I believe the original poster meant that the brewery was the oldest Anheuser-Busch brewery. Everyone knows Yuengling is the oldest. It's on the cap;-). Then again, it is mostly brewed in Florida now, instead of Pottstown, which is unfortunate.
"The Thirteenth Warrior was by far the coolest interpretation to date, I don't care if they did leave out nearly half the tale."
Sigh. I don't mean to be a troll here, but it is surely not coincidence that you chose a film addaptation of this great work as "the coolest interpretation."::Sarcasm:: Yes I agree, Antonio Banderas brought clout and intelligence to this film opus.::Sarcasm:: Not. Of all the interesting 'interpretations' and 'translations' out there of late, you choose the one that is as much based on Beowulf as it is on Crichton's Eaters of the Dead. While I am intrigued to see what Tolkien has to say on this seminal work, I would recommend to those discerning reads who are capable of reading and not just moviegoing to take a gander at Seamus Heaney's new translation. It is a side-by-side metered rendering (of the whole work) by an accomplished poet. Take my advice, and ditch the 13th Warrior. Sorry for the rant, also.
Re:For folks near Disney...
on
Robocoaster
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My chair doesn't lean back, you insensitive clod! Not all of us got to steal our Aeros when the tech-bubble burst, and our startups went bust.::wink::
That is because, I believe, quantum mechanics is inherently incomprehensible. Kant informs us that we can never perceive a thing in itself since any perception is a psychological process that somehow or other colors the impression. But we can perceive directly and indirectly. That is, we can be assured that there is a "thing" we are viewing when we view something. But with the electron or the photon, these things are beyond are perception. Thus, our psychological processes (the a priori forms of our spatial and temporal intuitions) cannot fully operate. That is how we get something like the results Davisson produced, viz. a simultaneous particle-wave. He showed that a cathode ray firing one electron at a time still produces an interference pattern. That means that though the electrons are fired discretely, there is a wave pattern formed perfectly alike to interference patterns. So the electron either knows where past electrons went and future electrons will go, and governs itself accordingly, or there are rules that apply to the things outside our perception which are contrary to the rules inside our perception. Neat huh.
I am in the market for a new cdrw since my Sony CDE-100 or something just bit the dust after almost 4 years. I think it recorded at -2x or something because I could play a cd at real speed faster than it could record one. Also, it began to create CDs that were no longer playable in my car (or anywhere?). So I am in the market for a new cdrw, and I need to balance price and reliability, and then speed. I have a 450mhz running Win2k primarily. Any suggestions or success stories, so that I can buy myself a late Hanukkah present?
The end of Moore's law is heralded on Slashdot every 2 months or so; it comes at the hand of new materials (copper, etc), new layering techniques, the ever-popular quantum computing, etc. Frankly, it doesn't seem to me to be that useful a benchmark anymore. The article says it will come sooner, but I foresee in 7 to 10 years the physical production, leakage stoppage and general quality of the chips will be so perfected that Moore's law will no longer be applicable to silicon chips. But, by then, new sorts of chips will be available to pick up the slack. So let us say farewell to silicon, and enjoy it while it lasts. It is like the fossil fuels problem really, except the industry is slightly more willing to advance, having set up years in advance a healthy pace to keep.
"As an interesting sidenote, Hodges has sustained peculiar fern like scarring and ramifications on his skin where he touched the prime discharge brass. I have endeavored to draw these for you Faraday, please forgive the penmanship. Hodges` hand was still smoking when I started the sketch, I hurried somewhat, as he was pleading to go to the horse doctor."
"The position of the gap is critical to these phenomena, and afforded me much experimentation, apparently to the detriment of Hodges. Just as I was observing a continuous luminous glow appearing between the top conductors, upon each discharge, Hodges couldn`t go on. His arm had seized and his whole frame was shaking as though palsied. At first I thought he had received another shock, but he maintained fatigue and virtually demanded a rest!
Sensing a shirker as well as you can Faraday, I took over turning the machine and with some merriment demanded he take observations of the expanded spark. The dolt actually had the audacity to assume a proprietorial stance next to the plates, Faraday! When the prime started sparking over, Hodges emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year. Hodges staggered back from the plates, covering his right eye and uttering blasphemities which would have themselves led to his dismissal, even had he not been blinded. But what had happened Faraday?"
See this slashdot thread for a complementary project working on the other half of the technology necessary to yield plasma-powered rockets. Plasma, essentially the fourth state of matter, is VERY hot and cannot be contained by normal means. A magnetic field, ostensibly impervious to temperature, is thought to be the way to contain the plasma and direct it. There is nothing really new here, except that this scientist is using a novel way to try to create this high energy plasma: the hydrino. Good luck to him... but I am also somewhat skeptical. He seems to be too much venture-capitalist, not enough scientist.
This is a well thought-out post, unfortunately by an AC. But let me, to the best of my abilities, address your concerns. First, you seem to be looking for a scientific explanation of God, which is not possible. I made this clear in the original post, but I can see how "God and Science are not mutually exclusive" might be misinterpreted. God is defined by St. Anselm in the Proslogion as that which is greater than anything that can be thought. This is problematic, but satisfactory for this note. People with true faith in God recieve this faith through providence, according to St. Thomas. That is, that God Himself makes Himself known to the person through grace, a private spiritual communication. This is not empirically demonstrable, obviously. That is why it is called faith. Those who call it blind faith do not respect or understand the concept of providence. I have not yet been graced by God to understand Him in all His glory. I can only go through the motions - or not - and await providence which may or may not arrive. Science is ostensibly the pursuit of truth through reason, while religion is the pursuit of truth through spirituality. So, you can see that the scientific method approach to God is silly, and futile. But the two realms *can* mutually coexist. I suggest reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianty for a primer. In any case, please feel free to email me if you wish to continue this conversation. I will be much more cohesive... and sober.
Doesn't this seem like a bid by AT&T to get some real money and muscle behind its waning wireless dept. And what really, besides money (granted, a lot of it), do IBM and Intel bring to the table? They are not making the better phone or building the better infrastructure - unless they start completely over. Isn't this just an attempt to build a better mousetrap, before the first one is quite finished. That is, though 3G has been slow to come to fruition, the technology is there, and it has been a money issue really. Consumers don't really want to adopt an expensive 2.5g solution when they are being bombarded with 3G this and 3G that, next week, next month, next quarter, etc. But this will all get straightened out soon enough, far sooner than this supposed one-logon, one-service, seamless nonsense will happen. I understand AT&T and co. wanting to get a piece of the 3G action that might not otherwise be coming their way, but this is a futile effort.
I know this is slashdot and we're all a bunch of godless heathens, etc, but come on.
This is just disrespectful and ignorant. First, God doesn't own intellectual property. There are certainly ethical problems with the IP of any living being, but it is not because God had the idea first. Second, God is NOT the lazy man's anything. He is not the explanation of things we don't understand. Admittedly, it is impossible to wholly (homophonic pun) know or understand God, but he is made known to many through providence. Faith is not laziness, and God and Science are not mutually exclusive.
Sorry for the diatribe, but it is only hapless clarification.
All I can say is the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. From the site:
"The Museum's collections include over 20,000 objects, including approximately 900 fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens; 10,000+ medical instruments and apparati, primarily dating between 1750 and the present; ca. 400 anatomical and pathological models in plaster, wax, papier mache, and plastic; ca. 200 items of memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians; and ca. 1500 medical illustrations in the form of lantern slides, 35 mm. slides, photographs, drawings, and prints. The Museum continues to receive medical instruments and specimens donated by Fellows, other physicians, and individuals."
In other words, this place has all sorts of interesting medical oddities, including the lady who turned to soap, siamese twin skeletons, preserved children born with horns, etc. Don't mod me down for bad taste, the museum exists to further medical and rational knowledge of the strange and misunderstood.
I agree with many of the posts on this thread: this article will not tell you much you didn't already know or couldn't find out googling for 10 minutes. However, there was a recent NY Times article, (relegated to the pay-per-archives on nytimes.com, but still available on GoogleNews) that summarized the material of a new comprehensive Einstein exhibit in New York. The article is a better read than the US News one, and it tells about the exhibit, which should be great. Obviously, a newspaper article is NOT a substitute for an educated and well-written biography. This exhibit might come closer however. Happy reading.
"Participants answered questions about the amount of time they spent in front of a VDT, their sleep habits, and physical and mental ailments including headache, low back pain, eyestrain, depression and anxiety. Their findings are published in the October issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
"In our study, we found a significant relationship between duration of daily VDT use and physical symptoms," even after adjusting for other factors that could influence the results, the authors write."
Isn't it bound to bias by placing questions like "Do you get headaches often?" or "Do you have regular backpain?" with "What kind of computer monitor do you use?" and "How close do you sit to your high-radiation death machine, shooting beta-particles at your unshielded brain?" OK, perhaps the second one is overkill, but come on, just placing these two topics in a study together without a) serious buffer questions (as sort of a placebo), or b) careful ordering of the questions (like placing the computer questions MUCH later after the health ones, is asking for skewed results.
Think the LCD display companies put them up to it?
It seems to me that most of the free books mentioned on this thread are sci-fi, and popular fiction. It is by virtue of this fact that these dispersion methods for books have not caught on more. The more popular the book, the more likely one is to charge for it. Perhaps we ought to start organizing things in the public domain, and things like classics, technical works, etc, that are more likely to be thought of as "free". Make these books accessible, and create a good interface, to show proof of concept in terms of readers and the bigger guys may come around, at least to publishing on and off-line works (the online versions being free or very cheap). Here are my links to some stellar classics archives. Aside from some of the more obscure math and science works, I believe my whole school's curriculum is available for free on the web:
The key to making this feature not only work in this model, but be adopted by other manufacturers, is to enhance and hone the interface. And I mean on both the hardware and software ends. The software must be simple - I mean VERY simple - to use. It ought to be not much more complicated than a CD Player. Already, cell phones have been over-complicated to the point that a non-geek driver needs to look away from the road for a substantial amount of time to, say, find a number in his address-book. Features like MP3/CD audio should be wholly separated from a directions feature which should be wholly separated from the web-browsing feature, etc. And the controls should be consolidated so that there are only a couple more buttons than on a CD Player. Incidentally, I wouldn't mind seeing a safe-guard that let the user browse the web only while stopped. Voice recognition would be good, if it worked; but faulty voice recognition would be more of a distraction to the driver than none at all. In future models, I would like to see a control panel set into the steering wheel and maybe a terse description of what is running at the time on the dash or projected onto the windshield like the speed is in some cars (terse meaning: "Turn left on 10th st.", or, "Now Playing: She Don't Use Jelly - Flaming Lips.mp3"). Finally, integration with the actual car's computers would be nice. One could monitor gas levels efficiently, get stats on miles/gallon, diagnose problems on the fly. Anyway, I don't see much of this a) happening in this model and b)working under a Windows-based OS.
What you say is interesting and somewhat convincing. However, and perhaps not entirely on the contrary, consider this: Nerds, techies, and what-have-you will be the first to sign up for the 3G or 2.5G services. They already know that they can use the service, i.e. that they need it; thus they will pay for it. Though I believe 3G to be inevitable, if only by virtue of it being the next "generation", prices will keep the average lay cell-phone user from trying the service for a while, and thus learning to need it / that he needs it. Consequently, profits will be negligible for longer, and the service and innovation will suffer and slow accordingly. Isn't lather, rinse, repeat more applicable to the inter-generation motion of services (1G to 2G to 2.5G to 3G, etc), than to pricing of the current generation?
This can't really be the future of computing can it? I mean, we all are aware of the biggest difference between computers and thu human brain. Humans have great pattern recognition, while computers have great calculating/processing powers. Slicing pieces of brain and attaching them to chips hardly seems likely to enhance either the brain's computational ability or the chip's recognizing abilities. If anything, this is a step forward in facilitating communications between man and machine. I could see uses in reversing paralysis, but thought-upgrades or what have you are a long way off.
With the piece-meal rolling out of 3G phones and coverage, when can I really expect to take advantage of these data rates? My supposed 3G phone gets a good deal less than 128 kbit/s, not to mention the obscene $/data rates. Speaking of, does this not seem to you like the chicken and the egg: Expensive per kilobyte/megabyte rates for 3G phone data downloads won't change until more people sign up... but more people won't sign up until the service gets cheaper! Grrrr.
I received two of these messages within the last month. The first puzzled me, but only briefly, since I was ragingly drunk. The second one bothered me however. It didn't seem right to me that someone should be able to do message me like that without my explicitly allowing it (and really, how can they give you a PHD or University Degree by filling out a short 5 minute form?! It's crazy.)
In any case, my first inclination was to try and find some sort of messenging service in Win2k and turn it off, which I promptly did. But isn't this just applying a bandaid to a scratch on your arm, while your entrails are spilling out of your abdomen? I mean, this must be a sign that my system is not that secure.
But is it really true, according to one poster, that if I share a drive or a printer I have been "HACKED ALREADY"? And whether I am or not, aren't there other choices besides reformatting, changing ISPs, blocking lots of ports useful to me, or just unplugging my box? I have to say poster, that you were a little curt.
In any case, I am looking for (relative)layman's advice that isn't as drastic and cynical as this (can I find such a advice on Slashdot?) for the Win2k user; also, I would appreciate some suggestions for software a) to help clean up my system if it needs it, b) to divine the actual level of current security (or lack thereof), c)to create the firewall that so many people tell me I need. Share/freeware would also be nice on this college student's budget.
Thank you for your patience and any help is greatly appreciated.
I just bought the (palm-powered) Kyocera 6035 smart phone off of EBay for $150. At first, I was no fan, since it is kinda huge and the controls take some getting used to, but now i am very happy with it. I can carry a French Dictionary to class, play a solid backgammon program, read classical literature, all on its albeit somewhat small screen. My two complaints are that it is just a little bulky looking, although it is still entirely portable, and that it runs the pam OS a bit slowly. Plenty of space for programs and whatnot, but also now space for additional memory card or bluetooth or whatever. Beats the hell out of that Tungsten-W which I suspect is faked anyhow. The Ericsson smart phone cited below looks snazzy, but it is not nearly as affordable, and i can just buy a new phone in a year or so at the price i paid for this one, should a K-razy sweet phone emerge.
I have seen this ad on the path train from Jersey city to, oh I don't know, 33rd st? Anyway, I was just sitting there and all of a sudden I look up, and see this full motion Target advertisement through the window above the guy across from me's head. It was pretty surreal the first time. Now me and my friends know exactly when to look up. It is worth a gander. Seems hard to install, in an in-use subway. And most people don't look out the windows in the tunnels. But the existence of the ad has spread by word of mouth. Seems like good money for the MTA, and the ads are relatively unobtrusive compared to the ones I get 5 minutes into surfing the web. Anyway...
I must confess that I have only leafed through your book at Border's recently. No offense, but I have already spent my cookbook budget on Mario Batali's latest. But from the review and from what I read at the store and seen of your television show, you treat cooking as a science to be mastered by good 'laboratory technique' and scientific method. "With the right tools and a little patience, anyone can turn this wily thistle (artichoke show) into Good Eats," or something to that effect. My question is this: Where does the art of cooking fit in? Is there such a thing in your opinion? Why isn't good cooking mastering the techniques etc, and then allowing the creativity to present itself, if it is there? Are artists the exception and scientists the rule? I am suspicious that behind the matter-of-factness tone of your show, and the any idiot can do it attitude, you have "the touch" for the culinary arts. Aren't you an artist first, and profiting (not in a bad way) from teaching the masses good stick-figure technique? I'm sure by now you get the drift of my question and can respond accordingly. Thanks very much for your patience. -Aaron Foster Annapolis, MD
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the original poster meant that the brewery was the oldest Anheuser-Busch brewery. Everyone knows Yuengling is the oldest. It's on the cap ;-). Then again, it is mostly brewed in Florida now, instead of Pottstown, which is unfortunate.
"The Thirteenth Warrior was by far the coolest interpretation to date, I don't care if they did leave out nearly half the tale."
::Sarcasm:: Yes I agree, Antonio Banderas brought clout and intelligence to this film opus. ::Sarcasm:: Not. Of all the interesting 'interpretations' and 'translations' out there of late, you choose the one that is as much based on Beowulf as it is on Crichton's Eaters of the Dead. While I am intrigued to see what Tolkien has to say on this seminal work, I would recommend to those discerning reads who are capable of reading and not just moviegoing to take a gander at Seamus Heaney's new translation. It is a side-by-side metered rendering (of the whole work) by an accomplished poet. Take my advice, and ditch the 13th Warrior. Sorry for the rant, also.
Sigh. I don't mean to be a troll here, but it is surely not coincidence that you chose a film addaptation of this great work as "the coolest interpretation."
My chair doesn't lean back, you insensitive clod! Not all of us got to steal our Aeros when the tech-bubble burst, and our startups went bust. ::wink::
That is because, I believe, quantum mechanics is inherently incomprehensible. Kant informs us that we can never perceive a thing in itself since any perception is a psychological process that somehow or other colors the impression. But we can perceive directly and indirectly. That is, we can be assured that there is a "thing" we are viewing when we view something. But with the electron or the photon, these things are beyond are perception. Thus, our psychological processes (the a priori forms of our spatial and temporal intuitions) cannot fully operate. That is how we get something like the results Davisson produced, viz. a simultaneous particle-wave. He showed that a cathode ray firing one electron at a time still produces an interference pattern. That means that though the electrons are fired discretely, there is a wave pattern formed perfectly alike to interference patterns. So the electron either knows where past electrons went and future electrons will go, and governs itself accordingly, or there are rules that apply to the things outside our perception which are contrary to the rules inside our perception. Neat huh.
I am in the market for a new cdrw since my Sony CDE-100 or something just bit the dust after almost 4 years. I think it recorded at -2x or something because I could play a cd at real speed faster than it could record one. Also, it began to create CDs that were no longer playable in my car (or anywhere?). So I am in the market for a new cdrw, and I need to balance price and reliability, and then speed. I have a 450mhz running Win2k primarily. Any suggestions or success stories, so that I can buy myself a late Hanukkah present?
Just think: "Which one was The Final Frontier?" Number 5. And, 5 is odd. Just work back (ugh, and forward to Generations) from there.
The end of Moore's law is heralded on Slashdot every 2 months or so; it comes at the hand of new materials (copper, etc), new layering techniques, the ever-popular quantum computing, etc. Frankly, it doesn't seem to me to be that useful a benchmark anymore. The article says it will come sooner, but I foresee in 7 to 10 years the physical production, leakage stoppage and general quality of the chips will be so perfected that Moore's law will no longer be applicable to silicon chips. But, by then, new sorts of chips will be available to pick up the slack. So let us say farewell to silicon, and enjoy it while it lasts. It is like the fossil fuels problem really, except the industry is slightly more willing to advance, having set up years in advance a healthy pace to keep.
Clearly a hoax, but very funny:
"As an interesting sidenote, Hodges has sustained peculiar fern like scarring and ramifications on his skin where he touched the prime discharge brass. I have endeavored to draw these for you Faraday, please forgive the penmanship. Hodges` hand was still smoking when I started the sketch, I hurried somewhat, as he was pleading to go to the horse doctor."
"The position of the gap is critical to these phenomena, and afforded me much experimentation, apparently to the detriment of Hodges. Just as I was observing a continuous luminous glow appearing between the top conductors, upon each discharge, Hodges couldn`t go on. His arm had seized and his whole frame was shaking as though palsied. At first I thought he had received another shock, but he maintained fatigue and virtually demanded a rest!
Sensing a shirker as well as you can Faraday, I took over turning the machine and with some merriment demanded he take observations of the expanded spark. The dolt actually had the audacity to assume a proprietorial stance next to the plates, Faraday! When the prime started sparking over, Hodges emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year. Hodges staggered back from the plates, covering his right eye and uttering blasphemities which would have themselves led to his dismissal, even had he not been blinded. But what had happened Faraday?"
See this slashdot thread for a complementary project working on the other half of the technology necessary to yield plasma-powered rockets. Plasma, essentially the fourth state of matter, is VERY hot and cannot be contained by normal means. A magnetic field, ostensibly impervious to temperature, is thought to be the way to contain the plasma and direct it. There is nothing really new here, except that this scientist is using a novel way to try to create this high energy plasma: the hydrino. Good luck to him... but I am also somewhat skeptical. He seems to be too much venture-capitalist, not enough scientist.
This is a well thought-out post, unfortunately by an AC. But let me, to the best of my abilities, address your concerns. First, you seem to be looking for a scientific explanation of God, which is not possible. I made this clear in the original post, but I can see how "God and Science are not mutually exclusive" might be misinterpreted. God is defined by St. Anselm in the Proslogion as that which is greater than anything that can be thought. This is problematic, but satisfactory for this note. People with true faith in God recieve this faith through providence, according to St. Thomas. That is, that God Himself makes Himself known to the person through grace, a private spiritual communication. This is not empirically demonstrable, obviously. That is why it is called faith. Those who call it blind faith do not respect or understand the concept of providence. I have not yet been graced by God to understand Him in all His glory. I can only go through the motions - or not - and await providence which may or may not arrive. Science is ostensibly the pursuit of truth through reason, while religion is the pursuit of truth through spirituality. So, you can see that the scientific method approach to God is silly, and futile. But the two realms *can* mutually coexist. I suggest reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianty for a primer. In any case, please feel free to email me if you wish to continue this conversation. I will be much more cohesive... and sober.
Doesn't this seem like a bid by AT&T to get some real money and muscle behind its waning wireless dept. And what really, besides money (granted, a lot of it), do IBM and Intel bring to the table? They are not making the better phone or building the better infrastructure - unless they start completely over. Isn't this just an attempt to build a better mousetrap, before the first one is quite finished. That is, though 3G has been slow to come to fruition, the technology is there, and it has been a money issue really. Consumers don't really want to adopt an expensive 2.5g solution when they are being bombarded with 3G this and 3G that, next week, next month, next quarter, etc. But this will all get straightened out soon enough, far sooner than this supposed one-logon, one-service, seamless nonsense will happen. I understand AT&T and co. wanting to get a piece of the 3G action that might not otherwise be coming their way, but this is a futile effort.
I know this is slashdot and we're all a bunch of godless heathens, etc, but come on.
This is just disrespectful and ignorant. First, God doesn't own intellectual property. There are certainly ethical problems with the IP of any living being, but it is not because God had the idea first. Second, God is NOT the lazy man's anything. He is not the explanation of things we don't understand. Admittedly, it is impossible to wholly (homophonic pun) know or understand God, but he is made known to many through providence. Faith is not laziness, and God and Science are not mutually exclusive.
Sorry for the diatribe, but it is only hapless clarification.
All I can say is the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. From the site:
"The Museum's collections include over 20,000 objects, including approximately 900 fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens; 10,000+ medical instruments and apparati, primarily dating between 1750 and the present; ca. 400 anatomical and pathological models in plaster, wax, papier mache, and plastic; ca. 200 items of memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians; and ca. 1500 medical illustrations in the form of lantern slides, 35 mm. slides, photographs, drawings, and prints. The Museum continues to receive medical instruments and specimens donated by Fellows, other physicians, and individuals."
In other words, this place has all sorts of interesting medical oddities, including the lady who turned to soap, siamese twin skeletons, preserved children born with horns, etc. Don't mod me down for bad taste, the museum exists to further medical and rational knowledge of the strange and misunderstood.
I agree with many of the posts on this thread: this article will not tell you much you didn't already know or couldn't find out googling for 10 minutes. However, there was a recent NY Times article, (relegated to the pay-per-archives on nytimes.com, but still available on GoogleNews) that summarized the material of a new comprehensive Einstein exhibit in New York. The article is a better read than the US News one, and it tells about the exhibit, which should be great. Obviously, a newspaper article is NOT a substitute for an educated and well-written biography. This exhibit might come closer however. Happy reading.
Quote from article:
"Participants answered questions about the amount of time they spent in front of a VDT, their sleep habits, and physical and mental ailments including headache, low back pain, eyestrain, depression and anxiety. Their findings are published in the October issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
"In our study, we found a significant relationship between duration of daily VDT use and physical symptoms," even after adjusting for other factors that could influence the results, the authors write."
Isn't it bound to bias by placing questions like "Do you get headaches often?" or "Do you have regular backpain?" with "What kind of computer monitor do you use?" and "How close do you sit to your high-radiation death machine, shooting beta-particles at your unshielded brain?" OK, perhaps the second one is overkill, but come on, just placing these two topics in a study together without a) serious buffer questions (as sort of a placebo), or b) careful ordering of the questions (like placing the computer questions MUCH later after the health ones, is asking for skewed results.
Think the LCD display companies put them up to it?
It seems to me that most of the free books mentioned on this thread are sci-fi, and popular fiction. It is by virtue of this fact that these dispersion methods for books have not caught on more. The more popular the book, the more likely one is to charge for it. Perhaps we ought to start organizing things in the public domain, and things like classics, technical works, etc, that are more likely to be thought of as "free". Make these books accessible, and create a good interface, to show proof of concept in terms of readers and the bigger guys may come around, at least to publishing on and off-line works (the online versions being free or very cheap). Here are my links to some stellar classics archives. Aside from some of the more obscure math and science works, I believe my whole school's curriculum is available for free on the web:
Perseus Project
Great Books Index
The Internet Classics Archive
Bartleby
Enjoy these free reads. They are the greatest books ever written.
The key to making this feature not only work in this model, but be adopted by other manufacturers, is to enhance and hone the interface. And I mean on both the hardware and software ends. The software must be simple - I mean VERY simple - to use. It ought to be not much more complicated than a CD Player. Already, cell phones have been over-complicated to the point that a non-geek driver needs to look away from the road for a substantial amount of time to, say, find a number in his address-book. Features like MP3/CD audio should be wholly separated from a directions feature which should be wholly separated from the web-browsing feature, etc. And the controls should be consolidated so that there are only a couple more buttons than on a CD Player. Incidentally, I wouldn't mind seeing a safe-guard that let the user browse the web only while stopped. Voice recognition would be good, if it worked; but faulty voice recognition would be more of a distraction to the driver than none at all. In future models, I would like to see a control panel set into the steering wheel and maybe a terse description of what is running at the time on the dash or projected onto the windshield like the speed is in some cars (terse meaning: "Turn left on 10th st.", or, "Now Playing: She Don't Use Jelly - Flaming Lips.mp3"). Finally, integration with the actual car's computers would be nice. One could monitor gas levels efficiently, get stats on miles/gallon, diagnose problems on the fly. Anyway, I don't see much of this a) happening in this model and b)working under a Windows-based OS.
What you say is interesting and somewhat convincing. However, and perhaps not entirely on the contrary, consider this: Nerds, techies, and what-have-you will be the first to sign up for the 3G or 2.5G services. They already know that they can use the service, i.e. that they need it; thus they will pay for it. Though I believe 3G to be inevitable, if only by virtue of it being the next "generation", prices will keep the average lay cell-phone user from trying the service for a while, and thus learning to need it / that he needs it. Consequently, profits will be negligible for longer, and the service and innovation will suffer and slow accordingly. Isn't lather, rinse, repeat more applicable to the inter-generation motion of services (1G to 2G to 2.5G to 3G, etc), than to pricing of the current generation?
This can't really be the future of computing can it? I mean, we all are aware of the biggest difference between computers and thu human brain. Humans have great pattern recognition, while computers have great calculating/processing powers. Slicing pieces of brain and attaching them to chips hardly seems likely to enhance either the brain's computational ability or the chip's recognizing abilities. If anything, this is a step forward in facilitating communications between man and machine. I could see uses in reversing paralysis, but thought-upgrades or what have you are a long way off.
With the piece-meal rolling out of 3G phones and coverage, when can I really expect to take advantage of these data rates? My supposed 3G phone gets a good deal less than 128 kbit/s, not to mention the obscene $/data rates. Speaking of, does this not seem to you like the chicken and the egg: Expensive per kilobyte/megabyte rates for 3G phone data downloads won't change until more people sign up... but more people won't sign up until the service gets cheaper! Grrrr.
How about trying to provide some assistance...
I received two of these messages within the last month. The first puzzled me, but only briefly, since I was ragingly drunk. The second one bothered me however. It didn't seem right to me that someone should be able to do message me like that without my explicitly allowing it (and really, how can they give you a PHD or University Degree by filling out a short 5 minute form?! It's crazy.)
In any case, my first inclination was to try and find some sort of messenging service in Win2k and turn it off, which I promptly did. But isn't this just applying a bandaid to a scratch on your arm, while your entrails are spilling out of your abdomen? I mean, this must be a sign that my system is not that secure.
But is it really true, according to one poster, that if I share a drive or a printer I have been "HACKED ALREADY"? And whether I am or not, aren't there other choices besides reformatting, changing ISPs, blocking lots of ports useful to me, or just unplugging my box? I have to say poster, that you were a little curt.
In any case, I am looking for (relative)layman's advice that isn't as drastic and cynical as this (can I find such a advice on Slashdot?) for the Win2k user; also, I would appreciate some suggestions for software a) to help clean up my system if it needs it, b) to divine the actual level of current security (or lack thereof), c)to create the firewall that so many people tell me I need. Share/freeware would also be nice on this college student's budget.
Thank you for your patience and any help is greatly appreciated.
I just bought the (palm-powered) Kyocera 6035 smart phone off of EBay for $150. At first, I was no fan, since it is kinda huge and the controls take some getting used to, but now i am very happy with it. I can carry a French Dictionary to class, play a solid backgammon program, read classical literature, all on its albeit somewhat small screen. My two complaints are that it is just a little bulky looking, although it is still entirely portable, and that it runs the pam OS a bit slowly. Plenty of space for programs and whatnot, but also now space for additional memory card or bluetooth or whatever. Beats the hell out of that Tungsten-W which I suspect is faked anyhow. The Ericsson smart phone cited below looks snazzy, but it is not nearly as affordable, and i can just buy a new phone in a year or so at the price i paid for this one, should a K-razy sweet phone emerge.
Does this mean Dell's will drop in price, and that they'll show up in my local computer store?
I have seen this ad on the path train from Jersey city to, oh I don't know, 33rd st? Anyway, I was just sitting there and all of a sudden I look up, and see this full motion Target advertisement through the window above the guy across from me's head. It was pretty surreal the first time. Now me and my friends know exactly when to look up. It is worth a gander. Seems hard to install, in an in-use subway. And most people don't look out the windows in the tunnels. But the existence of the ad has spread by word of mouth. Seems like good money for the MTA, and the ads are relatively unobtrusive compared to the ones I get 5 minutes into surfing the web. Anyway...
I must confess that I have only leafed through your book at Border's recently. No offense, but I have already spent my cookbook budget on Mario Batali's latest. But from the review and from what I read at the store and seen of your television show, you treat cooking as a science to be mastered by good 'laboratory technique' and scientific method. "With the right tools and a little patience, anyone can turn this wily thistle (artichoke show) into Good Eats," or something to that effect. My question is this: Where does the art of cooking fit in? Is there such a thing in your opinion? Why isn't good cooking mastering the techniques etc, and then allowing the creativity to present itself, if it is there? Are artists the exception and scientists the rule? I am suspicious that behind the matter-of-factness tone of your show, and the any idiot can do it attitude, you have "the touch" for the culinary arts. Aren't you an artist first, and profiting (not in a bad way) from teaching the masses good stick-figure technique? I'm sure by now you get the drift of my question and can respond accordingly. Thanks very much for your patience. -Aaron Foster Annapolis, MD