1) Lenses for SLRs digital and otherwise are not compatible between manufacturers. Lenses that can be used to make professional quality photos (crisper, and sharper than consumer lenses ) can cost a small fortune, and this doesn't always follow from the cost of manufacture. R&D is often used to justify costs but most lense technology in use today has been around for some time.
2) Many cameras use proprietary batteries. If you're faced with a choice between a big bulky poorly performing camera that uses AA batteries and a better one with a proprietary battery which would you pick? Genuine proprietary batteries are always overly expensive.
3) Film use to be standard 35mm. Camera manufacturers have managed to fragment the market so that different cameras use different types of memory card. You don't have to buy film for every shot anymore but you may have to buy different memory cards each time you buy a camera.
Camera manufacturers have always prefered a business model where they force their customers to buy most accessories from them at inflated prices. They sell you the camera at a very reasonable price then gouge you elsewhere. Is it any surprise they want to retain control over in camera hardware and software then charge you a mint to access it? Lots of cameras have remote control software, but at an additional cost. If you released open specs you couldn't do that.
The NASA scientists would be fools to release these images in a raw format as soon as they're available and then try to beat amateurs, who aren't responsible for the rest of the mission. Once the information is obtained years can be spent analysing it. In other words, when the mission is in progress the teams are focused on the mission, not post mission analysis.
All these guys did was use software to make 3d models of the terrain and then pictures from those models. If you want to try something really fun, and have a mathematical inclination and a lot of time on your hands try downloading pictures from hubble, or from one of the large radio telescopes and doing some data reduction. The software's freely available on the web and runs on Linux. To get anything meaningful from the data you'll have to spend a lot of time learning about the data, instruments used to capture it, and the astro sources you're looking at though.
This is the sort of thing that should be encouraged in highschools and unis around the planet.
Question: "If you could live forever, would you and why?" Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever." -- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest.
My experience has been that most women aren't as interested in science and math. Those that are interested and motivated can do things as well as their male counterparts. Here in Australia girls up to high school age outdo the boys in math. Some of the best programmers I've known have been women.
(My first software job was in a software house where half the staff were female. This was a recent development at the time and they were very motivated to show they could outdo the guys. They generally did because they were more focused).
We live in a society however that does not encourage women to take up maths and science. Just look at how most astronomy and chess clubs are very male dominated. It makes it very difficult for women to feel comfortable in that kind of environment and further puts them off. Unless this guy's done a study in a very different society where males and females are encouraged in the sciences equally I call bullshit.
Here's the quote from the web site: http://montemagno.typepad.com/p2p_manifesto /about_ en.html
Marco is Assistant Professor at Cattolica University, Milan (Italy), of "Theories and techniques of online communication", faculty of Arts and Philosophy.
You're joking right? Give him a break because he's "pretty". This is/. not the young and the bloody restless. Its not just the translation that's poor. His grasp of the concepts is poor, and he's claiming to be an expert in technology. He's an arts professor! As far as I'm concerned he's a conman with a winning smile, and you're falling for it!
Nice in prinicple but man how much of the world are you going to see from the cinema parking lot? I can think of much better things to do with 139 days. This guy's a fool IMHO any way I look at it. You never know how long you'll be alive and healthy. He should get out and do something else with his 4 1/2 months!
In my limited experience the kind of people who camp out for over a hundred days to watch a film have such poor social skills that he doesn't need to worry about the opposite sex being interested.
You're very naive if you think the authorities are going to place someone in protective custody with other first offenders when they go to prison. Prison systems world wide are rife with crime and corruption.
Also you'd be surprised how many crimes you commit every day.
Suppose his actions caused financial harm to You? Would you be so willing to let him off easy?
I'd want him punished but I wouldn't want him raped nor would I want him to associate with criminals and become a hardened criminal. How the hell does this make things better for those who were harmed financially? This is NOT the way to punish him. Society is cutting off its nose despite its face.
I suppose at 17 you never did anything stupid and your judgement was perfect huh? You're either a very uncharitable person or you're doing this to stir. Either way end of conversation.
And he's not going to prison for 40+ years, either.
You're right. 6 months is just long enough to be buggered blue, and gain enough exposure to the criminal element to become a criminal for life. Then once we've done that let's unleash him on society, just for fun.
Did anyone RTFA and realize this guy was 17 at the time? Yes he committed a crime and a crime is a crime but this isn't murder we're talking about people. This is a 17 year old nerd who did something stupid and is going to end up in jail for it 4 years later..
Yes at 21 he'll be going to be going to a federal prison where he can learn to be a real criminal. He's also being restricted in his use of computers for 3 years so he'll have to find employment in something else and cope with his computer addiction no doubt. He's bound to become bitter about it after 6 months of prison life and is going to be very likely to break the terms of his 3 year ban.
So you're saying a tanked MIT geek is infallible? Dude, there are saftey standards and testing going into any elevator design or maintenance program. I think you'll find its quite well regulated in most places.
I dunno dude. Do you want to travel on an elevator that's been compromised like that? What if through a fault that may or may not be related to the rewiring a fire started or the elevator brakes failed?
My experiences have always been that if students find a course too difficult to complete despite massive amounts of work and reasonable talent and confidence, they impart this knowledge to the coming years who then avoid the course like the plague.
That's an excellent way to work yourself out of a teaching job and become redundant (pun intended).
Let me qualify this. I've done and undergrad and I've taught electives. Your job as a lecturer is always to find the right level and teach the class at that level. If you do something that loses them or makes them believe any effort put into the subject is futile, then you're a bad lecturer period. No excuses about trying to make them understand real world problems are hard etc. either. If you want to set a challenge, put it in writing and submit a paper.
Now if the assignment had been to document the process of trying to discover the bugs in the software and what approaches did or didn't work, how you select the problem etc. And if grades were given for approach instead of just successes, THAT would be a worthwhile course. Something like:
"Attempt to discover new unpublished security flaws in 10 pieces of Un*x software. Document your reasoning for choice of program, and the approach you have taken to finding the flaws".
Not all of the below is free as in GNU but it is free as in beer.
X(PLORE), despite being obscure, is very good. I've used it in DOS and Windows. Not sure I'd rely on any results without verifying them:
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~meredith/X(PLORE)/xplor ep g.html
MuPad is good for symbolic calculus. Free for learning. Pro version is paid. http://research.mupad.de/
Don't discount freeware spreadsheets.
Also, though I personally think non-wysiwyg is horrible, Latex is often used to publish math papers etc.
Personally I'd google for software related to the particular math that you want to explore. There's a lot out there and it'll take some hunting, but for example goole for the words: math freeware differential equations.
Even when there's evidence that a product does not provide what it claims to, the offending person or company is rarely prosecuted. Advertising has all turned to shit.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider this:
1) Lenses for SLRs digital and otherwise are not compatible between manufacturers. Lenses that can be used to make professional quality photos (crisper, and sharper than consumer lenses ) can cost a small fortune, and this doesn't always follow from the cost of manufacture. R&D is often used to justify costs but most lense technology in use today has been around for some time.
2) Many cameras use proprietary batteries. If you're faced with a choice between a big bulky poorly performing camera that uses AA batteries and a better one with a proprietary battery which would you pick? Genuine proprietary batteries are always overly expensive.
3) Film use to be standard 35mm. Camera manufacturers have managed to fragment the market so that different cameras use different types of memory card. You don't have to buy film for every shot anymore but you may have to buy different memory cards each time you buy a camera.
Camera manufacturers have always prefered a business model where they force their customers to buy most accessories from them at inflated prices. They sell you the camera at a very reasonable price then gouge you elsewhere. Is it any surprise they want to retain control over in camera hardware and software then charge you a mint to access it? Lots of cameras have remote control software, but at an additional cost. If you released open specs you couldn't do that.
The NASA scientists would be fools to release these images in a raw format as soon as they're available and then try to beat amateurs, who aren't responsible for the rest of the mission. Once the information is obtained years can be spent analysing it. In other words, when the mission is in progress the teams are focused on the mission, not post mission analysis.
All these guys did was use software to make 3d models of the terrain and then pictures from those models. If you want to try something really fun, and have a mathematical inclination and a lot of time on your hands try downloading pictures from hubble, or from one of the large radio telescopes and doing some data reduction. The software's freely available on the web and runs on Linux. To get anything meaningful from the data you'll have to spend a lot of time learning about the data, instruments used to capture it, and the astro sources you're looking at though.
This is the sort of thing that should be encouraged in highschools and unis around the planet.
Question: "If you could live forever, would you and why?" Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever." -- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest.
My experience has been that most women aren't as interested in science and math. Those that are interested and motivated can do things as well as their male counterparts. Here in Australia girls up to high school age outdo the boys in math. Some of the best programmers I've known have been women.
(My first software job was in a software house where half the staff were female. This was a recent development at the time and they were very motivated to show they could outdo the guys. They generally did because they were more focused).
We live in a society however that does not encourage women to take up maths and science. Just look at how most astronomy and chess clubs are very male dominated. It makes it very difficult for women to feel comfortable in that kind of environment and further puts them off. Unless this guy's done a study in a very different society where males and females are encouraged in the sciences equally I call bullshit.
You're Italian so you must be right????
o /about_ en.html
Here's the quote from the web site:
http://montemagno.typepad.com/p2p_manifest
Marco is Assistant Professor at Cattolica University, Milan (Italy), of "Theories and techniques of online communication", faculty of Arts and Philosophy.
You're joking right? Give him a break because he's "pretty". This is /. not the young and the bloody restless. Its not just the translation that's poor. His grasp of the concepts is poor, and he's claiming to be an expert in technology. He's an arts professor! As far as I'm concerned he's a conman with a winning smile, and you're falling for it!
Pfft, tell me when you've over clocked a pencil and paper.
There are several solutions of this. The most legal is caffeine.
How does he satisfy his sexual urges without getting arrested?
Probably socially inept and satisfies them by playing Chess - one of his many other interests (even if it is starwars chess).
Nice in prinicple but man how much of the world are you going to see from the cinema parking lot? I can think of much better things to do with 139 days. This guy's a fool IMHO any way I look at it. You never know how long you'll be alive and healthy. He should get out and do something else with his 4 1/2 months!
In my limited experience the kind of people who camp out for over a hundred days to watch a film have such poor social skills that he doesn't need to worry about the opposite sex being interested.
I am not an expert on any prison system. Nor am I naive enough to think its a fair just system where your family can make sure you're treated well.
You're very naive if you think the authorities are going to place someone in protective custody with other first offenders when they go to prison. Prison systems world wide are rife with crime and corruption.
Also you'd be surprised how many crimes you commit every day.
Suppose his actions caused financial harm to You? Would you be so willing to let him off easy?
I'd want him punished but I wouldn't want him raped nor would I want him to associate with criminals and become a hardened criminal. How the hell does this make things better for those who were harmed financially? This is NOT the way to punish him. Society is cutting off its nose despite its face.
At 17 your old enough to know better...
I suppose at 17 you never did anything stupid and your judgement was perfect huh? You're either a very uncharitable person or you're doing this to stir. Either way end of conversation.
And he's not going to prison for 40+ years, either.
You're right. 6 months is just long enough to be buggered blue, and gain enough exposure to the criminal element to become a criminal for life. Then once we've done that let's unleash him on society, just for fun.
Did anyone RTFA and realize this guy was 17 at the time? Yes he committed a crime and a crime is a crime but this isn't murder we're talking about people. This is a 17 year old nerd who did something stupid and is going to end up in jail for it 4 years later..
Yes at 21 he'll be going to be going to a federal prison where he can learn to be a real criminal. He's also being restricted in his use of computers for 3 years so he'll have to find employment in something else and cope with his computer addiction no doubt. He's bound to become bitter about it after 6 months of prison life and is going to be very likely to break the terms of his 3 year ban.
This is shear madness IMHO.
It's not their intelligence I'm worried about.
Just wait till the first time he fails enough kids who've got a relative on the Alumini donating real money. Everyone's expendible.
So you're saying a tanked MIT geek is infallible? Dude, there are saftey standards and testing going into any elevator design or maintenance program. I think you'll find its quite well regulated in most places.
I dunno dude. Do you want to travel on an elevator that's been compromised like that? What if through a fault that may or may not be related to the rewiring a fire started or the elevator brakes failed?
My experiences have always been that if students find a course too difficult to complete despite massive amounts of work and reasonable talent and confidence, they impart this knowledge to the coming years who then avoid the course like the plague.
That's an excellent way to work yourself out of a teaching job and become redundant (pun intended).
Let me qualify this. I've done and undergrad and I've taught electives. Your job as a lecturer is always to find the right level and teach the class at that level. If you do something that loses them or makes them believe any effort put into the subject is futile, then you're a bad lecturer period. No excuses about trying to make them understand real world problems are hard etc. either. If you want to set a challenge, put it in writing and submit a paper.
Now if the assignment had been to document the process of trying to discover the bugs in the software and what approaches did or didn't work, how you select the problem etc. And if grades were given for approach instead of just successes, THAT would be a worthwhile course. Something like:
"Attempt to discover new unpublished security flaws in 10 pieces of Un*x software. Document your reasoning for choice of program, and the approach you have taken to finding the flaws".
Brings new meaning to connection is down ;-)
Not all of the below is free as in GNU but it is free as in beer.
r ep g.html
X(PLORE), despite being obscure, is very good. I've used it in DOS and Windows. Not sure I'd rely on any results without verifying them:
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~meredith/X(PLORE)/xplo
MuPad is good for symbolic calculus. Free for learning. Pro version is paid.
http://research.mupad.de/
Don't discount freeware spreadsheets.
Also, though I personally think non-wysiwyg is horrible, Latex is often used to publish math papers etc.
Personally I'd google for software related to the particular math that you want to explore. There's a lot out there and it'll take some hunting, but for example goole for the words: math freeware differential equations.
Even when there's evidence that a product does not provide what it claims to, the offending person or company is rarely prosecuted. Advertising has all turned to shit.
So this is Christmas,
:-)
And what have we done,
American's in Space suits,
Look for Russians to come...
Feed the Astronaunts...Do they know its Christmas time at all?
Please give generously. In Soviet America no one can hear you starve.
Hmmm this is a bit of a turnaround. American's waiting on Russian food relief.