Let's face it - most advertising these days is rubbish. I almost never see an ad that tells me something I really wanted to know. Leaflets dropped through my door are never to sell something I actually want. I don't want a new patio, factory price clothing, etc. I do want to know where locally I can buy a universal 6V power supply with built in NiMH battery charger (for example).
The reason why advertising is rubbish is because it's so cheap to do so. Sooner of later they'll find someone who WANTS that new patio or factory price clothing and sooner or later someone will send you a piece of spam telling you where to get that power supply. The industry of junk mail/spam works on fringe markets that arn't covered by mainstream advertising because the impact on the person is so much lesser. It's not quite nobody who wants these things but just a very few people(which add up). Rather than the sledgehammer approach of mainstream advertising which is intended to sway a large and attentive target audience, junk mail is like throwing a bunch of darts at a few selected consumers.
I have actually practiced writting by hand a lot and I do find it more comfertable to do any form of relaxed writing by hand (more flexability). Yet for any length of structured writing (letter, essay,/. comment) I find the speed and accuracy of typing preferable. I don't know why my hand writing is poor as I am well coordinated. You should however realize that writing actually requires better fine musclular movement than typing, think about it, while typing you can miss your intended target by half a centimeter and still hit the key yet while writing deviations as small as a millimeter can make the difference between neat and atrocious. Typing as opposed to hand writing is dependent on practice NOT coordination (I saw a man with no arms who could type 70 wpm with his FEET). The fact that I have poor handwriting is more likely dependent on the fact that I switched hands while young so my left hand's relatively neat writing atrophyed while my right hand never had a chance to develope early when it is by far easiest to leave. This happened LONG before I learned to type and the fact that I type has never taken away practice from my writing as most that I type would never be written on paper (this comment for example).
Ignoring my computer class there are only 3 classes in which I have used a computer.
1. English: Here we used computers for writing essays. In this case they were very useful as they allowed we to work must faster and better explore my topic, and also make my nearly illegible handwriting a non-issue.
2. Math: In one or two classes we worked with a program involving the relationships between angles in circles, this was also very useful as it helped demonstrate the principals in a manner easy to observe.
3. Social(History for Americans): Here we used computers in two ways, for one we used the Internet as a research tool. This was a great learning experience as it taught us to discriminate between the veracity of various sources (as opposed to the library where we were exposed to a much narrower array of for the most part more "standard"? material). It also gave us better exposure to a much wider spectrum of opinions (when we could find it (((search for relevant material)+ (slow Internet connection))!=fun). Our social teacher also showed us various powerpoint presentations (and DVD's of war movies but that's another story;), these did have a strong effect and helped to drive the point home.
My point is that technology can be a useful tool but only when utilized properly, you don't know how many kids I saw diddling the period away in computer class instead of doing work. I had a great experience with a limited amount of technology in the classroom. However in all of these cases the focus was not the technology but what we were doing with it. I think the problem emerges when teachers and school start using technology for the sake of using it instead of using it to enhance effect the concept or ability to do the work.
The kids of these Intel workers probably get lots of exposure to technology at home. Perhaps they feel that the schools are mearly teaching their kids to use computers rather than learning with them, kind of redundant if the kinds are already experienced with technology. They probably feel the need to ensure that their kids can write essays and do research without computers rather than locking them into this medium for life.
Actually the UofA where I'm attending all of the CS labs past 1st year(and formerly those) are non-MS (I've seen FreeBSD and Sun Unix and there may be others). Also where my brother works in the physics department most of the computers they use at the post-grad level are Linux.
One reason I can see is public confidence. The public probably thinks that open source means hackers , knowing how the system works, could easily break into the system and steal whatever they want. Open source simply does not have the reputation of reliability that most proprietary systems do simply to the fact that most people automatically assume that anything "professionally" designed by a company for the purpose of making money will by automatically better than something made by people in their spare time.
Whenever I have to give my adress to a website where I think there is even the slightest possibility that a spammer could get my e-mail address I merely give them a dummy spam account I have set up. I never get any spam in my normal mailbox and just hop over to the spam box every once in a while and look for any legit messages.
AMD has announced that they are working on a new line of chips designed to work in Palm pilots and other small personal devices. When asked of their progress an AMD spokesman commented "The initial tests look encouraging although we're still having some problems with the heat dispersement. We've submitted some of the results of the experiment to a "research" group in hopes that they will have some useful insight."
Actually a pair of students from my school went for 3d animation a couple years ago (their computer kept crashing at the nationals and I think they ended up sixth or fourth). I was just commenting on how the olympics are opening up to less and less athletic events every year (ie Bridge and ballroom dancing), in reality something like coding (or a quake tournament) is not completely different than a card game in some respects
In a few years not only will the olympics be into the net. But programming could be a sport. Cm'on I'm serious! Heck they made Bridgea demonstration sport(I think Canada won the gold:)!!! Why can't we have the C++ finals (or C# if Microsoft got it's way, which it probably would) or even the typing preliminaries(although this would just be secretaries). Just code hard and soon every uncoordinated emancipated geek will see that he too has a chance at olympic glory! (or at least at hacking the web page and giving him self a bunch of medals)
Sorry, I was rushed last time and didn't get a chance to get the link working here's a link to some wired interviews (I coudn't link directly to one) and here's some pics of the actual robots.
Another roboticist, Mark Tilden(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/til den.ht), actually builds robots that have no CPU's. He fashions them after insects by having just a simple circuit board, after an action proves unsuccessful it gets changed slightly and like this the robots learns. I heard about one experiment where he took a number of solar powered robots (built out of things like walki-talki parts) that were programmed (I'm not sure of all the details) to find light and set them in a room with a few light sources. He observed behavior that some of the larger ones broke smaller robots and ended up using their parts to form a barrier around the light source.
The article only refers to the repressor genes, (i.e. 6 legs instead of 12). But the creature still has to go through the slow process of developing legs itself in order for the gene to have some effect. It also doesn't explain how appendages like for instance wings on that fruit fly came along. They would have to start somewhere and I can't see how wings could be useful in any but their mature form. They wouldn't be needed to slow an insects fall(as they are small enoguh not to be hurt) and I can't see a pair of fans growing the muscle control and speed necessary to flight. What steered the evolution of the fruit flies to lead them to functioning wings?
Does poll only take into account internet access through home computers or is it considering other devices that operate over the internet, internet cabable cell phones, palm pilots, heck my freind said his fridge can order milk over the internet!! If he didn't have a computer would he still count as on-line?
and in other news the head of the FBI stated that "wrestling is fixed", and a former member of the baywatch cast was heard, while referring to Pamela Anderson, state that "they arn't real!".
That reminds me of a SETI@home poll I ran across recently. In this case a full 92.70% of respondents were male(ie 7.3% female). Does anyone have any statistics of involvement in internet communities of women as opposed to men. From experience I believe that women are more sociable among themselves than men. Perhaps this makes them less likely to activly participate in inpersonal internet communities such as open source development or/.
Those predictions are possible although I think the more plausable order is
understand speech correctly,
respond to voice commands,
and pass the turing test.
As to these things happening on schedule ever see 2001: A Space Oddessy (although to be fair they had quite an aggressive schedule for technological advancement).
I think a more accurate application of your comment should be which one has had more breaks. This is where the security through obscurity that M$ subscribes to would hurt them more. Also when a bug is discovered which OS is usually first in providing a fix for the OS?
Slashdot Mirror
Otherwise why would she possibly consent to be called Mrs. Taco?!?
Isn't Salon owned by M$? I might be wrong but I seem to remember hearing that.
The reason why advertising is rubbish is because it's so cheap to do so. Sooner of later they'll find someone who WANTS that new patio or factory price clothing and sooner or later someone will send you a piece of spam telling you where to get that power supply. The industry of junk mail/spam works on fringe markets that arn't covered by mainstream advertising because the impact on the person is so much lesser. It's not quite nobody who wants these things but just a very few people(which add up). Rather than the sledgehammer approach of mainstream advertising which is intended to sway a large and attentive target audience, junk mail is like throwing a bunch of darts at a few selected consumers.
I have actually practiced writting by hand a lot and I do find it more comfertable to do any form of relaxed writing by hand (more flexability). Yet for any length of structured writing (letter, essay, /. comment) I find the speed and accuracy of typing preferable. I don't know why my hand writing is poor as I am well coordinated. You should however realize that writing actually requires better fine musclular movement than typing, think about it, while typing you can miss your intended target by half a centimeter and still hit the key yet while writing deviations as small as a millimeter can make the difference between neat and atrocious. Typing as opposed to hand writing is dependent on practice NOT coordination (I saw a man with no arms who could type 70 wpm with his FEET). The fact that I have poor handwriting is more likely dependent on the fact that I switched hands while young so my left hand's relatively neat writing atrophyed while my right hand never had a chance to develope early when it is by far easiest to leave. This happened LONG before I learned to type and the fact that I type has never taken away practice from my writing as most that I type would never be written on paper (this comment for example).
Ignoring my computer class there are only 3 classes in which I have used a computer.
1. English: Here we used computers for writing essays. In this case they were very useful as they allowed we to work must faster and better explore my topic, and also make my nearly illegible handwriting a non-issue.
2. Math: In one or two classes we worked with a program involving the relationships between angles in circles, this was also very useful as it helped demonstrate the principals in a manner easy to observe.
3. Social(History for Americans): Here we used computers in two ways, for one we used the Internet as a research tool. This was a great learning experience as it taught us to discriminate between the veracity of various sources (as opposed to the library where we were exposed to a much narrower array of for the most part more "standard"? material). It also gave us better exposure to a much wider spectrum of opinions (when we could find it (((search for relevant material)+ (slow Internet connection))!=fun). Our social teacher also showed us various powerpoint presentations (and DVD's of war movies but that's another story;), these did have a strong effect and helped to drive the point home.
My point is that technology can be a useful tool but only when utilized properly, you don't know how many kids I saw diddling the period away in computer class instead of doing work. I had a great experience with a limited amount of technology in the classroom. However in all of these cases the focus was not the technology but what we were doing with it. I think the problem emerges when teachers and school start using technology for the sake of using it instead of using it to enhance effect the concept or ability to do the work.
The kids of these Intel workers probably get lots of exposure to technology at home. Perhaps they feel that the schools are mearly teaching their kids to use computers rather than learning with them, kind of redundant if the kinds are already experienced with technology. They probably feel the need to ensure that their kids can write essays and do research without computers rather than locking them into this medium for life.
Actually the UofA where I'm attending all of the CS labs past 1st year(and formerly those) are non-MS (I've seen FreeBSD and Sun Unix and there may be others). Also where my brother works in the physics department most of the computers they use at the post-grad level are Linux.
One reason I can see is public confidence. The public probably thinks that open source means hackers , knowing how the system works, could easily break into the system and steal whatever they want. Open source simply does not have the reputation of reliability that most proprietary systems do simply to the fact that most people automatically assume that anything "professionally" designed by a company for the purpose of making money will by automatically better than something made by people in their spare time.
Whenever I have to give my adress to a website where I think there is even the slightest possibility that a spammer could get my e-mail address I merely give them a dummy spam account I have set up. I never get any spam in my normal mailbox and just hop over to the spam box every once in a while and look for any legit messages.
AMD has announced that they are working on a new line of chips designed to work in Palm pilots and other small personal devices. When asked of their progress an AMD spokesman commented "The initial tests look encouraging although we're still having some problems with the heat dispersement. We've submitted some of the results of the experiment to a "research" group in hopes that they will have some useful insight."
Actually a pair of students from my school went for 3d animation a couple years ago (their computer kept crashing at the nationals and I think they ended up sixth or fourth). I was just commenting on how the olympics are opening up to less and less athletic events every year (ie Bridge and ballroom dancing), in reality something like coding (or a quake tournament) is not completely different than a card game in some respects
In a few years not only will the olympics be into the net. But programming could be a sport. Cm'on I'm serious! Heck they made Bridgea demonstration sport(I think Canada won the gold:)!!! Why can't we have the C++ finals (or C# if Microsoft got it's way, which it probably would) or even the typing preliminaries(although this would just be secretaries). Just code hard and soon every uncoordinated emancipated geek will see that he too has a chance at olympic glory! (or at least at hacking the web page and giving him self a bunch of medals)
Sorry, I was rushed last time and didn't get a chance to get the link working here's a link to some wired interviews (I coudn't link directly to one) and here's some pics of the actual robots.
Another roboticist, Mark Tilden(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/til den.ht), actually builds robots that have no CPU's. He fashions them after insects by having just a simple circuit board, after an action proves unsuccessful it gets changed slightly and like this the robots learns. I heard about one experiment where he took a number of solar powered robots (built out of things like walki-talki parts) that were programmed (I'm not sure of all the details) to find light and set them in a room with a few light sources. He observed behavior that some of the larger ones broke smaller robots and ended up using their parts to form a barrier around the light source.
The article only refers to the repressor genes, (i.e. 6 legs instead of 12). But the creature still has to go through the slow process of developing legs itself in order for the gene to have some effect. It also doesn't explain how appendages like for instance wings on that fruit fly came along. They would have to start somewhere and I can't see how wings could be useful in any but their mature form. They wouldn't be needed to slow an insects fall(as they are small enoguh not to be hurt) and I can't see a pair of fans growing the muscle control and speed necessary to flight. What steered the evolution of the fruit flies to lead them to functioning wings?
Does poll only take into account internet access through home computers or is it considering other devices that operate over the internet, internet cabable cell phones, palm pilots, heck my freind said his fridge can order milk over the internet!! If he didn't have a computer would he still count as on-line?
and in other news the head of the FBI stated that "wrestling is fixed", and a former member of the baywatch cast was heard, while referring to Pamela Anderson, state that "they arn't real!".
The video link isn't working. Did you guys manage to /. MIT!?!
That reminds me of a SETI@home poll I ran across recently. In this case a full 92.70% of respondents were male(ie 7.3% female). Does anyone have any statistics of involvement in internet communities of women as opposed to men. From experience I believe that women are more sociable among themselves than men. Perhaps this makes them less likely to activly participate in inpersonal internet communities such as open source development or /.
Those predictions are possible although I think the more plausable order is
understand speech correctly,
respond to voice commands,
and pass the turing test.
As to these things happening on schedule ever see 2001: A Space Oddessy (although to be fair they had quite an aggressive schedule for technological advancement).
I think a more accurate application of your comment should be which one has had more breaks. This is where the security through obscurity that M$ subscribes to would hurt them more. Also when a bug is discovered which OS is usually first in providing a fix for the OS?
I'm using ME.
Enough said:)
"Imagine this: The 2020 wearables exhibition: Now at the South Pole ... "
Well they were selling it to the Penguins, obviously;)
Do they have a similar thing for the Window boot-up
Since I try to reboot about once every 5 min (due to crashes), I'd see a lot of it:)
This helps Linux's credibility leading to a stronger position in the marketplace, leading to more apps for Linux which leads to more users and on on.