Give them some Arduinos to mess around with. It utilizes a C-like programming language which is easy to get a handle on, but scales up in complexity to accomplish all sorts of things. They would also be learning about electronics, and microcontrollers. The Arduino can pretty much do anything from blinking an LED when you press a button, to interpreting gcode sent from a computer to control a 3-axis milling machine.
Seems like a good age to get them playing around with electronics anyway. And I always say that the wider range of things you can teach kids with a single activity, the better. They're more liable to retain it. Also, it's damn cool.
I'm 27 years old, and I had a lot of childhood experience with electronics, but no programming experience beyond some BASIC on the C64... I was *ecstatic* when I figured out how to use a 'navigation switch' (Single axis and a pushbutton center) to adjust the color mixture on an RGB LED. Sure, it had no practical use, but I learned a lot programming it. Currently, I'm turning the drive head carriages from two optical drives into a CNC laser engraver. (Though it will only have a 1.5x1.5" working area...)
Get these kids started on the road to evil genius!
I registered and cast an early vote For Barack Obama over the weekend.
Election night was spent playing EVE-Online with some friends, with IRC on another monitor, and CNN's election coverage on another. My father and I were following the election very closely. When they announced Obama had California, Oregon, and Washington we knew it was pretty much over. Apparently someone got the idea to ring the church bells to celebrate the news, nice touch.
...I have three computers that are on 24/7. 450, 550, and 750 watts. (My father's computer, my old machine/fileserver, and my current workstation/gaming rig, respectively) And five medium-to-large flatpanel displays. And these numbers aren't likely to go DOWN. Though, our only 'television', is a DLP projector, which I'm fairly sure consumes less power than a CRT. Oh yeah, we also basically run the A/C from May through September because we are physiologically incompatible with hot weather.
So yeah, I can believe that all the computers out there are putting a little strain on the power grid now and again.;o
Yeah, as far as I can tell, it's a Cintiq 21UX that's being used. ($2000!!!)
12x19? I didn't know they made an Intuos2 that big. Certainly seems like overkill. I have a 9x12 Intuos3 Special Edition ($500) and it's pretty big.
As far as I know, even tablet PCs using Wacom 'Penabled' tech lack some of the finer points associated with their graphics tablets. They really need to make a 'digital sketchpad', a tablet PC with all the refinements you expect from a high-end graphics tablet. (It needs to be able to use Intuos3 pens like the Cintiq!)
As an illustrator and 3d modeler, I must say, that is simply the most awesome thing I have ever seen. I would go so far as to say that it is 'insanely great'. I also just happen to be buying a Wacom Cintiq 21UX in the immediate future. FORTUITOUS!
"And then you realize that anybody who WENT to college would never say anything that stupid in public! And as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close, and the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom."
Thanks. That made my day. +1
I needed an excuse to listen to The White Album.:3 (Also, I noticed he actually says 7%)
Uhm...wow. I think this is an attempt at some sort of BRAIN VIRUS...
Lewis Black says the reason we only use 6% of our brains is that the rest sits around waiting to figure out the meaning of stupid things people say. (He also says that figuring out these stupid things people say is what causes aneurysms...)
Yeah, now I can believe it. This is some sort of weaponized STUPID.
I imagine the trick was balancing the stupid so you read it all the way through...
So, what you're saying is that if someone can cover their tracks well enough they should be able to escape accountability for something?
Assuming a method like this WERE to work, explain to me how your own brain saying "Yep, I did it!" doesn't prove you guilty?
Whether or not the state has the right to probe your brain is another matter, and honestly, it's a slippery slope...but what the hell isn't?
On the other hand, why would it be any different than DNA testing? You have a suspect, you take a sample from the suspect, it matches the sample found at the scene of the crime... Only in this case the sample at the scene of the crime would BE the crime, and the sample from the suspect would be something like the suspect's memories of having committed it.
So, I'm not saying it wouldn't be wrong, but it's not wrong for YOUR reasons.
Does a person have a right to privacy over their own memories, or should society's interest in holding criminals accountable come first?
I honestly think that if someone commits a crime like murder they should be held accountable, period. BUT, there's no way this brain scan thing works. I mean, REALLY. Ask the question again when the thing isn't a bunch of BS.
Also...
...the headline made me think she fried someone's brain with an MRI or something. Might want to see to that.:P
For years I'd used pricewatch to find the best prices for all the things I wanted, and then see how much I could order together from the retailers I found... I stopped that BS about five years ago. I pretty much rely entirely on Newegg now. You really can't go wrong. I live in Vermont, so most of the time, stuff I order from them ships from their New Jersey warehouses, and I have it the next day, for next to nothing on shipping. Last time I built new machines, cases monitors and most of the guts shipped from New Jersey, memory shipped from Tennessee, and the uber videocard for my box shipped from California, and I had it all within 3 days. I paid something like $80 shipping for the parts for two fully-loaded machines with input devices, monitors, and 40lb steel cases. So, not bad. They usually have the lowest prices, or at least close enough that it's not worth buying from somewhere else, and their shipping is cheap and fast.
I've never really had a problem with them NOT having something I wanted, although one time I had to order special low-noise fans and a huge copper heatsink from FrozenCPU because they were out of stock at Newegg. (I was ordering stuff from FrozenCPU anyway)
Other than that, if it's pro video capture hardware or tablets or something, I get it from B&H Photo, where I get all my camera gear. They're like the Newegg of Photo and Video stuff. Although Newegg has started carrying Tablets now.
Aside: First big order I made with Newegg was for building a new computer, with a scanner, printer, and two 19" Viewsonic CRT monitors... It all arrived very quickly (And at once), the FedEx guy was not amused, and I had to help him carry it up the flight of stairs... It filled the goddamn livingroom. Hehe. That's so completely etched into my memory now.
Why are we even dignifying this? 'Professional--lol--Gamers' are the new thing in the global sports doping epidemic? This is ridiculous. OH NOES, THEY'RE HIGH AND THEY'RE PLAYING VIDEOGAMES FOR MONEY! Why does anyone care? And I don't even mean from the perspective I have on the sports doping which is "Fuck it, it's their body, let them fuck it up if they want to.", I'm speaking from the perspective of "Why in the name of all that is more important than this (basically...everything) does anyone care about professional gamers playing while on drugs?" Why does anyone care about professional gaming to BEGIN with? It's just an organized tournament for an otherwise normal form of competitive entertainment. These have been around forever.
What next? People are going to lose their minds over kids playing in Pokemon CCG tourneys on a sugar high, or off their ritalin?
Tournament Scrabble players who undergo experimental brain surgery to become idiot savants? (Actually, that would make a cool cyberpunk story)
Look around! Do we really a) Have nothing more important to bitch about, or b) Not care about anything more important? I mean REALLY!
...all the happiest (Or at least the 'least frustrated') IT professionals are BOFH.:3
Since you usually have to deal with clueless asshats at one time or another regardless of what you're doing...the true path to happiness involves linking someone's home directory to/dev/null
...why aren't the pre-recorded messages about 'your vehicle warranty' and messages from 'cardholder services' illegal to begin with? They're basically fraudulent trolling schemes. They don't come out and say it, but they basically imply that they're something they aren't. Like "OH SNAP! YOUR CAR'S WARRANTY IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE, BLAH BLAH BLAH!" a less intelligent person might think this is actually real and important. Cardholder services? Please. "We're your credit card company, press 1 on your touchtone phone to lower your interest rate!" There's also that snail-mail spam claiming to be from your registrar, saying your domain is about to expire, and you have to pay them $29.95.
I get half a dozen of these calls a day. Not being comfortable with phones, I try to use them as little as possible, so it really pisses me off.
And the opt-out is a joke. I have 'been removed from the list' 17 times this week alone, for the exact same fucking 'cardholder services' recording!
Something else that is a joke is Anonymous Call Rejection, where calls are blocked if they have Caller ID blocked (Not Available) or are 'PRIVATE'. Too bad telemarketers know this, and therefor I'm still constantly getting calls from anonymous 800-numbers that are NAMED 'Private' and 'Not Available'. Assholes. I wonder if I can sue them under the DMCA for circumventing my apparent 'spamfucker security'.
Don't have a 780 chipset myself, I have a 790, but I figure this ought to be just as relevant. I felt the same way when I built my latest machine back in February. I didn't want to go with an AMD chipset and ATI cards. I've been an ardent AMD fan for CPUs, but for the last two builds, I went from ATI to nVidia for graphics...
Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's, and the new CrossfireX SLI system looked like they took nVidia SLI, and changed everything that was wrong with it. Besides, there were no decent nVidia-based mobos that could socket a Phenom that I could find at the time. So I went with an AMD-based quad CrossfireX motherboard from ASUS (The M3A32-MVP Deluxe), and slapped a Phenom, 8gb of RAM, and a Radeon HD 3850 in it. (I later added a second 3850...technically I can still put two more in, too!)
I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips... (Though I still haven't been in a position to need it.) As far as performance, it's been rock solid for me. My nVidia-based machine crashed and hung a hell of a lot more when gaming. As it is, I know this one HAS, but I can't clearly recall any one time. Even the onboard audio, despite being the same chip as my last nVidia machine, doesn't have the problems my old machine did. (Some audio samples being replaced with static and screeching in certain games.)
It's not all fun and games though, I also use the machine for graphics work. When I first put it together, I tested my passive CPU cooling setup by running an unbiased render of a complex scene in Fryrender for roughly 72 hours, keeping the cores maxed the whole time... Solid as a rock, AND never went above 41 degrees C. (Spent most of the time at 38C, when I wasn't heating up the apartment making dinner.)
So, all things considered, I'd say they make a damn good chipset.:D
This would probably matter more if most ISP-provided usenet feeds didn't have retention that can barely be measured in HOURS to begin with. I imagine the pedocons, like anyone else who has any serious interest in newsgroups in general, and binaries newsgroups in particular, probably pay for premium usenet service. What worries me is what happens when this (As obviously will be the case) does nothing. Will they eventually try to wipe out usenet altogether?
Giganews is up to 240 days retention on all binary newsgroups. If it's out there, anyone who wants it can have at it for $25 a month. But then, so it goes. That's always going to be the case...so where does it end? We start taking pointers from China? From Web 2.0 to Web Good-fuckin-Luck.
I used to believe you, Slashdot. But now you're all 'sun' this, and 'outside' that, like all those other nutbags! Screw you guys! Go ahead, go outside, see if I care! Maybe you'll get eaten by one of those 'wild animal' things you people are always going on about. Like a..uh..what was it...beer? Bar? Oh, right... A bear! Maybe you'll get eaten by a bear! It'd serve you right!
This post was brought to you by the latter hours of a horrible caffeine bender which failed to see anything accomplished. Enjoy!
Last year, I was scanning and cleaning up some old (1800s) maps of Vermont for prints... My god... 1200dpi scans of large maps? I can't tell you how many times I caused CS3 to UTTERLY SELF DESTRUCT...and I think it actually burned up a pair of 1gb sticks of DDR2... My new machine has 8gb, so I can definitely get crap like that done easier, and I can actually DO other stuff at the same time... But it's still not difficult to reach the 32-bit memory limit D:
Slashdot Mirror
Give them some Arduinos to mess around with. It utilizes a C-like programming language which is easy to get a handle on, but scales up in complexity to accomplish all sorts of things. They would also be learning about electronics, and microcontrollers. The Arduino can pretty much do anything from blinking an LED when you press a button, to interpreting gcode sent from a computer to control a 3-axis milling machine.
Seems like a good age to get them playing around with electronics anyway. And I always say that the wider range of things you can teach kids with a single activity, the better. They're more liable to retain it. Also, it's damn cool.
I'm 27 years old, and I had a lot of childhood experience with electronics, but no programming experience beyond some BASIC on the C64... I was *ecstatic* when I figured out how to use a 'navigation switch' (Single axis and a pushbutton center) to adjust the color mixture on an RGB LED. Sure, it had no practical use, but I learned a lot programming it. Currently, I'm turning the drive head carriages from two optical drives into a CNC laser engraver. (Though it will only have a 1.5x1.5" working area...)
Get these kids started on the road to evil genius!
I registered and cast an early vote For Barack Obama over the weekend.
Election night was spent playing EVE-Online with some friends, with IRC on another monitor, and CNN's election coverage on another. My father and I were following the election very closely. When they announced Obama had California, Oregon, and Washington we knew it was pretty much over. Apparently someone got the idea to ring the church bells to celebrate the news, nice touch.
...I have three computers that are on 24/7. 450, 550, and 750 watts. (My father's computer, my old machine/fileserver, and my current workstation/gaming rig, respectively) And five medium-to-large flatpanel displays. And these numbers aren't likely to go DOWN. Though, our only 'television', is a DLP projector, which I'm fairly sure consumes less power than a CRT. Oh yeah, we also basically run the A/C from May through September because we are physiologically incompatible with hot weather.
So yeah, I can believe that all the computers out there are putting a little strain on the power grid now and again. ;o
Yeah, as far as I can tell, it's a Cintiq 21UX that's being used. ($2000!!!)
12x19? I didn't know they made an Intuos2 that big. Certainly seems like overkill. I have a 9x12 Intuos3 Special Edition ($500) and it's pretty big.
As far as I know, even tablet PCs using Wacom 'Penabled' tech lack some of the finer points associated with their graphics tablets. They really need to make a 'digital sketchpad', a tablet PC with all the refinements you expect from a high-end graphics tablet. (It needs to be able to use Intuos3 pens like the Cintiq!)
I think my head just exploded into candy...
As an illustrator and 3d modeler, I must say, that is simply the most awesome thing I have ever seen. I would go so far as to say that it is 'insanely great'. I also just happen to be buying a Wacom Cintiq 21UX in the immediate future. FORTUITOUS!
Verizon (now FairPoint Communications in these parts) does it too. http://wwwwz.websearch.verizon.net/search?qo=blahblahblah&rn=S6ORMW8T2m7rGJi&rg= That's where you end up if you try to go to an invalid domain name. (Replace 'blahblahblah' with whatever)
"And then you realize that anybody who WENT to college would never say anything that stupid in public! And as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close, and the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom."
Thanks. That made my day. +1
I needed an excuse to listen to The White Album. :3 (Also, I noticed he actually says 7%)
Uhm...wow. I think this is an attempt at some sort of BRAIN VIRUS...
Lewis Black says the reason we only use 6% of our brains is that the rest sits around waiting to figure out the meaning of stupid things people say. (He also says that figuring out these stupid things people say is what causes aneurysms...)
Yeah, now I can believe it. This is some sort of weaponized STUPID.
I imagine the trick was balancing the stupid so you read it all the way through...
So, what you're saying is that if someone can cover their tracks well enough they should be able to escape accountability for something?
Assuming a method like this WERE to work, explain to me how your own brain saying "Yep, I did it!" doesn't prove you guilty?
Whether or not the state has the right to probe your brain is another matter, and honestly, it's a slippery slope...but what the hell isn't?
On the other hand, why would it be any different than DNA testing? You have a suspect, you take a sample from the suspect, it matches the sample found at the scene of the crime... Only in this case the sample at the scene of the crime would BE the crime, and the sample from the suspect would be something like the suspect's memories of having committed it.
So, I'm not saying it wouldn't be wrong, but it's not wrong for YOUR reasons.
I honestly think that if someone commits a crime like murder they should be held accountable, period. BUT, there's no way this brain scan thing works. I mean, REALLY. Ask the question again when the thing isn't a bunch of BS.
Also...
:P
...the headline made me think she fried someone's brain with an MRI or something. Might want to see to that.
That was interesting and amusing, and it made my morning. Thanks slashdot!
For years I'd used pricewatch to find the best prices for all the things I wanted, and then see how much I could order together from the retailers I found... I stopped that BS about five years ago. I pretty much rely entirely on Newegg now. You really can't go wrong. I live in Vermont, so most of the time, stuff I order from them ships from their New Jersey warehouses, and I have it the next day, for next to nothing on shipping. Last time I built new machines, cases monitors and most of the guts shipped from New Jersey, memory shipped from Tennessee, and the uber videocard for my box shipped from California, and I had it all within 3 days. I paid something like $80 shipping for the parts for two fully-loaded machines with input devices, monitors, and 40lb steel cases. So, not bad. They usually have the lowest prices, or at least close enough that it's not worth buying from somewhere else, and their shipping is cheap and fast.
I've never really had a problem with them NOT having something I wanted, although one time I had to order special low-noise fans and a huge copper heatsink from FrozenCPU because they were out of stock at Newegg. (I was ordering stuff from FrozenCPU anyway)
Other than that, if it's pro video capture hardware or tablets or something, I get it from B&H Photo, where I get all my camera gear. They're like the Newegg of Photo and Video stuff. Although Newegg has started carrying Tablets now.
Aside:
First big order I made with Newegg was for building a new computer, with a scanner, printer, and two 19" Viewsonic CRT monitors... It all arrived very quickly (And at once), the FedEx guy was not amused, and I had to help him carry it up the flight of stairs... It filled the goddamn livingroom. Hehe. That's so completely etched into my memory now.
I think the response my father gave when I read the summary to him nicely sums up what we're all thinking: "Are you fucking kidding me?"
Why are we even dignifying this? 'Professional--lol--Gamers' are the new thing in the global sports doping epidemic? This is ridiculous. OH NOES, THEY'RE HIGH AND THEY'RE PLAYING VIDEOGAMES FOR MONEY! Why does anyone care? And I don't even mean from the perspective I have on the sports doping which is "Fuck it, it's their body, let them fuck it up if they want to.", I'm speaking from the perspective of "Why in the name of all that is more important than this (basically...everything) does anyone care about professional gamers playing while on drugs?" Why does anyone care about professional gaming to BEGIN with? It's just an organized tournament for an otherwise normal form of competitive entertainment. These have been around forever.
What next? People are going to lose their minds over kids playing in Pokemon CCG tourneys on a sugar high, or off their ritalin?
Tournament Scrabble players who undergo experimental brain surgery to become idiot savants? (Actually, that would make a cool cyberpunk story)
Look around! Do we really a) Have nothing more important to bitch about, or b) Not care about anything more important? I mean REALLY!
...all the happiest (Or at least the 'least frustrated') IT professionals are BOFH. :3
Since you usually have to deal with clueless asshats at one time or another regardless of what you're doing...the true path to happiness involves linking someone's home directory to /dev/null
You know I'm right.
Oh, yeah... Needs a 'FUCKFOX' tag. *sigh*
...why aren't the pre-recorded messages about 'your vehicle warranty' and messages from 'cardholder services' illegal to begin with? They're basically fraudulent trolling schemes. They don't come out and say it, but they basically imply that they're something they aren't. Like "OH SNAP! YOUR CAR'S WARRANTY IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE, BLAH BLAH BLAH!" a less intelligent person might think this is actually real and important. Cardholder services? Please. "We're your credit card company, press 1 on your touchtone phone to lower your interest rate!" There's also that snail-mail spam claiming to be from your registrar, saying your domain is about to expire, and you have to pay them $29.95.
I get half a dozen of these calls a day. Not being comfortable with phones, I try to use them as little as possible, so it really pisses me off.
And the opt-out is a joke. I have 'been removed from the list' 17 times this week alone, for the exact same fucking 'cardholder services' recording!
Something else that is a joke is Anonymous Call Rejection, where calls are blocked if they have Caller ID blocked (Not Available) or are 'PRIVATE'. Too bad telemarketers know this, and therefor I'm still constantly getting calls from anonymous 800-numbers that are NAMED 'Private' and 'Not Available'. Assholes. I wonder if I can sue them under the DMCA for circumventing my apparent 'spamfucker security'.
I especially like the answer in Cyrillic. 'All your base are belong to us!' I laughed until it hurt. xD
So, the end of the world WILL be televised?
Don't have a 780 chipset myself, I have a 790, but I figure this ought to be just as relevant. I felt the same way when I built my latest machine back in February. I didn't want to go with an AMD chipset and ATI cards. I've been an ardent AMD fan for CPUs, but for the last two builds, I went from ATI to nVidia for graphics...
Of course, when I looked into it, it turned out that the latest ATI offerings beat the pants off of nVidia's, and the new CrossfireX SLI system looked like they took nVidia SLI, and changed everything that was wrong with it. Besides, there were no decent nVidia-based mobos that could socket a Phenom that I could find at the time. So I went with an AMD-based quad CrossfireX motherboard from ASUS (The M3A32-MVP Deluxe), and slapped a Phenom, 8gb of RAM, and a Radeon HD 3850 in it. (I later added a second 3850...technically I can still put two more in, too!)
I barely missed dual-NICs, the thing that got me most, was the lack of RAID5 support on the SATA chips... (Though I still haven't been in a position to need it.) As far as performance, it's been rock solid for me. My nVidia-based machine crashed and hung a hell of a lot more when gaming. As it is, I know this one HAS, but I can't clearly recall any one time. Even the onboard audio, despite being the same chip as my last nVidia machine, doesn't have the problems my old machine did. (Some audio samples being replaced with static and screeching in certain games.)
It's not all fun and games though, I also use the machine for graphics work. When I first put it together, I tested my passive CPU cooling setup by running an unbiased render of a complex scene in Fryrender for roughly 72 hours, keeping the cores maxed the whole time... Solid as a rock, AND never went above 41 degrees C. (Spent most of the time at 38C, when I wasn't heating up the apartment making dinner.)
So, all things considered, I'd say they make a damn good chipset. :D
They can have my cutlass when they pry it from my cold dead hand!
This would probably matter more if most ISP-provided usenet feeds didn't have retention that can barely be measured in HOURS to begin with. I imagine the pedocons, like anyone else who has any serious interest in newsgroups in general, and binaries newsgroups in particular, probably pay for premium usenet service. What worries me is what happens when this (As obviously will be the case) does nothing. Will they eventually try to wipe out usenet altogether?
Giganews is up to 240 days retention on all binary newsgroups. If it's out there, anyone who wants it can have at it for $25 a month. But then, so it goes. That's always going to be the case...so where does it end? We start taking pointers from China? From Web 2.0 to Web Good-fuckin-Luck.
Sun...light?
Now you're just making stuff up!
I used to believe you, Slashdot. But now you're all 'sun' this, and 'outside' that, like all those other nutbags! Screw you guys! Go ahead, go outside, see if I care! Maybe you'll get eaten by one of those 'wild animal' things you people are always going on about. Like a..uh..what was it...beer? Bar? Oh, right... A bear! Maybe you'll get eaten by a bear! It'd serve you right!
This post was brought to you by the latter hours of a horrible caffeine bender which failed to see anything accomplished. Enjoy!
...never play (or steal) games made by ze Germans.
Last year, I was scanning and cleaning up some old (1800s) maps of Vermont for prints... My god... 1200dpi scans of large maps? I can't tell you how many times I caused CS3 to UTTERLY SELF DESTRUCT...and I think it actually burned up a pair of 1gb sticks of DDR2... My new machine has 8gb, so I can definitely get crap like that done easier, and I can actually DO other stuff at the same time... But it's still not difficult to reach the 32-bit memory limit D: