Seriously, you don't think there's anything new in the technologies that enabled the rovers or that made SpaceShipOne possible?
Cassini you might be able to make an argument about, but I think these other two are certainly as much of an advancement as the "robot that can do science experiments" that made their list.
Nothing in the piece about the two Mars Rovers. Nothing about Space Ship One. Nothing about the Cassini flight (though some of it's major work is still to come).
Is space exploration no longer considered technological? Or is this just not on their "radar" screens?
Still, I'm glad to see they mentioned some of the less recognized advances such as the quantum entanglement work.
What I find interesting was that the previous crew hadn't snacked in the traditional sense - but had actually eaten more "good" food and left the snacks behind.
Which brings up the question of whether you get more cravings for calcium and protein as the body reacts to the effects of zero-g, or if it just says something about the preferences of the previous crew?
I think part of the problem with this, and many other similar studies, is that the results don't generalize well.
Personal example - I can deal with a fair amount of multiple tasking as long as it's the right kind of task. However, some things require concentration. For myself, this means putting headphones on and turning on some music. If I don't have something that will tune out everything else, I fall right back into "do a little of everything mode".
On the other hand, my wife has to be focused and has to have pretty much complete quiet or she can't do anything. That's not a knock (she almost has a PhD), but it does mean we have to plan things appropriately.
FWIW,
Ewan
---
Help me test this out and see if this is "for real"
I'm curious who you see as the Ubuntu target user/audience? It seems that from the ease of use, and "price", that you are trying to target the audience that doesn't care for Microsoft, or that is trying to do things and can't afford Microsoft.
With that, I'm a little curious as to why Ubuntu has chosen Gnome as the desktop? On older machines (such as my HP Kayak), Ubuntu runs passingly well, but simply having an option that probes the machine and then picks a desktop like XFCE or IceWM using a similar theme to the Gnome one would help refurbished/recycled machines really shine.
Similarly, it would seem that there are some software choices that could be tuned as well. As much as I like to use Open Office on my newer machines, selecting a more modest office offering for lower specification machines seems like a reasonable option.
OK, this article pushed a couple of my hot buttons since I get to see the results of the "good" schools during interviews almost every week (and if you're willing to live in San Antonio and know Hibernate, go ahead and email me).
First, because of all the concern about "cheating" I often spend weeks getting recent graduates to work on teams. The idea that sharing and collaborating on code is "OK" is so foreign to them, that I get people who won't show their work to anyone.
Next, because they have learned that the instructor "has the answer", they will come up to me and ask me how to solve the problem I asked them to work on several days ago. I work at a research institute, and if I knew the answers I wouldn't have bothered asking in the first place. I can help you figure out ways to find the answers, and suggest sites to look for examples of code that might solve similar problems to use as a guide (oh, but there's that cheating problem again), but if I have to figure out the answer for you, then why am I paying you a salary in the first place?
Finally, and I think I've seen this a few times in this discussion already, there's people skills. No program seems to bother to teach folks how to talk in front of a group, and if they do it's to tell them how to cover their Powerpoint slides. Folks, if I can read (and I wouldn't be where I was otherwise), I don't need you to recite your slides. I need you to tell me what you couldn't put on them, or to expand upon the couple bullets you have on each.
Sorry, but when I see how what people learn in school makes them start out on the wrong foot in the "real" world, it does get a little upsetting.
Which of course didn't happen because there are known side vectors at launch and differing attitudes throughout flight, and so the sensors were activated only shortly before the descent was to begin.
But I suspect you may have just been trying to be funny?
I think the trick in this arena is to find a balance of graphics and story, and that balance is going to differ based on the intended audience as well as the skill of the author/programmer.
For example, Kingdom of Loathing seems to do very well with a good story and rather poor graphics. On the other hand there are games where you sit there in awe of the visuals and can pretty much forget about why you're there.
The applications that most get the attention of folks in my office run under both Windows and Linux, and the fact they do so make it easier to ease folks into thinking outside the Microsoft "box". While I'm not sure I'm looking forward to a version of Firefox or OpenOffice written in Mono, I can't say it would be a bad thing either.
In fact I think it would be "real" interesting to have someone write an app in Java, and another in C#, that can run in their respective environments on both Windows and Linux, and see where the sweet spot is.
Of course, I'm also the sort of person that thinks that imagining what Bill Gates' daughters will teach him about technology is fun too...
Generally I have found the firewire entries for doing DV captures to a laptop or to avoid tying yourself down to a particular PC to be better than the USB or USB 2 entries. This tends to be better supported in terms of both the quality of the image, and the ability to edit the file afterwards. Not to mention that there is excellent support in Linux as well as Windows for this (Kino and Cinelerra).
As far as devices, my personal preference is a Canopus ADVC-100 connected to the output from a VCR. YMMV of course.
Obligatory Plug - Please check out my online novel.
Has that actually happened to you, or is that something you've "heard"?
Myself, I've run a 4 firewire disk RAID-5 using Reiserfs and never had any problems. And nothing will exercise a disk or a filesystem quite like running RAID...
The thing I notice about this is that they've found a way to advertise they have jobs available, and to increase their general branding effort, by paying for a simple banner.
I think that shows a lot more thought than coming up with the equation in the first place.
As for using it to narrow applications to only "smart" applicants, there are a lot of other ways of doing so. Like following up on referrals...
Obligatory Plug - Please check out my online novel
Not to belittle a heck of an achievement, but I was glad to see the author explain how even under such extreme conditions and with much improved equipment than was used they would be able to do as well as the Hubble only 10% of the time. Which (IMNSHO) again points out the need to keep the Hubble up there.
However, I think Site C shows promise for imaging sites that are not in the right plane for Hubble to get a look at, or where the long winter night would allow for extended exposures...
Obligatory plug - please check out my online novel
You want to increase the number of machines running Firefox instead of IE? Then volunteer to go around and setup folks machines with Firefox. Seriously. Most of us have friends, family, and even fellow workers who barely understand the difference between a browser and the web. If you can take the time to set it up (including transferring their bookmarks) and then show them how to use the new features (like tabs), you'll get converts easily.
Of course if they're not all that tech savvy, it's not like they'll be able to restore IE anyway (evil grin)
I agree that Linux needs a Music service, and I agree that I would prefer one that is founded on and focused on Linux. Considering the likelihood of that at this point, I consider getting a service like Rhapsody to support Linux "the next best thing".
As for Linspire, the service they charge for is based on apt-get, but serves packages that they have done the dependency resolving on so you don't have the problem in apt-get where one tree of dependency crashes into another tree. Whether someone thinks that avoiding having to do manual resolving is worth the subscription fee is up to the buyer. And yes, I've played with Sarge directly...
While I would have rather seen a pre-announcement of when Rhapsody would be available to Linux users, I thought that overall he did a fair job of explaining his position. I think in a lot of ways he and his company resemble Linspire and it's CEO.
The one fault they also seem to share is that they get geek speak, but I'm not sure they truly understand. IOW, they understand the promise of the really open market, but don't live and breathe it in their business. So they're better than many of the alternatives (like our dear MS Borg), but still aren't taking advantage of the full market they could get if they made that extra step and truly opened up...
FWIW, I've spent money with both companies in the past, and will do so again if Rhapsody ever does offer a Linux version.
Obligatory plug - please check out my online novel
When I got my new computer, our support staff was too "busy" to setup my system, and I've been using Firefox and Thunderbird ever since. Amazing how you can redefine policy if you're willing to do a bit of work yourself:-)
However, two things that have kept me from making a greater push into converting folks have been Thunderbird's buggy LDAP support (our company email directory is LDAP) and the lack of a central calendar. Yes, I use the calendar add-on, and am aware of the stand-alone product, but until it can talk with our Exchange server, the conversion process will be painful. I was willing to do it because I prefer having the same system at work as at home (where I run Linux). Most folks here aren't going to be quite as motivated...
Seems to me that the ultimate way to prevent piracy is not to charge for the software in the first place. I'm not being flip. Rather than charge for the software, charge for access to message boards and for add-ons and the like. Doing so you can then do everything possible to increase your user base, like even encouraging copying, and then have more people who want to pay to get the "value added" features. Seems to work for a lot of the open source projects out there...
Obligatory plug - please check out my online novel.
Maybe it's just me, but the only drivers I routinely have trouble with under Linux are those for my wireless networking devices. I assume folks can see how having a "driver on demand" database sets up a Catch-22 in this case...
Part of the problem may be that SF in the main print markets is having to serve a different market than where most of the readership is - which is online.
Of course, as this shows, I may be biased:-)
Early 1990's, and I had just taken a job as a consultant at an agency in Minneapolis, MN. At the time IBM was trying to get their AIX systems in to businesses to replace their old System 34 and 36 machines. Because there hadn't been many sales at this point, they had an engineer in the area, but no software/admin person.
So my office gets a call from IBM looking for someone who knows Unix, and AIX experience is a plus. Which got me the assignment.
I meet the engineer in St. Paul at a company that does electrical wiring for other businesses. They have a spanking new system with an accounting package that works great for them, but every so often, without any apparent rhyme or reason, most of the terminals drop off the system.
The engineer and I spend most of the day working on the machine, and of course the terminals are rock solid whenever it's up. We go back the next morning trying to puzzle through what might be happening, and I decide to see if there might be a problem with the cabling.
I'm shown around the place, and just as one of the employees there takes me to a room in the basement to turn on the lights, the terminals go off.
I run upstairs to see if there's anything apparent, but no processes seem to be acting funny, and the console is still talking just fine to the machine. Probing the network card shows it's up, but not seeing anything.
Curious about that, I reach behind the machine to see if perhaps the cable has come loose... whereupon I get a shock similar to touching an active electric fence.
It seems that at one point in the cable run they had put unshielded cable next to a high power line, and were basically running current on the network whenever someone turned on the light in that room of the basement. That was (not surprisingly) knocking off the terminals in a burst of static.
The amazing thing (to me) was that the network card was handling a fairly high bit of power coming in on the TTY ports, and not seeming to be affected. Good ol' IBM:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, you don't think there's anything new in the technologies that enabled the rovers or that made SpaceShipOne possible?
Cassini you might be able to make an argument about, but I think these other two are certainly as much of an advancement as the "robot that can do science experiments" that made their list.
FWIW...
Is space exploration no longer considered technological? Or is this just not on their "radar" screens?
Still, I'm glad to see they mentioned some of the less recognized advances such as the quantum entanglement work.
FWIW,
Ewan
---
Help me test this to see if it's for real
Which brings up the question of whether you get more cravings for calcium and protein as the body reacts to the effects of zero-g, or if it just says something about the preferences of the previous crew?
FWIW,
Ewan
---
Yes I have a blog - deal with it :-)
Personal example - I can deal with a fair amount of multiple tasking as long as it's the right kind of task. However, some things require concentration. For myself, this means putting headphones on and turning on some music. If I don't have something that will tune out everything else, I fall right back into "do a little of everything mode".
On the other hand, my wife has to be focused and has to have pretty much complete quiet or she can't do anything. That's not a knock (she almost has a PhD), but it does mean we have to plan things appropriately.
FWIW,
Ewan
---
Help me test this out and see if this is "for real"
I'm curious who you see as the Ubuntu target user/audience? It seems that from the ease of use, and "price", that you are trying to target the audience that doesn't care for Microsoft, or that is trying to do things and can't afford Microsoft.
With that, I'm a little curious as to why Ubuntu has chosen Gnome as the desktop? On older machines (such as my HP Kayak), Ubuntu runs passingly well, but simply having an option that probes the machine and then picks a desktop like XFCE or IceWM using a similar theme to the Gnome one would help refurbished/recycled machines really shine.
Similarly, it would seem that there are some software choices that could be tuned as well. As much as I like to use Open Office on my newer machines, selecting a more modest office offering for lower specification machines seems like a reasonable option.
Interested in your thoughts on this...
OK, this article pushed a couple of my hot buttons since I get to see the results of the "good" schools during interviews almost every week (and if you're willing to live in San Antonio and know Hibernate, go ahead and email me).
First, because of all the concern about "cheating" I often spend weeks getting recent graduates to work on teams. The idea that sharing and collaborating on code is "OK" is so foreign to them, that I get people who won't show their work to anyone.
Next, because they have learned that the instructor "has the answer", they will come up to me and ask me how to solve the problem I asked them to work on several days ago. I work at a research institute, and if I knew the answers I wouldn't have bothered asking in the first place. I can help you figure out ways to find the answers, and suggest sites to look for examples of code that might solve similar problems to use as a guide (oh, but there's that cheating problem again), but if I have to figure out the answer for you, then why am I paying you a salary in the first place?
Finally, and I think I've seen this a few times in this discussion already, there's people skills. No program seems to bother to teach folks how to talk in front of a group, and if they do it's to tell them how to cover their Powerpoint slides. Folks, if I can read (and I wouldn't be where I was otherwise), I don't need you to recite your slides. I need you to tell me what you couldn't put on them, or to expand upon the couple bullets you have on each.
Sorry, but when I see how what people learn in school makes them start out on the wrong foot in the "real" world, it does get a little upsetting.
Which of course didn't happen because there are known side vectors at launch and differing attitudes throughout flight, and so the sensors were activated only shortly before the descent was to begin.
But I suspect you may have just been trying to be funny?
For example, Kingdom of Loathing seems to do very well with a good story and rather poor graphics. On the other hand there are games where you sit there in awe of the visuals and can pretty much forget about why you're there.
Just my .02 worth
In fact I think it would be "real" interesting to have someone write an app in Java, and another in C#, that can run in their respective environments on both Windows and Linux, and see where the sweet spot is.
Of course, I'm also the sort of person that thinks that imagining what Bill Gates' daughters will teach him about technology is fun too...
You might check out:m
:-)
http://www.grandtec.com/ultimatewireless.ht
Which appears to support what you're looking for. However, I haven't tried it myself, so please let us know if you decide to give it a shot
As far as devices, my personal preference is a Canopus ADVC-100 connected to the output from a VCR. YMMV of course.
Obligatory Plug - Please check out my online novel.
Has that actually happened to you, or is that something you've "heard"?
Myself, I've run a 4 firewire disk RAID-5 using Reiserfs and never had any problems. And nothing will exercise a disk or a filesystem quite like running RAID...
Obligatory Plug - Please check out my online novel
I think that shows a lot more thought than coming up with the equation in the first place.
As for using it to narrow applications to only "smart" applicants, there are a lot of other ways of doing so. Like following up on referrals...
Obligatory Plug - Please check out my online novel
However, I think Site C shows promise for imaging sites that are not in the right plane for Hubble to get a look at, or where the long winter night would allow for extended exposures...
Obligatory plug - please check out my online novel
Of course if they're not all that tech savvy, it's not like they'll be able to restore IE anyway (evil grin)
Obligatory plug - please visit my online novel
I agree that Linux needs a Music service, and I agree that I would prefer one that is founded on and focused on Linux. Considering the likelihood of that at this point, I consider getting a service like Rhapsody to support Linux "the next best thing".
As for Linspire, the service they charge for is based on apt-get, but serves packages that they have done the dependency resolving on so you don't have the problem in apt-get where one tree of dependency crashes into another tree. Whether someone thinks that avoiding having to do manual resolving is worth the subscription fee is up to the buyer. And yes, I've played with Sarge directly...
FWIW,
Ewan
Assume we'll get an update after her ride, which then saves me $3000 - until I decide I have to experience it myself...
Obligatory plug - Please check out my online novel
The one fault they also seem to share is that they get geek speak, but I'm not sure they truly understand. IOW, they understand the promise of the really open market, but don't live and breathe it in their business. So they're better than many of the alternatives (like our dear MS Borg), but still aren't taking advantage of the full market they could get if they made that extra step and truly opened up...
FWIW, I've spent money with both companies in the past, and will do so again if Rhapsody ever does offer a Linux version.
Obligatory plug - please check out my online novel
However, two things that have kept me from making a greater push into converting folks have been Thunderbird's buggy LDAP support (our company email directory is LDAP) and the lack of a central calendar. Yes, I use the calendar add-on, and am aware of the stand-alone product, but until it can talk with our Exchange server, the conversion process will be painful. I was willing to do it because I prefer having the same system at work as at home (where I run Linux). Most folks here aren't going to be quite as motivated...
Obligatory Plug - Please read my online novel
Obligatory plug - please check out my online novel.
Oh, and my obligatory plug for my online novel
Part of the problem may be that SF in the main print markets is having to serve a different market than where most of the readership is - which is online. Of course, as this shows, I may be biased :-)
Early 1990's, and I had just taken a job as a consultant at an agency in Minneapolis, MN. At the time IBM was trying to get their AIX systems in to businesses to replace their old System 34 and 36 machines. Because there hadn't been many sales at this point, they had an engineer in the area, but no software/admin person.
:-)
So my office gets a call from IBM looking for someone who knows Unix, and AIX experience is a plus. Which got me the assignment.
I meet the engineer in St. Paul at a company that does electrical wiring for other businesses. They have a spanking new system with an accounting package that works great for them, but every so often, without any apparent rhyme or reason, most of the terminals drop off the system.
The engineer and I spend most of the day working on the machine, and of course the terminals are rock solid whenever it's up. We go back the next morning trying to puzzle through what might be happening, and I decide to see if there might be a problem with the cabling.
I'm shown around the place, and just as one of the employees there takes me to a room in the basement to turn on the lights, the terminals go off.
I run upstairs to see if there's anything apparent, but no processes seem to be acting funny, and the console is still talking just fine to the machine. Probing the network card shows it's up, but not seeing anything.
Curious about that, I reach behind the machine to see if perhaps the cable has come loose... whereupon I get a shock similar to touching an active electric fence.
It seems that at one point in the cable run they had put unshielded cable next to a high power line, and were basically running current on the network whenever someone turned on the light in that room of the basement. That was (not surprisingly) knocking off the terminals in a burst of static.
The amazing thing (to me) was that the network card was handling a fairly high bit of power coming in on the TTY ports, and not seeming to be affected. Good ol' IBM
Was wondering if you view the Wikipedia as a competitor or an additional tool compared to a World Book or an Encyclopedia Britannica?
And do you see the future direction being more or less that way?