This is interesting news for me. Long ago when I was taking a class on using JMP, the instructor told us that JMP stood for Jim's Macintosh Program and that it was written or, at least, started by Jim Goodnight. Sounded like a good story. It was almost right, except that it was wrong.
If scientists got paid like doctors, lawyers and investment bankers, there would be a lot more interest in science. I'm mostly talking about the US. I think there's interest in other countries where people see it as a way to improve their lives. Over the last 20 years, the United States has systematically exported much of our science (and engineering) know-how to Asia because it was so much cheaper to do it that way. Whether it was a good idea or just the way things work, that's what happened. We'll start paying scientists decent wages and the interest will come back when someone attacks us and then won't make our bombs for us cheaply to toss back at them. Actually, the bigger problem is that the bombs will be products (drugs, electronics, cars, etc) we can no longer afford.
It's been somewhat amazing to me that an open standard for any kind of scalable vector graphics model on the web has taken so long to take off. The web has mostly been a graphical environment with bandwidth constraints. It seems a natural. I suspect a conspiracy.
I think this is all an inverted corollary of the old engineering maxim "Good, Fast, Cheap, pick two". If you do two of them well enough, the third one will drive sales. It might make more sense if you think of "fast" in terms of convenience.
Nothing new here, just old mechanisms showing up in new places.
We were a Nielsen family for a couple of years, up until about March. The amount of equipment that they attached to the TV and all the associated devices was staggering. We also had a TV in the bedroom that contained a DVD player. They took the TV apart and put lots of wires inside and a box on the outside. Some how they amanged to break a VCR during the installation, which they replaced. Both TVs in the house had a complete PC attached and ran a separate wireless network as well as connecting to the house phone lines. There were zillions of wires and lots of little boxes behind the TV. If the whole gamisch didn't call in daily to report on us for a day or two, the technician would schedule a visit and pound on his PC for an hour or so and then leave, satisfied that he's done something. Last March, during the Final Four, our old 1994 27" Sony Trinitron died and when I went shopping for a new TV, I decided that it was time for Nielsen to go. It was an interesting experience but I was very unimpressed with the complexity of their equipment. Now I know what a modern Rube Goldberg device looks like.
This is exactly right. A lot of people hoot on Steve Case over this deal. I think it was a genius move on his part as explained above. I did the math back when it happened and AOL was valued at around $7K per US household. It would take a long time to get that kind of money back. It was a disastrous deal on TW's part. Overall it was a bad deal because TW was twice as stupid as Case and company were smart.
There are occasional rumors of Meg Whitman getting into politics. She was often mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain. Keep this little fiasco in mind when you go to vote. This makes a $400 hammer look like a real deal.
Tritium has a relatively short half-life (around 12.3 yr) so it spews out a lot of low energy beta particles relative to, say, carbon-14 which spews out fewer, hotter beta particles. If you're counting, it's pretty radioactive. I do know that tritiated organic molecules will turn brown on standing pretty quickly. Much faster than carbon-14 labeled molecules.
I definitely agree. This book, given to me about 35 years ago by a friend who was in architecture school, has clearly shaped my thinking. And I'm a chemist. Should be on every scientist's reading list.
My wife recently built a series of stone walls beside our driveway. I often wondered if some program existed that would help figure out where each stone should go so that it all fit tightly together. So now one exists. The next problem is how to get the shapes of all those stones into the program for it to crunch on.
I always thought that the Flat Earth Society was a drinking club, sort of like the "Man will Never Fly Society" that meets every year at Kitty Hawk, NC and gets smashed.
Not so sure about the paint program analogy. I bought a 128K Mac back in the day. I have yet to see any paint program on any hardware that tracked the mouse as accurately as MacPaint did on that old machine. Ive been looking for 24 years. My guess is that there was very little higher level code between your hand and the screen.
I thought this article was going to be about the evolutionary advantage that stripes give zebras, not spreadsheets. Who cares about spreadsheets, what about the zebras?
Slashdot Mirror
This is interesting news for me. Long ago when I was taking a class on using JMP, the instructor told us that JMP stood for Jim's Macintosh Program and that it was written or, at least, started by Jim Goodnight. Sounded like a good story. It was almost right, except that it was wrong.
If scientists got paid like doctors, lawyers and investment bankers, there would be a lot more interest in science. I'm mostly talking about the US. I think there's interest in other countries where people see it as a way to improve their lives. Over the last 20 years, the United States has systematically exported much of our science (and engineering) know-how to Asia because it was so much cheaper to do it that way. Whether it was a good idea or just the way things work, that's what happened. We'll start paying scientists decent wages and the interest will come back when someone attacks us and then won't make our bombs for us cheaply to toss back at them. Actually, the bigger problem is that the bombs will be products (drugs, electronics, cars, etc) we can no longer afford.
It's been somewhat amazing to me that an open standard for any kind of scalable vector graphics model on the web has taken so long to take off. The web has mostly been a graphical environment with bandwidth constraints. It seems a natural. I suspect a conspiracy.
Ooops! Wrong Charleston.
This kid lives in Charleston. Why is he talking about shooting at rebels? What has the South come to? Where is the adult supervision?
I think this is all an inverted corollary of the old engineering maxim "Good, Fast, Cheap, pick two". If you do two of them well enough, the third one will drive sales. It might make more sense if you think of "fast" in terms of convenience. Nothing new here, just old mechanisms showing up in new places.
We were a Nielsen family for a couple of years, up until about March. The amount of equipment that they attached to the TV and all the associated devices was staggering. We also had a TV in the bedroom that contained a DVD player. They took the TV apart and put lots of wires inside and a box on the outside. Some how they amanged to break a VCR during the installation, which they replaced. Both TVs in the house had a complete PC attached and ran a separate wireless network as well as connecting to the house phone lines. There were zillions of wires and lots of little boxes behind the TV. If the whole gamisch didn't call in daily to report on us for a day or two, the technician would schedule a visit and pound on his PC for an hour or so and then leave, satisfied that he's done something. Last March, during the Final Four, our old 1994 27" Sony Trinitron died and when I went shopping for a new TV, I decided that it was time for Nielsen to go. It was an interesting experience but I was very unimpressed with the complexity of their equipment. Now I know what a modern Rube Goldberg device looks like.
This is exactly right. A lot of people hoot on Steve Case over this deal. I think it was a genius move on his part as explained above. I did the math back when it happened and AOL was valued at around $7K per US household. It would take a long time to get that kind of money back. It was a disastrous deal on TW's part. Overall it was a bad deal because TW was twice as stupid as Case and company were smart.
Somebody's got to pay for all those cute commercials. Maybe we should ban direct to consumer advertising of phone service.
There are occasional rumors of Meg Whitman getting into politics. She was often mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain. Keep this little fiasco in mind when you go to vote. This makes a $400 hammer look like a real deal.
The tutorial looks a lot more like a lecture than a "how to" play a game. I bailed.
I don't think the iPhone has a hard drive. In fact, I know it doesn't.
Tritium has a relatively short half-life (around 12.3 yr) so it spews out a lot of low energy beta particles relative to, say, carbon-14 which spews out fewer, hotter beta particles. If you're counting, it's pretty radioactive. I do know that tritiated organic molecules will turn brown on standing pretty quickly. Much faster than carbon-14 labeled molecules.
I definitely agree. This book, given to me about 35 years ago by a friend who was in architecture school, has clearly shaped my thinking. And I'm a chemist. Should be on every scientist's reading list.
My wife recently built a series of stone walls beside our driveway. I often wondered if some program existed that would help figure out where each stone should go so that it all fit tightly together. So now one exists. The next problem is how to get the shapes of all those stones into the program for it to crunch on.
Since when is a "188x119x55mm Alu alloy Hammond enclosure," a common household item?
I always thought that the Flat Earth Society was a drinking club, sort of like the "Man will Never Fly Society" that meets every year at Kitty Hawk, NC and gets smashed.
Apple will do without Steve Jobs like NASA has done since Wernher von Braun died.
Not so sure about the paint program analogy. I bought a 128K Mac back in the day. I have yet to see any paint program on any hardware that tracked the mouse as accurately as MacPaint did on that old machine. Ive been looking for 24 years. My guess is that there was very little higher level code between your hand and the screen.
I thought this article was going to be about the evolutionary advantage that stripes give zebras, not spreadsheets. Who cares about spreadsheets, what about the zebras?
This conversation reminds me of the question that was often posed when I was a kid.
Would you rather suck on someone's nose till their head caves in or slide down a razor blade into a pool of alcohol?
Tough choice!
I think this is No News.
It's glass, not Lucite. No fanboy is gonna stare at Lucite.
I was in Best Buy this past weekend and saw that they were on sale pretty cheap. Toshiba models under $200 if I remember correctly. Nobody was biting.
I've downloaded Google Desktop. I didn't know it was also a browser. Well, you live and learn.