And they bought out double click for the sole reason of closing that department. They might get away with it if they can convince their shareholders that the existence of that company is bad for their main revenue source.
More proof that the American educational system needs work... Last I looked at a map, or even Google Earth, the US (which has an IRS) is south of Canada. Did it occur to you that a Canadian might have been the one to submit that article?
I would just like to point out that nuclear power sources are already there. The Mars Rovers, Spirit, and Opportunity contain radio-isotope heaters to stave off the chilly days and nights of the red planet. Granted, this is a much smaller power source (and the only energy being recovered is heat), but I would like to point out that sending nuclear power sources out is nothing new.
CANDU's may be the safest reactors on the planet, but be careful suggesting they are 100% safe. Keep in mind that there is a ridiculus amount of engineering necessary to keep a nuclear reaction under control... Granted, CANDU's are safer because a loss moderator or coolant (which in the candu system happen to be one and the same) causes the reaction to end, but never forget that the moderator and coolant have to go somewhere when lost, and could still leak and pose a hazard (since they have absorbed some extra nutrons that will eventually radiate out -- at least that is my laymans understanding).
Meanwhile, you still have to store the radioactive material for a long time afterwards. Not only is the waste material radioactive, it is full of chemically toxic heavy metals as well.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for nuclear power, especially here in Canada with the CANDU system because it is safer than the alternatives at the moment.
The fact of the matter is that nuclear power in general is a balancing act trying to contain a lot of energy, and we are trading short term polution issues like air quality for extremly long term hazardous waste storage.
So, ebay lists Candian Tire Money (which for Americans not in the know is esentially a coupon that you get for using cash or Debit at Candian Tire, a department store with an automotive bent) which is directly in contrevention with "Whether the payment model involves precious metals, or other non-cash (points, miles, minutes, coupons, discounts)"
but don't permit google checkout. IANAL, but as I understand antitrust laws, the definition of which is using a monopoly in one business to push into another -- Now Ebay itself as a service (auctions)is practically a monopolly, and though they own paypal, it is a seperate business/industry(payment processing), then they are using that monopoly in auctions to hurt competition in payment acceptance.
They had better provide valid reasons why options like that are not permitted, and expect to face lawsuits -- Google has shown itself not to be to shy about pushing it's case when appropriate.
I suspect they will back pedal citing some concern based on the list they had of reasons, and then state that a reevaluation of that policy that they decided that Google Checkout is appropriate.
First of all, that means you need bateries for your gun. While I am assuming that the primary market here are handguns, you have to take into account that batteries don't work in the cold very well, and it is one more point of failure. Heaven help the cop that forgot to put his gun on the charger last night.
Secondly, if you did have one, and someone else got it, chances are it was loaded or stored near ammunition coded for it. (hopefully seperatly locked up, but a safe won't stop anyone who is targetting your collection anyways.)
I suppose that could be combined with an RFID ring to activate/deactivate the gun (ok, now atleast if someone grabs it off you, they can't fire it immediatly -- but the rfid ring already did that.)
Finally, in a real fire fight, sharing ammunition is now impossible or very slow. There is a reason why police forces and militaries issue and do their best to require that everone caries compatible equipment -- parts, service, and supplies (inc. ammo) are all easier and cheaper to provide.
So, it sounds like a neat idea, but really it is completly stupid and useless, and the only way it would be adopted is if governments required that kind of technology... Which could happen with a few careful campaign donations, astro turfing, lobyists, etc. Such laws would then grant the company pushing the technology a license to print money -- which of course could happen.
The question is whether you want to teach people to program, or teach them to use an IDE.
On the left hand, the ide simplifies some the 'magic' to get the beginner going and writing code as quickly as possible. On the right hand, the ide does so much for you that you might not learn the underlying structures.
I am right handed on this one. While IDE's are an excellent tool, without knowing how a program is actually assembled (both literally and figurativley speaking,) then what the IDE is doing is just magic as far as the student can understand. However with that knowledge, then the IDE becomes a powerful tool to be used and abused to maximum gain.
I worry about the seperation between learning to program, and learning how to use one vendor's non-portable tools. Learning to program is more about problem solving, symbolic logic, and learning how to read the manual -- generally being flexible. In the real world, most of the time you will be given a workstation with some IDE or related system already in place, and told to use it. Without the basic understanding, you are screwed. Of course, after a few years and promotions if you are a good little code monkey, you may get to help choose the new tools, but most places I have ever been have so much time and code invested in legacy systems that the only change vendors when they go out of business -- and then, the places I work ususally use the last released version of the tool untill it will no longer compile executables for the target systems.
Besides, if you learn how to do it purely in text mode, then you have the moral authority to talk about the good old days and weigh in on editor wars. And, you would be suprised what a breath of fresh air finding someone installed an old version of VI (not even VIM, true VI) is when you sudenly get handed a software maintenance task on a VMS-Vaxen, and you are not old enough to have used them in kindergarten!
The problem with most low-end cameras and especially cell-phone cameras lies in the lens, not the sensor. Simply put, a small lens tends to have more distortion, and can't gather as much light to see in the dark well. Add that on to a light weight camera that is difficult to hold still, and you are garenteed that half your pictures will be blurry and dark.
It's not that I have anything against it, but it looks like a product targeted at being able to sell a 8Mega pixel camera for $300 that people will compare with the $800-3000 offerings in the same pixel range and think they are getting a good deal, but really they will not get something worth having. For that matter, they would be better buying a $50 PHD camera (my mother-in-law who has a PHD in engineering calls them that for 'Push Here Dummy'), and spending the money saved on film and processing -- You will still have a crappy lens, but you will probably get better pictures.
Just a few weeks ago I had to replace my computer, and I did it using the same case as the article, but I stuck to stock coolers and the like. It seemed awefully quiet right off the bat, but it really drove home just how nice it was to have a quiet computer when I was out of bed in the middle of the night getting baby formula, and I walked by my computer and wondered who bothered to turn it off. Funny thing was that when I looked under the desk, the soft blue case lights were bathing the floor with their glow. The house was quiet, there was no traffic, the furnace fan was not running, and the baby wasn't actually making any noise yet, and I actually could not here the computer over the sound of my own footsteps. I ended up moving it on top of my desk instead of hidden, so I could see the lights easily (and to get the cables off the ground -- baby is crawling these days).
The war of 1812 was not a draw. Although the american history will often try and show it, lets make a few things clear.
The war of 1812 was an invasion into canada, with the goal of annexation. This goal was not met. While it is true that the british forces tried to counter attack american cities, and were held off, the fact of the matter is that us canucks and the british whose colony we were at the time kicked your american buts back south where you belong, and for the fun of it, burned the white house down. Too bad (as the comedy troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie so succinctly put (http://www.deadtroll.com/ ) it's a shame you didn't take your culture with you.
But hey, by gons be by gons, we are now friends and trading partners, no hard feelings!
Of course next time the US tries to annex Canada, it will probably succeed (actually, places like Alberta, my home will probably vote to join peacefully, but that is another matter), because our military isn't much better than it was in 1812, and who knows what other parts of the world would help us.
I tried several times to come up with a witty comeback, but every one of them became a whining rant. Lets just say I felt like I was cheaper than the floor, and walked on just as much.
I have found that nice office space is good, but if the company is more concerned about appearances than their employees, that is not so good.
In the long distance past, I found out that the office space for a company I was working at cost 40$ (Canadian) per square foot per month. Now that doesn't include anything other than the rental itself... not power, plumbing, etc. So, I did the math... I was using up an area of 8ft by 6 foot, so 48 square feet. Round it off if you include use of common areas, so make that 50 ft^2. At that price, they were paying 2000 $/month for the space I occupied. Funny thing is that happened to be what I was earning at the time. So when they offered me a 100 square foot office, (raises had occured -- I was up to 3k/month by then) I started looking for a new job. I for one think that an employee should be worth at least as much per month as the floor under their feet. I felt the company was more concerned about appearances and having a fancy address than it was concerned about having employees who could afford clothes to match the office.
For reference, 40$/sq foot/month is for AAA office space... Just about any other building in the city would go for 12-20/month.
Don't get me wrong, I like having a nice office as much as anyone, but not when the company is paying a premium for the address and can't afford to pay a better wage. Maybe it's just ego, but I would like to think that good employees should be worth more to a company than an expensive address. The expensive address may add prestige to the company and bring business, but happy employees who are well paid tend to work harder, produce better quality work, and are less likely to leave the company for greener fields in the middle of a project.
My beef with attempting to link videogames and crime is all correllation vs. causation. Certainly it may be possible to show that people who commit certain types of crimes may also own/play video games on the same topic. People like Mr. Thompson from florida (who as far as I know hasn't weighed in on this one yet) will claim that the playing of the game was a cause of the crime. However, the data only provides a corellation. It is equally likely (or if you ask me, more likely) that people inclined to commit certain crimes happen to enjoy and therefore choose to play games on that topic. As one earlier posted noted, street and drag racing has been around as long as young people have had cars... How many of the early racers would/do enjoy racing games?
In any case, I will say for the record that the fact I enjoy playing MarioKart DS does not mean that I take turtle shells and squids with me to the go-kart track.
Perhaps it is in an oddly circular orbit because some intellegent being put it there, either personally, or as a programmed response. Granted, not a good place to hide if that was the point, but a good place to get noticed by a planet of creatures looking to the sky with some decent equipment.
[link rel="reference" src="simpsons"]I doubt it has anything to do with Major League Baseball[/link] but assuming something or someone has the ability to put such an object there, that might be plenty close enough to watch us and file lots of reports. Depending on the nature and disposition of the beings involved, perhaps it is to determine when we are ready for contact, or if we are ready to be razed and pillaged, or perhaps even to select anal probe research subjects for kidnap.
Seriously though, orbits of natural objects do not tend to be overly circular because in any orbital system there are lots of other sources of gravity to contend with -- over time, even the miniscule interactions of the planets, passing stars, etc will pull a circular orbit elliptical. So if it is rather circular, and been there a long time, then one supposes that it must be capable of correcting for those perturbations.
And hey, space is a rather large place to hold only us, so I am willing to accept that something or someone else is out there, and that there may be some aspect of physics that we havn't even begun to imagine that could allow for interstellar travel within a reasonable time... or that 'a reasonable time' may be signifigantly different for something whose life span is very very long...
Anyhow, that is my pure conjecture for the evening (MST).
A little harsh, no? While I grant you that the vast majority of similar Ask Slashdot's on this line of questioning do leave me wondering why those people are doing those jobs, expecting someone to know everything before they have 10-30 years experience is unreasonable!
People like sysadmins and IT support staff frequently finding new and exciting problems needing solutions that someone else has already solved. Besides, I think it's normal and good practice to ask colleagues for suggestions in stead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Within reason that is. And slashdot is probably a good place to ask about cheap solutions when expensive commercial ones exist -- though I hope the asker is not asking/. without trying a bit of googling first.
As for responses, you are completly right about the mixed bag -- I figure about 1-10% of comments on this kind of Ask/. are at least a little bit useful, 10-15% are Me too's, 20-30 % are bashing the questioner for being a moron, and the rest are a combination of nasty links, irrelevant meta-comments (like this one) and otherwise a huge waste of time to dig through. Go/. tech support!
But then I am a new father (3mo!), and so untill lately I have not been remotely looking at kids toys. I just have to wonder what is the hardware in these things, and how hard would it be to hack them and write your own software. i.e.
Step 1: Hack and boot linux on it Step 2:... Step 3: Profit?
(Couldn't resist, haven't seen one of those here for a while).
Seriously though, what I see is a cheap full colour LCD hand held that is made of (hopefully) bullet proof plastic - I would expect it to be made more sturdy than toys made for older kids (aka adults) who don't throw things when they are frustated(well, not that often anyways.)
Perhaps this is just a personal gripe, but I think it is an artificial division. From my point of view, art and science are closely intertwined -- at worst, a continuum, at best two perpendicular elements defining a plane where some idea or item can be placed.
One group I 'played' with (The SCA) defined an science as anything that could cause damage, and an art to be any other craft or the like... But really that is also an artificial division.
Until this century, artists, natural philosophers, theologists, alchemists, and all other forerunners to the modern scientist fluidly combined the two -- art leading to science, and science leading to art. Creating an artificial distinction between the two creates a barrier that might hinder future developments.
Well, our government has been talking about that we would likely follow the change up here, for business reasons.
I for one will be really unhappy if this is the case. The further north you go, the less sense DST makes (plus for those Saskatchewanners out there that don't change at all -- farmers work by the sun, not the clock, and they make up the largest part of their population.)
By november here, (in Edmonton, AB) there are less than 6 hours of daylight and even without DST they all occur during regular business hours. I leave home in the dark, don't see the sun all day in my internal office, and go home in the dark... So all that the change does is cause annoyance by changing something that is already annoying.
Now during the summer here, with DST, the sun rises around 5:30 and sets close to 10 or 11. There is so little dark during the day, that again, it doesn't matter if you use DST or not, it won't affect energy use or productivity. Since most of the states is closer to the equator than most of canada, I can see that in some areas (Like Texas) DST may have a much more signifigant effect, but I hope that Canada doensn't follow in that change because I don't want to change my ways!
As a former torontonian, and someone who still has a copy of the board game kicking around, I think this is a great idea. The rules they posted are pretty reasonable granting real life versus a game, so I will certainly check it out to see how it went.
Slashdot Mirror
And they bought out double click for the sole reason of closing that department. They might get away with it if they can convince their shareholders that the existence of that company is bad for their main revenue source.
You can't go to jail for exercising free speech on CraigsList. The worst that will happen is your account is closed.
So was my response... Really, Canadians get humor and sarcasm. Honest!
More proof that the American educational system needs work... Last I looked at a map, or even Google Earth, the US (which has an IRS) is south of Canada. Did it occur to you that a Canadian might have been the one to submit that article?
I would just like to point out that nuclear power sources are already there. The Mars Rovers, Spirit, and Opportunity contain radio-isotope heaters to stave off the chilly days and nights of the red planet. Granted, this is a much smaller power source (and the only energy being recovered is heat), but I would like to point out that sending nuclear power sources out is nothing new.
r e_environments.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/is_seve
CANDU's may be the safest reactors on the planet, but be careful suggesting they are 100% safe. Keep in mind that there is a ridiculus amount of engineering necessary to keep a nuclear reaction under control... Granted, CANDU's are safer because a loss moderator or coolant (which in the candu system happen to be one and the same) causes the reaction to end, but never forget that the moderator and coolant have to go somewhere when lost, and could still leak and pose a hazard (since they have absorbed some extra nutrons that will eventually radiate out -- at least that is my laymans understanding).
Meanwhile, you still have to store the radioactive material for a long time afterwards. Not only is the waste material radioactive, it is full of chemically toxic heavy metals as well.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for nuclear power, especially here in Canada with the CANDU system because it is safer than the alternatives at the moment.
The fact of the matter is that nuclear power in general is a balancing act trying to contain a lot of energy, and we are trading short term polution issues like air quality for extremly long term hazardous waste storage.
Feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of bricks..
(Snowcrash, Neil Stephenson. Don't have the book on hand, so the quote could be off, but the jist of it is right.)
So, ebay lists Candian Tire Money (which for Americans not in the know is esentially a coupon that you get for using cash or Debit at Candian Tire, a department store with an automotive bent) which is directly in contrevention with
"Whether the payment model involves precious metals, or other non-cash (points, miles, minutes, coupons, discounts)"
but don't permit google checkout. IANAL, but as I understand antitrust laws, the definition of which is using a monopoly in one business to push into another -- Now Ebay itself as a service (auctions)is practically a monopolly, and though they own paypal, it is a seperate business/industry(payment processing), then they are using that monopoly in auctions to hurt competition in payment acceptance.
They had better provide valid reasons why options like that are not permitted, and expect to face lawsuits -- Google has shown itself not to be to shy about pushing it's case when appropriate.
I suspect they will back pedal citing some concern based on the list they had of reasons, and then state that a reevaluation of that policy that they decided that Google Checkout is appropriate.
Serious shooters would never buy one.
First of all, that means you need bateries for your gun. While I am assuming that the primary market here are handguns, you have to take into account that batteries don't work in the cold very well, and it is one more point of failure. Heaven help the cop that forgot to put his gun on the charger last night.
Secondly, if you did have one, and someone else got it, chances are it was loaded or stored near ammunition coded for it. (hopefully seperatly locked up, but a safe won't stop anyone who is targetting your collection anyways.)
I suppose that could be combined with an RFID ring to activate/deactivate the gun (ok, now atleast if someone grabs it off you, they can't fire it immediatly -- but the rfid ring already did that.)
Finally, in a real fire fight, sharing ammunition is now impossible or very slow. There is a reason why police forces and militaries issue and do their best to require that everone caries compatible equipment -- parts, service, and supplies (inc. ammo) are all easier and cheaper to provide.
So, it sounds like a neat idea, but really it is completly stupid and useless, and the only way it would be adopted is if governments required that kind of technology... Which could happen with a few careful campaign donations, astro turfing, lobyists, etc. Such laws would then grant the company pushing the technology a license to print money -- which of course could happen.
I mean really, why bother?
I wish I knew where the original quote came from, but to paraphrase loosley:
The downfall of any system of laws is that number of laws continues to grow; Eventually everything that is not prohibited becomes compulsary.
The question is whether you want to teach people to program, or teach them to use an IDE.
On the left hand, the ide simplifies some the 'magic' to get the beginner going and writing code as quickly as possible. On the right hand, the ide does so much for you that you might not learn the underlying structures.
I am right handed on this one. While IDE's are an excellent tool, without knowing how a program is actually assembled (both literally and figurativley speaking,) then what the IDE is doing is just magic as far as the student can understand. However with that knowledge, then the IDE becomes a powerful tool to be used and abused to maximum gain.
I worry about the seperation between learning to program, and learning how to use one vendor's non-portable tools. Learning to program is more about problem solving, symbolic logic, and learning how to read the manual -- generally being flexible. In the real world, most of the time you will be given a workstation with some IDE or related system already in place, and told to use it. Without the basic understanding, you are screwed. Of course, after a few years and promotions if you are a good little code monkey, you may get to help choose the new tools, but most places I have ever been have so much time and code invested in legacy systems that the only change vendors when they go out of business -- and then, the places I work ususally use the last released version of the tool untill it will no longer compile executables for the target systems.
Besides, if you learn how to do it purely in text mode, then you have the moral authority to talk about the good old days and weigh in on editor wars. And, you would be suprised what a breath of fresh air finding someone installed an old version of VI (not even VIM, true VI) is when you sudenly get handed a software maintenance task on a VMS-Vaxen, and you are not old enough to have used them in kindergarten!
worth looking at.
The problem with most low-end cameras and especially cell-phone cameras lies in the lens, not the sensor. Simply put, a small lens tends to have more distortion, and can't gather as much light to see in the dark well. Add that on to a light weight camera that is difficult to hold still, and you are garenteed that half your pictures will be blurry and dark.
It's not that I have anything against it, but it looks like a product targeted at being able to sell a 8Mega pixel camera for $300 that people will compare with the $800-3000 offerings in the same pixel range and think they are getting a good deal, but really they will not get something worth having. For that matter, they would be better buying a $50 PHD camera (my mother-in-law who has a PHD in engineering calls them that for 'Push Here Dummy'), and spending the money saved on film and processing -- You will still have a crappy lens, but you will probably get better pictures.
Just a few weeks ago I had to replace my computer, and I did it using the same case as the article, but I stuck to stock coolers and the like. It seemed awefully quiet right off the bat, but it really drove home just how nice it was to have a quiet computer when I was out of bed in the middle of the night getting baby formula, and I walked by my computer and wondered who bothered to turn it off. Funny thing was that when I looked under the desk, the soft blue case lights were bathing the floor with their glow. The house was quiet, there was no traffic, the furnace fan was not running, and the baby wasn't actually making any noise yet, and I actually could not here the computer over the sound of my own footsteps. I ended up moving it on top of my desk instead of hidden, so I could see the lights easily (and to get the cables off the ground -- baby is crawling these days).
The war of 1812 was not a draw. Although the american history will often try and show it, lets make a few things clear.
The war of 1812 was an invasion into canada, with the goal of annexation. This goal was not met. While it is true that the british forces tried to counter attack american cities, and were held off, the fact of the matter is that us canucks and the british whose colony we were at the time kicked your american buts back south where you belong, and for the fun of it, burned the white house down. Too bad (as the comedy troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie so succinctly put (http://www.deadtroll.com/ ) it's a shame you didn't take your culture with you.
But hey, by gons be by gons, we are now friends and trading partners, no hard feelings!
Of course next time the US tries to annex Canada, it will probably succeed (actually, places like Alberta, my home will probably vote to join peacefully, but that is another matter), because our military isn't much better than it was in 1812, and who knows what other parts of the world would help us.
Yup, pretty much.
I tried several times to come up with a witty comeback, but every one of them became a whining rant. Lets just say I felt like I was cheaper than the floor, and walked on just as much.
I have found that nice office space is good, but if the company is more concerned about appearances than their employees, that is not so good.
In the long distance past, I found out that the office space for a company I was working at cost 40$ (Canadian) per square foot per month. Now that doesn't include anything other than the rental itself... not power, plumbing, etc. So, I did the math... I was using up an area of 8ft by 6 foot, so 48 square feet. Round it off if you include use of common areas, so make that 50 ft^2. At that price, they were paying 2000 $/month for the space I occupied. Funny thing is that happened to be what I was earning at the time. So when they offered me a 100 square foot office, (raises had occured -- I was up to 3k/month by then) I started looking for a new job. I for one think that an employee should be worth at least as much per month as the floor under their feet. I felt the company was more concerned about appearances and having a fancy address than it was concerned about having employees who could afford clothes to match the office.
For reference, 40$/sq foot/month is for AAA office space... Just about any other building in the city would go for 12-20/month.
Don't get me wrong, I like having a nice office as much as anyone, but not when the company is paying a premium for the address and can't afford to pay a better wage. Maybe it's just ego, but I would like to think that good employees should be worth more to a company than an expensive address. The expensive address may add prestige to the company and bring business, but happy employees who are well paid tend to work harder, produce better quality work, and are less likely to leave the company for greener fields in the middle of a project.
1) release something into the open source community
2) ???????
3) Lawyers/profit
I think that should be:
3) Lawyers Profit
My beef with attempting to link videogames and crime is all correllation vs. causation. Certainly it may be possible to show that people who commit certain types of crimes may also own/play video games on the same topic. People like Mr. Thompson from florida (who as far as I know hasn't weighed in on this one yet) will claim that the playing of the game was a cause of the crime. However, the data only provides a corellation. It is equally likely (or if you ask me, more likely) that people inclined to commit certain crimes happen to enjoy and therefore choose to play games on that topic. As one earlier posted noted, street and drag racing has been around as long as young people have had cars... How many of the early racers would/do enjoy racing games?
In any case, I will say for the record that the fact I enjoy playing MarioKart DS does not mean that I take turtle shells and squids with me to the go-kart track.
Perhaps it is in an oddly circular orbit because some intellegent being put it there, either personally, or as a programmed response. Granted, not a good place to hide if that was the point, but a good place to get noticed by a planet of creatures looking to the sky with some decent equipment.
[link rel="reference" src="simpsons"]I doubt it has anything to do with Major League Baseball[/link] but assuming something or someone has the ability to put such an object there, that might be plenty close enough to watch us and file lots of reports. Depending on the nature and disposition of the beings involved, perhaps it is to determine when we are ready for contact, or if we are ready to be razed and pillaged, or perhaps even to select anal probe research subjects for kidnap.
Seriously though, orbits of natural objects do not tend to be overly circular because in any orbital system there are lots of other sources of gravity to contend with -- over time, even the miniscule interactions of the planets, passing stars, etc will pull a circular orbit elliptical. So if it is rather circular, and been there a long time, then one supposes that it must be capable of correcting for those perturbations.
And hey, space is a rather large place to hold only us, so I am willing to accept that something or someone else is out there, and that there may be some aspect of physics that we havn't even begun to imagine that could allow for interstellar travel within a reasonable time... or that 'a reasonable time' may be signifigantly different for something whose life span is very very long...
Anyhow, that is my pure conjecture for the evening (MST).
A little harsh, no? While I grant you that the vast majority of similar Ask Slashdot's on this line of questioning do leave me wondering why those people are doing those jobs, expecting someone to know everything before they have 10-30 years experience is unreasonable!
/. without trying a bit of googling first.
/. are at least a little bit useful, 10-15% are Me too's, 20-30 % are bashing the questioner for being a moron, and the rest are a combination of nasty links, irrelevant meta-comments (like this one) and otherwise a huge waste of time to dig through. Go /. tech support!
People like sysadmins and IT support staff frequently finding new and exciting problems needing solutions that someone else has already solved. Besides, I think it's normal and good practice to ask colleagues for suggestions in stead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Within reason that is. And slashdot is probably a good place to ask about cheap solutions when expensive commercial ones exist -- though I hope the asker is not asking
As for responses, you are completly right about the mixed bag -- I figure about 1-10% of comments on this kind of Ask
But then I am a new father (3mo!), and so untill lately I have not been remotely looking at kids toys. I just have to wonder what is the hardware in these things, and how hard would it be to hack them and write your own software. i.e.
...
Step 1: Hack and boot linux on it
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit?
(Couldn't resist, haven't seen one of those here for a while).
Seriously though, what I see is a cheap full colour LCD hand held that is made of (hopefully) bullet proof plastic - I would expect it to be made more sturdy than toys made for older kids (aka adults) who don't throw things when they are frustated(well, not that often anyways.)
Perhaps this is just a personal gripe, but I think it is an artificial division. From my point of view, art and science are closely intertwined -- at worst, a continuum, at best two perpendicular elements defining a plane where some idea or item can be placed.
One group I 'played' with (The SCA) defined an science as anything that could cause damage, and an art to be any other craft or the like... But really that is also an artificial division.
Until this century, artists, natural philosophers, theologists, alchemists, and all other forerunners to the modern scientist fluidly combined the two -- art leading to science, and science leading to art. Creating an artificial distinction between the two creates a barrier that might hinder future developments.
My first child was born just three weeks ago (Boy, 7lbs, 11oz!)
I am recently back at work, and let me tell you, I could use some of this stuff!
Well, our government has been talking about that we would likely follow the change up here, for business reasons.
I for one will be really unhappy if this is the case. The further north you go, the less sense DST makes (plus for those Saskatchewanners out there that don't change at all -- farmers work by the sun, not the clock, and they make up the largest part of their population.)
By november here, (in Edmonton, AB) there are less than 6 hours of daylight and even without DST they all occur during regular business hours. I leave home in the dark, don't see the sun all day in my internal office, and go home in the dark... So all that the change does is cause annoyance by changing something that is already annoying.
Now during the summer here, with DST, the sun rises around 5:30 and sets close to 10 or 11. There is so little dark during the day, that again, it doesn't matter if you use DST or not, it won't affect energy use or productivity. Since most of the states is closer to the equator than most of canada, I can see that in some areas (Like Texas) DST may have a much more signifigant effect, but I hope that Canada doensn't follow in that change because I don't want to change my ways!
As a former torontonian, and someone who still has a copy of the board game kicking around, I think this is a great idea. The rules they posted are pretty reasonable granting real life versus a game, so I will certainly check it out to see how it went.