It's not a PDA because: It lacks a calendar (although you could write one for it). It lacks a contact database (although you could write one for it). You can write software for it without using another computer. It has a full-size keyboard. It doesn't fit in your pocket, even if you get a Steve Jobs special shirt with extra-large pocket.
So, why is it not a laptop? It did most of what any contemporary computer did at that time, and it fit on your lap comfortably. If someone built a laptop today that was lightweight and consumed very little power, but it was only as good as a 5-year-old computer, would you say it's not a laptop? Because that's basically what Tandy accomplished with the Model 100. (Actually it was probably more like 1-2 years behind state of the art personal computers of the day.)
Or maybe you're hung up because you think the article is talking about this being a replacement for modern laptops -- that would be a very ludicrous thing for anyone to suggest, but I suppose we've gotten crazier articles than that before.
Adding the "[sic]" after "defense" suggests that you believe the U.S. Department of Defense doesn't know how to spell its own name. They'll be talking to you about this at lunchtime. Do not resist.
The 'Silver Dart' name plays homage to Canada's first plane.
Frankly, I think they'd do better with some sort of (much less expensive and land-intensive) tie-in to Bell's early high-speed hydroplaning watercraft, the HD-4.
Whatever they do, it sounds like it will end up in the dictionary under "boondoggle."
Breaking a CFL bulb isn't really "spilling" mercury, since there's no liquid mercury in there. This link has info specific to cleaning up broken fluorescent bulbs: http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/WPIE/FluoresLamps/#CleanBr eak
Okay, so we don't want to block out all sunlight like they did in The Matrix, but the lack of contrails in the U.S. after September 11th had a measurable warming effect on this part of the planet.
So if we can find a way to make long-lasting clouds above the land-masses, we reflect all sorts of solar radiation back into space, and things cool off. Can we do it with plain old contrails, or do we need to add something to the mix to make them stick around longer?
Considering the amount of commercial aviation in the skies, perhaps we can save some money by retrofitting jets already in use to leave behind thicker and/or wider trails.
A possible negative side effect is that crops will be somewhat weaker, but given how far agriculture has advanced since the industrial revolution, I'm sure we'll make up for any losses pretty quickly. (If we're growing our meat in labs by then, there should be plenty of extra, arable land available after most of the food herds are slaughtered.)
It's not completely clear, but it sounds like the deep links were going straight to media files, such as WMV or MOV format. I can see how the file owner could loses advertising revenue from that sort of link. But what if they linked to the HTML page that includes the link to the media file?
For comparison, this would be like linking to a video file on YouTube vs. linking to YouTube's page for that same video. If the former is deemed harmful to the owner but the latter is deemed mutually beneficial, that would seem reasonable to me.
In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the much earlier cases where content owners complained about being displayed inside someone else frameset rather than in a separate window. In that case, the user could get the impression that the content belonged to the linking site, rather than to the site actually hosting it.
This has been true since the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls got popular in the 80's. The only change is that the mechanisms for hearing about new toys and scalping them have gotten faster and more pervasive.
On the other hand, that would make it a lot tougher for "observers to use the building as a fully functioning time piece" using those "12 o'clock markings on the ground and the podium."
The blurb and the original article are a bit spotty, unfortunately. One quote suggests the tower will move at 5mm/second, which means it almost certainly turns 360 degrees per day, just like a 24-hour timepiece's hour hand. (Although I suppose it could turn twice per day...)
The original article (not the blog linked to by Slashdot) states that "state of the art bearing systems at several points in the tower will allow a power plant to rotate the base of the tower at 5mm per second using only 21 electic kettles' worth of solar power."
I don't have an electric tea kettle handy to measure, but I don't see this as a huge waste of energy, especially when its collecting its own energy.
And for reference, if 5mm/second is at the outer edge of the tower, and 5mm/second is only one rotation per day, then the tower is about 138 meters in diameter. (If it really only rotates once a week like the original article says... Then something doesn't add up.)
From the rules at http://www.netflixprize.com/rules : "Residents of the province of Quebec in Canada are ineligible to participate." They go on to list the remaining Axis of Evil and some other countries the U.S. doesn't much care for.
But what's wrong with Quebec? I would presume that they passed some sort of IP law that would make it problematic for NetFlix if the winner were based there.
You know, for a long time, I've remembered asking my mom what "IV" meant when seeing Star Wars for the first time. Doing a bit of research, I see that clearly that didn't happen. So either I didn't see it until the second run in theaters (after which it had been added), or else I'm remembering asking what "V" meant when we saw Empire.
So here I was all ready to go with a snotty retort, and instead I've learned something. Harumph.
If the only thing I had at the end of a 50-minute class was a memory of what was said, I am certain that I --personally -- will remember less than if I had the opportunity to write notes during the class.
Specifically, writing what I think is important helps me remember the key points visually, plus I believe there is a benefit in the note-taking itself -- a kinetic engagement of the new material, if you will -- especially if it's not strictly words but includes a few diagrams/pictures.
The book Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer (links to Amazon.com) includes scientific evidence proving that most people learning more if they engage multiple senses (e.g. hearing and sight) while learning. (Interestingly, he also shows that we tend to learn less if the visual part of the learning is simply to read word-for-word what the lecturer is saying. E.g. any speaker who reads his PowerPoint slides to you word for word is actually diminishing what you might have gained from the presentation.)
3. Actually, since no radiator is visible, we could just imagine that the engine compartment is similar to that of the old Saab 93. The engine was up front, the crank-driven fan was behind it, and a little radiator was behind that.
This is not to say that Saab's layout was the most logical or efficient, but it does prove that the fan can be behind the engine, pulling air over it before pushing the same air through a radiator.
My own problem with the fan in the paper model is that it rotates maybe 16 times for one rotation of the crankshaft. So if it were a real engine running 2000 rpm, the fan would be doing 32000 rpm!
Second, this is a MAJOR patient confidentiality issue, and I believe is considered legal under HIPAA, but if a physician, clinician, etc lost the iPod, they could go to JAIL. I'm not kidding.
As the article says, the main privacy problem is the users, not the technology. The technology allows the users to strip patient information from the data relatively easily. If the patient cannot be identified from the data/image, then the data privacy problem is solved vis a vis the iPod being lost or stolen. Clearly, of course, this would not be a tool for storing hundreds of patients' data for clinical reference. I imagine you might keep a few interesting cases around for teaching purposes, while the current workload would be cleared off before the next day's work begins. (Or else when the doctor decides to make room for the latest Britney Spears single.)
Also, I'm pretty sure HIPAA hasn't made it to Switzerland just yet, so while patient privacy is still a valid concern, HIPAA isn't the law governing it.
The problem with normal air conditioning is that it requires a massive amount of electricity to be used during the hottest hours of the day. This results in everyone drawing a huge load of power at the same time, resulting in strains on the system and so forth.
Rewind to a conservation/proof of concept idea from Alabama Power back in the early 90's: Make a lot of ice at night, when it's cooler outside and much less electricity is being used. Since there is excess generation capacity at night, this power costs less to use. (Err, especially if you're the power company.) During the day, use the ice to cool the building.
Assuming your local power company would install a second meter for you that lets you pay less for electricity -- but only at night -- you could make ice at night to cool yourself off during the day. Run it through a few calculators, but eventually the electricity savings would pay for the equipment. (Including the ice machine...)
I disagree that subtitles are there just to convey literal meaning -- that's the difference between a workable translation and a good one. A good translation carries the nuance of the original meaning in addition to the literal story conveyed. If I were wrong, then there'd be no reason to translate any poem -- any beautiful literature for that matter -- into any other language, because the beauty will always be lost in a literal translation.
(2) I will not buy DVDs blind, nor will I watch anime dubbed. I require at least a sampling before I plunk $ down on discs. Fansubs meet this requirement and have determined every single one of my anime purchases, with the exceptions of those series that came out before fansubbing really existed.
Which would include RoboTech (dubbed), Speed Racer (likewise) and what else? I remember watching fansubs in 1992, when most of them were the work of lone American ex-patriots living in Japan, buying anime laserdiscs, and adding subtitles with Toast.
I will say that the studios could use help with their subtitles. After accidentally watching part of the Cowboy Bebop series with both subtitles and English dubbing, I realized the subtitles were horrifically bad translations -- they appeared to be just literal translations, with no regard for making sense in English and sounding like real dialog. I ended up watching the rest of the series dubbed. (The same can not be said of Princess Mononoke and its lousy American actors trying to do voiceover work.)
Thank you for remembering the name of that for me. I bought a couple cases of that good stuff, back before I quit caffeine. It came in glorious 12-packs of 22 ounce bottles, and boy was it tasty.
Having read beyond the three "most troubling assumptions" on page iii of the "Thwarted Innovation" article, I see that it does touch on corporate as well as educational e-learning. Perhaps their initial detractors were right when they said, "The ink will be hardly dry on your report when it will be out of date!" It seems that they are still writing in 1999-2000, when the promise of e-learning was in line with the promise of e- everything else -- i.e., grandiose and starry-eyed as a result of the Internet bubble in the stock market.
I honestly think that here and now, in 2004, expectations of corporate e-learning are entirely appropriate, as are the budgets spent on it.
The chapter devopted to Corporate e-Learning is almost laughable, unfortunately. It appears that all they were able to do was look at e-learning providers' websites to see what their specialties were, then keep checking the sites to see what changed. No kidding. So the entire section just covers movement in the provider community to provide whatever the monied corporations needed. Nothing on the quality of the content developed, time saved by LMS's in proving mandated courses were taken, or anything that would require looking at the real output of all those e-learning providers.
For more timely insights on e-learning, I'd recommend following someone like Elliott Masie. I'd be curious to hear what he has to say about "Thwarted Innovation."
The Learning Alliance is specific to higher education, so when that report says "e-learning," they are speaking about attempts to replace college classrooms with synchronous and asynchronous teaching. For example: web conferencing software for a classroom, email lists for professors' office hours, and instant messaging instead of study sessions in the hallway.
I suspect companies like the University of Phoenix would also argue against The Learning Alliance's report, but I haven't really studied how the private, nationwide colleges like U of Phoenix are doing. (And even they offer both Internet-based and traditional class models.)
When Clark Aldrich says "e-learning," he's almost always talking about asynchronous, self-paced business training. For example: his own (sort of freaky) Virtual Leader situational simulators, off-the-shelf Word and Excel courses (CD-ROM or Internet based makes no difference), canned videos with PowerPoint slides, etc. (The canned video/PowerPoints are typically pretty awful, but they're cheap to develop, so you see a lot of them.)
E-learning for business applications is a huge, growing market. Its acceptance rate is also growing, to the point that any large company not already offering some sort of e-learning is seriously behind the curve. At a minimum, they can replace expensive, traditional classroom-based courses and reduce travel budgets. Where it's applicable, e-learning also saves employee time by letting them finish the course at their own pace. E-learning can't replace all classroom training, by any means, but anyone who's sat through the misery of an 8-hour class on how to use the latest version of Big Co.'s proprietary management software knows those classes are a waste of time for all but the slowest learners. Since e-learning can save boatloads of money in some cases (especially by saving otherwise unproductive employee hours), it's here to stay, at least in the business world.
If you want something better to read, try Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer, which actually proves through various studies why multimedia-based e-learning is actually much more effective than straight PowerPoint-type e-learning or, worse yet, e-learning where the voiceover just reads to you the text on the screen.
(Mild disclaimer: We're one of the companies creating custom e-learning courses for corporations who need and can afford it.)
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're supposed to make an argument here.
It's not a PDA because: It lacks a calendar (although you could write one for it). It lacks a contact database (although you could write one for it). You can write software for it without using another computer. It has a full-size keyboard. It doesn't fit in your pocket, even if you get a Steve Jobs special shirt with extra-large pocket.
So, why is it not a laptop? It did most of what any contemporary computer did at that time, and it fit on your lap comfortably. If someone built a laptop today that was lightweight and consumed very little power, but it was only as good as a 5-year-old computer, would you say it's not a laptop? Because that's basically what Tandy accomplished with the Model 100. (Actually it was probably more like 1-2 years behind state of the art personal computers of the day.)
Or maybe you're hung up because you think the article is talking about this being a replacement for modern laptops -- that would be a very ludicrous thing for anyone to suggest, but I suppose we've gotten crazier articles than that before.
Huh! Thanks for the clarification. Here I thought "trolling" was Usenet-coined. Now I know. (And knowing is half the battle, etc.)
"Trolling" would mean they're hanging around crappy discussion forums looking for ways to cheeze people off.
"Trawling" would mean they're out there dragging their nets and fishing lines in hopes of catching something worth keeping.
The former is intentionally pejorative, the latter is simply metaphorical.
And if you're the type to complain of NYTime's bias, isn't the Times more likely to think ill of Microsoft than to say something good about it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/technology/25soft.html
Adding the "[sic]" after "defense" suggests that you believe the U.S. Department of Defense doesn't know how to spell its own name. They'll be talking to you about this at lunchtime. Do not resist.
The 'Silver Dart' name plays homage to Canada's first plane.
Frankly, I think they'd do better with some sort of (much less expensive and land-intensive) tie-in to Bell's early high-speed hydroplaning watercraft, the HD-4.
Whatever they do, it sounds like it will end up in the dictionary under "boondoggle."
about extending human senses: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html
This project could easily provide fodder for a follow-up article.
Breaking a CFL bulb isn't really "spilling" mercury, since there's no liquid mercury in there. This link has info specific to cleaning up broken fluorescent bulbs: http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/WPIE/FluoresLamps/#CleanBr eak
Okay, so we don't want to block out all sunlight like they did in The Matrix, but the lack of contrails in the U.S. after September 11th had a measurable warming effect on this part of the planet.
So if we can find a way to make long-lasting clouds above the land-masses, we reflect all sorts of solar radiation back into space, and things cool off. Can we do it with plain old contrails, or do we need to add something to the mix to make them stick around longer?
Considering the amount of commercial aviation in the skies, perhaps we can save some money by retrofitting jets already in use to leave behind thicker and/or wider trails.
A possible negative side effect is that crops will be somewhat weaker, but given how far agriculture has advanced since the industrial revolution, I'm sure we'll make up for any losses pretty quickly. (If we're growing our meat in labs by then, there should be plenty of extra, arable land available after most of the food herds are slaughtered.)
It's not completely clear, but it sounds like the deep links were going straight to media files, such as WMV or MOV format. I can see how the file owner could loses advertising revenue from that sort of link. But what if they linked to the HTML page that includes the link to the media file?
For comparison, this would be like linking to a video file on YouTube vs. linking to YouTube's page for that same video. If the former is deemed harmful to the owner but the latter is deemed mutually beneficial, that would seem reasonable to me.
In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the much earlier cases where content owners complained about being displayed inside someone else frameset rather than in a separate window. In that case, the user could get the impression that the content belonged to the linking site, rather than to the site actually hosting it.
This has been true since the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls got popular in the 80's. The only change is that the mechanisms for hearing about new toys and scalping them have gotten faster and more pervasive.
On the other hand, that would make it a lot tougher for "observers to use the building as a fully functioning time piece" using those "12 o'clock markings on the ground and the podium."
The blurb and the original article are a bit spotty, unfortunately. One quote suggests the tower will move at 5mm/second, which means it almost certainly turns 360 degrees per day, just like a 24-hour timepiece's hour hand. (Although I suppose it could turn twice per day...)
The original article (not the blog linked to by Slashdot) states that "state of the art bearing systems at several points in the tower will allow a power plant to rotate the base of the tower at 5mm per second using only 21 electic kettles' worth of solar power."
I don't have an electric tea kettle handy to measure, but I don't see this as a huge waste of energy, especially when its collecting its own energy.
And for reference, if 5mm/second is at the outer edge of the tower, and 5mm/second is only one rotation per day, then the tower is about 138 meters in diameter. (If it really only rotates once a week like the original article says... Then something doesn't add up.)
From the rules at http://www.netflixprize.com/rules : "Residents of the province of Quebec in Canada are ineligible to participate." They go on to list the remaining Axis of Evil and some other countries the U.S. doesn't much care for.
But what's wrong with Quebec? I would presume that they passed some sort of IP law that would make it problematic for NetFlix if the winner were based there.
You know, for a long time, I've remembered asking my mom what "IV" meant when seeing Star Wars for the first time. Doing a bit of research, I see that clearly that didn't happen. So either I didn't see it until the second run in theaters (after which it had been added), or else I'm remembering asking what "V" meant when we saw Empire.
So here I was all ready to go with a snotty retort, and instead I've learned something. Harumph.
If the only thing I had at the end of a 50-minute class was a memory of what was said, I am certain that I --personally -- will remember less than if I had the opportunity to write notes during the class.
Specifically, writing what I think is important helps me remember the key points visually, plus I believe there is a benefit in the note-taking itself -- a kinetic engagement of the new material, if you will -- especially if it's not strictly words but includes a few diagrams/pictures.
The book Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer (links to Amazon.com) includes scientific evidence proving that most people learning more if they engage multiple senses (e.g. hearing and sight) while learning. (Interestingly, he also shows that we tend to learn less if the visual part of the learning is simply to read word-for-word what the lecturer is saying. E.g. any speaker who reads his PowerPoint slides to you word for word is actually diminishing what you might have gained from the presentation.)
3. Actually, since no radiator is visible, we could just imagine that the engine compartment is similar to that of the old Saab 93. The engine was up front, the crank-driven fan was behind it, and a little radiator was behind that.
This is not to say that Saab's layout was the most logical or efficient, but it does prove that the fan can be behind the engine, pulling air over it before pushing the same air through a radiator.
My own problem with the fan in the paper model is that it rotates maybe 16 times for one rotation of the crankshaft. So if it were a real engine running 2000 rpm, the fan would be doing 32000 rpm!
Second, this is a MAJOR patient confidentiality issue, and I believe is considered legal under HIPAA, but if a physician, clinician, etc lost the iPod, they could go to JAIL. I'm not kidding.
As the article says, the main privacy problem is the users, not the technology. The technology allows the users to strip patient information from the data relatively easily. If the patient cannot be identified from the data/image, then the data privacy problem is solved vis a vis the iPod being lost or stolen. Clearly, of course, this would not be a tool for storing hundreds of patients' data for clinical reference. I imagine you might keep a few interesting cases around for teaching purposes, while the current workload would be cleared off before the next day's work begins. (Or else when the doctor decides to make room for the latest Britney Spears single.)
Also, I'm pretty sure HIPAA hasn't made it to Switzerland just yet, so while patient privacy is still a valid concern, HIPAA isn't the law governing it.
The problem with normal air conditioning is that it requires a massive amount of electricity to be used during the hottest hours of the day. This results in everyone drawing a huge load of power at the same time, resulting in strains on the system and so forth.
Rewind to a conservation/proof of concept idea from Alabama Power back in the early 90's: Make a lot of ice at night, when it's cooler outside and much less electricity is being used. Since there is excess generation capacity at night, this power costs less to use. (Err, especially if you're the power company.) During the day, use the ice to cool the building.
Assuming your local power company would install a second meter for you that lets you pay less for electricity -- but only at night -- you could make ice at night to cool yourself off during the day. Run it through a few calculators, but eventually the electricity savings would pay for the equipment. (Including the ice machine...)
It's not a robot, it's a (wet) submarine. Y'know, with a diver inside, controlling it. Not a robot, just a really nice shark suit you can swim with.
Reading like good dialog then...
I disagree that subtitles are there just to convey literal meaning -- that's the difference between a workable translation and a good one. A good translation carries the nuance of the original meaning in addition to the literal story conveyed. If I were wrong, then there'd be no reason to translate any poem -- any beautiful literature for that matter -- into any other language, because the beauty will always be lost in a literal translation.
(2) I will not buy DVDs blind, nor will I watch anime dubbed. I require at least a sampling before I plunk $ down on discs. Fansubs meet this requirement and have determined every single one of my anime purchases, with the exceptions of those series that came out before fansubbing really existed.
Which would include RoboTech (dubbed), Speed Racer (likewise) and what else? I remember watching fansubs in 1992, when most of them were the work of lone American ex-patriots living in Japan, buying anime laserdiscs, and adding subtitles with Toast.
I will say that the studios could use help with their subtitles. After accidentally watching part of the Cowboy Bebop series with both subtitles and English dubbing, I realized the subtitles were horrifically bad translations -- they appeared to be just literal translations, with no regard for making sense in English and sounding like real dialog. I ended up watching the rest of the series dubbed. (The same can not be said of Princess Mononoke and its lousy American actors trying to do voiceover work.)
Thank you for remembering the name of that for me. I bought a couple cases of that good stuff, back before I quit caffeine. It came in glorious 12-packs of 22 ounce bottles, and boy was it tasty.
Having read beyond the three "most troubling assumptions" on page iii of the "Thwarted Innovation" article, I see that it does touch on corporate as well as educational e-learning. Perhaps their initial detractors were right when they said, "The ink will be hardly dry on your report when it will be out of date!" It seems that they are still writing in 1999-2000, when the promise of e-learning was in line with the promise of e- everything else -- i.e., grandiose and starry-eyed as a result of the Internet bubble in the stock market.
I honestly think that here and now, in 2004, expectations of corporate e-learning are entirely appropriate, as are the budgets spent on it.
The chapter devopted to Corporate e-Learning is almost laughable, unfortunately. It appears that all they were able to do was look at e-learning providers' websites to see what their specialties were, then keep checking the sites to see what changed. No kidding. So the entire section just covers movement in the provider community to provide whatever the monied corporations needed. Nothing on the quality of the content developed, time saved by LMS's in proving mandated courses were taken, or anything that would require looking at the real output of all those e-learning providers.
For more timely insights on e-learning, I'd recommend following someone like Elliott Masie. I'd be curious to hear what he has to say about "Thwarted Innovation."
The Learning Alliance is specific to higher education, so when that report says "e-learning," they are speaking about attempts to replace college classrooms with synchronous and asynchronous teaching. For example: web conferencing software for a classroom, email lists for professors' office hours, and instant messaging instead of study sessions in the hallway.
I suspect companies like the University of Phoenix would also argue against The Learning Alliance's report, but I haven't really studied how the private, nationwide colleges like U of Phoenix are doing. (And even they offer both Internet-based and traditional class models.)
When Clark Aldrich says "e-learning," he's almost always talking about asynchronous, self-paced business training. For example: his own (sort of freaky) Virtual Leader situational simulators, off-the-shelf Word and Excel courses (CD-ROM or Internet based makes no difference), canned videos with PowerPoint slides, etc. (The canned video/PowerPoints are typically pretty awful, but they're cheap to develop, so you see a lot of them.)
E-learning for business applications is a huge, growing market. Its acceptance rate is also growing, to the point that any large company not already offering some sort of e-learning is seriously behind the curve. At a minimum, they can replace expensive, traditional classroom-based courses and reduce travel budgets. Where it's applicable, e-learning also saves employee time by letting them finish the course at their own pace. E-learning can't replace all classroom training, by any means, but anyone who's sat through the misery of an 8-hour class on how to use the latest version of Big Co.'s proprietary management software knows those classes are a waste of time for all but the slowest learners. Since e-learning can save boatloads of money in some cases (especially by saving otherwise unproductive employee hours), it's here to stay, at least in the business world.
If you want something better to read, try Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer, which actually proves through various studies why multimedia-based e-learning is actually much more effective than straight PowerPoint-type e-learning or, worse yet, e-learning where the voiceover just reads to you the text on the screen.
(Mild disclaimer: We're one of the companies creating custom e-learning courses for corporations who need and can afford it.)