A simple door off a hinge repair, and NO ONE does it in a year?
Never heard of a UNION, have you? You're NOT ALLOWED to do things like this in most universities. Physical plant services are unionized in every university I have ever been in.
Nevermind most fundraising goes into a collective pool.
I hope the extreme reception the Nano got (mine is on the way) is a wake up call to Palm et. al they better get back to their roots and make some THIN and LIGHT devices you can actually easily take with you.
No input on the Nano is crummy, but it's form factor makes it much more likely I will take it someplace.
No! What we need is for government to pay less attention to the "threat to the industry's livelihood" and more attention to removing obstacles to the rise of the public domain's interests, as is fostered by FOSS methods of product value development and delivery.
The arguement boils down like this, for me:
Are you going to make money from selling software, or are you going to make money by USING software?
When a bunch of industries all need the same set of widgets, it is to their interest to contribute a small amount to get a good common ground to work from. This is one reason why embedded linux is popular; otherwise, you end up with a tax on your products in the form of royalties or liscences to a third party.
The question becomes, does it cost society to have cheap tools in the form of IP losses, real or percieved? Is this cost offset by increased productivity elsewhere?
Video and multimedia that work in linux without problems.
Specified set of working hardware and a distro deal with Dell / whomever.
Unified, cleaned up development tool package.
Application developer support for ^^^^
Clean application installer, no hassles.
Redhat had enough funding to make those things happen. They didn't.
Apple did what redhat should have, train gone..
on
Ulrich Drepper On The LSB
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Redhat should have given us OSX based on linux. They didn't; Apple gave people free, reliable and supported unix based on top of BSD instead. I used to run linux, guess what this comment is being written on?
The ship has sailed for desktop linux IMHO. Apple got your candy. Linux is doing VERY well in the server arena, and this is where I'd be focusing my efforts; if you look at where the money is being spent by Redhat, IBM et al. now, it is on the server side and server side applications. The desktop has already been lost.
This isn't a bad thing.. I use linux in a lot of places; embedded linux is going to be HUGE, you think the microsoft tax is bad.. but the desktop I'm not optimistic about at all anymore.
Many will disagree with me, but OSX is hard to beat on the desktop. I've got a half dozen X11 windows open to various servers now, and the X11 install was painless and worked first time!:)
I'd go completely rack mount, and plan on having a pile of systems. This solves the messy multiboot issue. At the minimum, I'd have a high end windows system and a linux system. If price were no object, I'd put in a seperate system just for gaming on a KVM but use X11 or Remote Desktop for the other systems on the three monitors.
Racks let you isolate for sound, too, something that annoys me more in my old age.
I'd add a seperate stand to add at least one notebook, probably a powerbook. This lets you be mobile and adds a forth monitor that's independant from all the other ones - handy for IM windows and quick checks, and the like.
For what it's worth - I'm currently working on developing my own custom rackmount setup along these lines with a company that does custom rackmount enclosres. Disclaimer: I get discounts for help with product development.
I'd go all DVI on the monitors for clarity. I've tested 15 foot copper DVI cables and had no problems; they're available in runs up to 50 feet.
I hate having five computers all in mismatched setups.. a gleaming rack with blinkenlights oozes geek.:)
Nobody I am currently working with has any plans whatsoever to migrate to Vista; most are still in the motions of moving to XP, if they even went that far. I'm not sure what huge features Vista is supposed to offer people, but I believe Microsoft may have themselves a real problem there.
Fragmenting it doesn't seem like a great strategy.
Every single odd, nonstandard, wierd, whatever media format that you can't easily write yourself has failed miserably. You'd think sony would have learned with the minidisc fiasco. Yes, I know minidisc is used by pros. Thanks.
Why the hell would I spend $40 or even $20 or even $15 when I can get the movie in DVD?
One thing I would love to see is some of the anti-nuclear organizations put together stunning, photorealistic animations of what a "limited" nuclear exhange might look like. There's lots and lots of data and video to work from to get very close, I think. The images would be so brutal I don't think you could find a television network willing to air it.
People have a hard time imagining what a million of something looks like. Let alone a million lives ended in 30 seconds. It's a fundamental comprenhension problem.
I don't recycle. I'm not particularly worried about running out of oil. The very fact governments are even still considering "first use" doctrines leads me to believe we will be back to sticks, stones, and crossbows in the forseeable future. Human nature, like karma, is a bitch.
However, both these billion-dollar lasers will primarily be used for nuclear-weapons research, with only 15% of their time being available for other areas of physics.
This is noticably absent from the article headlines.. I will also point out there are several thousand pefectly working fusion reactors on the planet, and I'd be willing to bet there's an excellent chance one of them is aimed at you sleeping in your bed right now!
The trick is -controlled- fusion, and FWIW, the ball of magic fire in the sky isn't controlled either.:)
The research is very, very young, and nobody is "Getting Serious" about it yet. Maybe when oil hits $200/bbl.
Ah.. but I live in the world of the screaming boss, the aggrivated client, and the yesterday deadline. For me to have a week or two to catch up on reserarch progress is an anomaly; most people are not given such an opportunity (I demand it), or are expected to do so on their own time.
When you don't have those connections to academia, then you're at a disadvantage and a loss. As far as IEEE conferences go - heh, these are usually only attended by engineering professors and very high level people in industry. Not your average schmuck.
There's a business opportunity here in a big way, but I have hopes google scholar will go a long way to solving the problem.
Case in point: I recently solved a difficult problem. My solution: 3 pages of code and 2 weeks of suffering. A PhD had a relevant section in his theis; the solution was ~10 lines and well explained.
There's a disconnect between research and industry that everyone knows about, but few people I believe realize how expensive that disconnect truely is.
b) likely a major contributing factor to them getting caught
Smart people either don't get caught, do their evil deeds in legal ways, or follow the rules. That's usually the way it goes down. One obervation I made some time ago is the reason that Society and Civilization "works" is because if you are smart enough to cause real trouble, you are also smart enough to be rewarded by society for productive deeds.
Ran "Derive!" for portable REAL symbolic math and solution solving
Based on DOS 5.0 (or dos 3?)
Single Serial Port
Weeks on two AA batteries
PCMCIA socket for a modem (although adios battery)
"right" sized.
Sigh. I would drop $1000 tomorrow, no questions asked, if someone came out with a linux version of that device. I used mine until the keys started getting flakey and then sold it. I regret selling it now.:(
My HP48 is still ticking though, although the keys are finally starting to go. Someone re-release it please too!
Universities have failed a lot of scientists in that a) those papers are the result of stupid tenure policies and b) universities often do little to promote their researchers.
Engineers often read papers to solve problems. When they know about them! (Google Scholar might fix this)
A worse problem than them often being wrong is that:
a) there is frequently no way to determine if a given paper is accurate, has mistakes, is partially accurate, is laughable, was accurate at one point but is outdated, etc etc. At least from an outsider's perspective.
b) there is no good way to stay abreast of current interesting developments - hell, there's no way to see interesting things from 20 years ago easily! Again, this is from an interested outsider's perspective.
Once or twice a year I have the luxury of spending a week or two in an engineering library for the express purpose of finding out new and interesting things in my field. I'm SHOCKED at the amount of material that is being duplicated (often badly) in industry, material that is inaccurate or poor quality, and VERY GOOD material that never sees the light of day again.
I concluded very early on the effort required to get an A was not worth it (to me) in engineering; I had no ambition to go into academia, and that's the only place it mattered. Getting a BSc. EE degree was a high enough bar to set. (does anyone really even care about the BSc. vs. BEng? does anyone even know the difference here? case in point)
The effort required for a 'B' was much, much less - often just going to class and doing assignments on time - this let me take all the effort I would have wasted getting an A, and pour it into working at internships, my own learning, and contracts - gaining real world, resume-stuffing experience.
That said, I busted my ass on my senior project and learned a LOT about wireless and packet-level IP communications - that and all the C++ experience I learned got me a very nice job when I graduated. Later, all the experience with embedded systems (learned from hacking on my car, NOT my degree), C++ and graphics paid off in spades and let me start my own company.
The degree was very valuable though - I learned enough about fourier transforms and calculus to study and read papers that helped me a lot when setting up my company. Did it matter that I got 10/10 of the complex integrals right in that fourier transforms class? Nope. All that mattered was I knew what they were, how they could be used, and what their limitations were.
I'm sure there's lots of counter examples, but almost all of it goes to: If you're motivated, you'll (probably) succeed.
Do something that interests you on your senior project, and make sure it works at the end. Regardless of grade, you'll have made out better than most of your classmates.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure whey they didn't offer the nano in an anodized aluminum enclosure.. it might scratch other things, but it would be resistant itself.
Now, they just need to invent transparant aluminum to protect the much more easily cratched screen. Haha.
A simple door off a hinge repair, and NO ONE does it in a year?
Never heard of a UNION, have you? You're NOT ALLOWED to do things like this in most universities. Physical plant services are unionized in every university I have ever been in.
Nevermind most fundraising goes into a collective pool.
I hope the extreme reception the Nano got (mine is on the way) is a wake up call to Palm et. al they better get back to their roots and make some THIN and LIGHT devices you can actually easily take with you.
No input on the Nano is crummy, but it's form factor makes it much more likely I will take it someplace.
For what it's worth, the post was meant to be attached to one of the desktop linux threads already started, not the main post.
Moot point.
No! What we need is for government to pay less attention to the "threat to the industry's livelihood" and more attention to removing obstacles to the rise of the public domain's interests, as is fostered by FOSS methods of product value development and delivery.
The arguement boils down like this, for me:
Are you going to make money from selling software, or are you going to make money by USING software?
When a bunch of industries all need the same set of widgets, it is to their interest to contribute a small amount to get a good common ground to work from. This is one reason why embedded linux is popular; otherwise, you end up with a tax on your products in the form of royalties or liscences to a third party.
The question becomes, does it cost society to have cheap tools in the form of IP losses, real or percieved? Is this cost offset by increased productivity elsewhere?
Linux core.
Single clean theme for KDE or GNOME.
Video and multimedia that work in linux without problems.
Specified set of working hardware and a distro deal with Dell / whomever.
Unified, cleaned up development tool package.
Application developer support for ^^^^
Clean application installer, no hassles.
Redhat had enough funding to make those things happen. They didn't.
Redhat should have given us OSX based on linux. They didn't; Apple gave people free, reliable and supported unix based on top of BSD instead. I used to run linux, guess what this comment is being written on?
:)
The ship has sailed for desktop linux IMHO. Apple got your candy. Linux is doing VERY well in the server arena, and this is where I'd be focusing my efforts; if you look at where the money is being spent by Redhat, IBM et al. now, it is on the server side and server side applications. The desktop has already been lost.
This isn't a bad thing.. I use linux in a lot of places; embedded linux is going to be HUGE, you think the microsoft tax is bad.. but the desktop I'm not optimistic about at all anymore.
Many will disagree with me, but OSX is hard to beat on the desktop. I've got a half dozen X11 windows open to various servers now, and the X11 install was painless and worked first time!
Math is not capable of proving something from nothing.
But his theory seemed so... intelligently designed!
I'd go completely rack mount, and plan on having a pile of systems. This solves the messy multiboot issue. At the minimum, I'd have a high end windows system and a linux system. If price were no object, I'd put in a seperate system just for gaming on a KVM but use X11 or Remote Desktop for the other systems on the three monitors.
:)
Racks let you isolate for sound, too, something that annoys me more in my old age.
I'd add a seperate stand to add at least one notebook, probably a powerbook. This lets you be mobile and adds a forth monitor that's independant from all the other ones - handy for IM windows and quick checks, and the like.
For what it's worth - I'm currently working on developing my own custom rackmount setup along these lines with a company that does custom rackmount enclosres. Disclaimer: I get discounts for help with product development.
I'd go all DVI on the monitors for clarity. I've tested 15 foot copper DVI cables and had no problems; they're available in runs up to 50 feet.
I hate having five computers all in mismatched setups.. a gleaming rack with blinkenlights oozes geek.
Nobody I am currently working with has any plans whatsoever to migrate to Vista; most are still in the motions of moving to XP, if they even went that far. I'm not sure what huge features Vista is supposed to offer people, but I believe Microsoft may have themselves a real problem there.
Fragmenting it doesn't seem like a great strategy.
Why would I pay for a movie or TV show on DVD, then pay for it again on UMD?
It doesn't make any sense to me. But, perhaps I am not the target demographic.
Every single odd, nonstandard, wierd, whatever media format that you can't easily write yourself has failed miserably. You'd think sony would have learned with the minidisc fiasco. Yes, I know minidisc is used by pros. Thanks.
Why the hell would I spend $40 or even $20 or even $15 when I can get the movie in DVD?
It's too horrific to imagine.
One thing I would love to see is some of the anti-nuclear organizations put together stunning, photorealistic animations of what a "limited" nuclear exhange might look like. There's lots and lots of data and video to work from to get very close, I think. The images would be so brutal I don't think you could find a television network willing to air it.
People have a hard time imagining what a million of something looks like. Let alone a million lives ended in 30 seconds. It's a fundamental comprenhension problem.
I don't recycle. I'm not particularly worried about running out of oil. The very fact governments are even still considering "first use" doctrines leads me to believe we will be back to sticks, stones, and crossbows in the forseeable future. Human nature, like karma, is a bitch.
They'll just have to make it up in volume. ;)
:)
From TFA:
However, both these billion-dollar lasers will primarily be used for nuclear-weapons research, with only 15% of their time being available for other areas of physics.
This is noticably absent from the article headlines.. I will also point out there are several thousand pefectly working fusion reactors on the planet, and I'd be willing to bet there's an excellent chance one of them is aimed at you sleeping in your bed right now!
The trick is -controlled- fusion, and FWIW, the ball of magic fire in the sky isn't controlled either.
The research is very, very young, and nobody is "Getting Serious" about it yet. Maybe when oil hits $200/bbl.
I'm assuming the earth was probably too bright to get stars .. and it looks like this might have been inside the moon's orbit.
Breathtaking video though. Very cool.
smanley@nyx.net
I've never heard of this. Email me directly and I will insure you get a rapid response.
Ah.. but I live in the world of the screaming boss, the aggrivated client, and the yesterday deadline. For me to have a week or two to catch up on reserarch progress is an anomaly; most people are not given such an opportunity (I demand it), or are expected to do so on their own time.
When you don't have those connections to academia, then you're at a disadvantage and a loss. As far as IEEE conferences go - heh, these are usually only attended by engineering professors and very high level people in industry. Not your average schmuck.
There's a business opportunity here in a big way, but I have hopes google scholar will go a long way to solving the problem.
Case in point: I recently solved a difficult problem. My solution: 3 pages of code and 2 weeks of suffering. A PhD had a relevant section in his theis; the solution was ~10 lines and well explained.
There's a disconnect between research and industry that everyone knows about, but few people I believe realize how expensive that disconnect truely is.
That's:
a) one of the reasons they're criminals
and
b) likely a major contributing factor to them getting caught
Smart people either don't get caught, do their evil deeds in legal ways, or follow the rules. That's usually the way it goes down. One obervation I made some time ago is the reason that Society and Civilization "works" is because if you are smart enough to cause real trouble, you are also smart enough to be rewarded by society for productive deeds.
Best palmtop there ever was.
:(
320x200 LCD large screen, beautiful reflective
Real clicky tactile feel "old hp" keys
Ran "Derive!" for portable REAL symbolic math and solution solving
Based on DOS 5.0 (or dos 3?)
Single Serial Port
Weeks on two AA batteries
PCMCIA socket for a modem (although adios battery)
"right" sized.
Sigh. I would drop $1000 tomorrow, no questions asked, if someone came out with a linux version of that device. I used mine until the keys started getting flakey and then sold it. I regret selling it now.
My HP48 is still ticking though, although the keys are finally starting to go. Someone re-release it please too!
Because geeky bittorrent users aren't as likely to have your family members drawn and quartered?
Coming soon to a Sopranos episode near you.
I wonder.
Platinum would be interesting too given it's catalyst power. Given enough energy though, I think it's pretty easy to get here.
The Deportation of the Acadians
..then we can have a hope of a mission there. Without upsetting the monoliths!
Universities have failed a lot of scientists in that a) those papers are the result of stupid tenure policies and b) universities often do little to promote their researchers.
Engineers often read papers to solve problems. When they know about them! (Google Scholar might fix this)
A worse problem than them often being wrong is that:
a) there is frequently no way to determine if a given paper is accurate, has mistakes, is partially accurate, is laughable, was accurate at one point but is outdated, etc etc. At least from an outsider's perspective.
b) there is no good way to stay abreast of current interesting developments - hell, there's no way to see interesting things from 20 years ago easily! Again, this is from an interested outsider's perspective.
Once or twice a year I have the luxury of spending a week or two in an engineering library for the express purpose of finding out new and interesting things in my field. I'm SHOCKED at the amount of material that is being duplicated (often badly) in industry, material that is inaccurate or poor quality, and VERY GOOD material that never sees the light of day again.
I concluded very early on the effort required to get an A was not worth it (to me) in engineering; I had no ambition to go into academia, and that's the only place it mattered. Getting a BSc. EE degree was a high enough bar to set. (does anyone really even care about the BSc. vs. BEng? does anyone even know the difference here? case in point)
The effort required for a 'B' was much, much less - often just going to class and doing assignments on time - this let me take all the effort I would have wasted getting an A, and pour it into working at internships, my own learning, and contracts - gaining real world, resume-stuffing experience.
That said, I busted my ass on my senior project and learned a LOT about wireless and packet-level IP communications - that and all the C++ experience I learned got me a very nice job when I graduated. Later, all the experience with embedded systems (learned from hacking on my car, NOT my degree), C++ and graphics paid off in spades and let me start my own company.
The degree was very valuable though - I learned enough about fourier transforms and calculus to study and read papers that helped me a lot when setting up my company. Did it matter that I got 10/10 of the complex integrals right in that fourier transforms class? Nope. All that mattered was I knew what they were, how they could be used, and what their limitations were.
I'm sure there's lots of counter examples, but almost all of it goes to: If you're motivated, you'll (probably) succeed.
Do something that interests you on your senior project, and make sure it works at the end. Regardless of grade, you'll have made out better than most of your classmates.