it detracts from the product being promoted (i.e. photography).
Current detectors can't even measure the mass of a neutrino yet. I think we've got a ways to go before detectors can manage complex communications.
I watched my husband help design and build a detector for his PhD research. There are a lot of scientists hard at work on the problem, but right now advances are incremental.
We had a terrible ant problem in our old office. I remember one occasion when I found the iBook I used for testing swarming with ants. Ick.
At least we were fortunate enough that there weren't enough ants to really damage anything. I'm glad I don't work in that office anymore.
My office may be grey and beige, but the facilities people here have created a beautiful nature trail that is designed to be used for a calm walk through a valley near the buildings.
You don't happen to work at GE Plastics in Chicago, do you? I visited that office once and was impressed by how they imbued the typical, cubicled office with a zen-like atmosphere. It was subtle touches - the prints used for the carpets and cubicle walls, high ceilings, strategically placed windows - that made all the difference. I felt like I was in an "earth-tone" office rather than a beige and gray one.
GE Plastics in Charlotte, on the other hand, had probably the dreariest office I've ever visited. Unbroken swaths of gray carpet and cubicles, windowless beige walls without a single decoration, overhead fluorescents - it felt more like a prison than an office.
Also, take a look at the required classes outside your major at both schools. My husband, a physics major, transferred from a small liberal arts college to a large state university. The small school had a reasonable number of non-physics classes required of physics majors, enough so he could take classes that just interested him or that were relevant to his major but not required into his schedule.
The state university had a ridiculous number of required classes outside his major. They prop up a lot of the departments that would otherwise have low enrollment by making their classes required. As a result, he transferred as a senior and it still took him 2 years to graduate.
So while it can be good to have some variety in your coursework, make sure the school's requirements won't interfere with your plan.
I find light on dark color schemes really tiring on my eyes, especially for long blocks of text. I have a "make black on white" bookmarklet I use whenever I have to read a web page that uses a light on dark color scheme, to make it easier for me to read.
I believe strongly that the web is malleable, and that everyone should be able to customize his browsing experience. If you prefer giant yellow type on a black background, you should go ahead and set up your browser to facilitate that, and web sites should be designed to allow for that kind of user manipulation (standards + accessibility).
The URLs are clickable, at least on the web site and in the app I use to view my stream, called Twitterrific. It sits there on the side of my desktop, occasionally updating. I've found a lot of good and useful information and news from the links in my tweetstream.
Twitter is also more useful if the people you want to follow are already using it. In my case, they are. I can see what the top people in my field are doing and watch in on conferences and meetups that I'm unable to go to. Yes, these people all have blogs, but I don't always have time to read a bunch of lengthy blog posts. Twitter forces brevity.
Take a look at this map of California's 12th congressional district.
I'd say that Lessig is living amidst his largest "base of support." If anyone is going to understand and champion his cause, it's the folks in the Silicon Valley area.
Right now, I am so pissed off that I bought a 2 year pro account just two days ago. There's $47 down the tubes!
Dell is good at selling commodity products to businesses and value consumers.
Not even that. In my university research group we stopped buying Dells because the brand-new machines consistently arrived with so many defects (e.g. drives installed improperly) and were just difficult to work with. For example, we bought two high-end workstations that within weeks of each other. After a while we decided to move the extra memory from one to the other and discovered we couldn't because even though they were exactly the same model built and nearly the same time they used different internal components. I guess Dell found a cheaper supplier for some part and changed the innards but not the model number, or else they were assembled at 2 different factories and Dell doesn't care that there's no consistency among their manufacturers.
I wouldn't buy a Dell handheld for any reason.
Just looking back at that keyboard reminds me of all the fun I had with our old C64. I remember painstakingly drawing pictures using the little bitmap shapes printed on the sides of the keys. I made my own CYOA-type games with these graphics, and a game for my little brother that drew different kinds of teddy bears.
they have merely memorized (or written down) a series of exact steps and they know that if they perform the magical steps, the magical process occurs and they get the desired output
This is a perfect description of how I deal with the DMV, the HR dept., and any other bureaucratic entity which requires me to submit paperwork.
And in the small town I live in, most driving is done because it is the only way to get from point A to point B. The existing civic infrastructure was built to accommodate people, horses, and cars in a small area of downtown. Everywhere else, it was only built to accommodate cars. Our town has no public transportation, and most of the residential areas don't even have sidewalks.
My town is not unique in the U.S. In many places, everything that's been built during the last 30 years has been designed with the assumption that people have cars, and that's how they get from place to place. You can offer them buses instead of cars, but they'll still have to drive to get to the bus stop (or else walk on the narrow shoulder of a street next to 35mph traffic), which kind of defeats the purpose. Retrofitting any other kind of alternative transportation (sidewalks, light rail, bike lanes) will be expensive and meet a great deal of political resistance.
That does make sense. A small company my friends worked for once got a phone call from the FBI (or similar organization) regarding a poorly secured Linux box they had. Apparently, someone in Russia was using it to break into banks. And my friends were supposedly experts who knew what they were doing.
I'm sure there are plenty of other Linux dabblers out there who have boxes full of holes.