I would expect them to block the union web site from machines that people work on. Blocking customers from the website sounds like censorship, and at the mercy of corporate controllers. Which to me sounds like facism.
There is a line for corporations, when it comes to freedom of speech. In the states we accept that we are not allowed to view or speak as we please on company time. If I were a Telus customer I would cancel my service, as I can no longer count on the provider to suply an objective look at the internet.
As a new ham myself...maybe a year and a half on the air now...I think it's fair to say that the morse REQUIREMENT should die.
The reason is simple. The morse technique can still be used to send packetized data, ala 300 baud modems and the like. Simple enough to keep a psk31 setup and use that instead of code. What I'm saying is that automatic code sending and recieiving is so inexpensive these days so as to make the real use of code by humans...less relevant.
Dont get me wrong, I admire those who can send and recieve code. The purpose of the amateur service is, however, to advance the hobby and science of radio telecommunications. Morse is well established and it WILL be a matter of pride among hams to learn, build, use, and compete with code. It does not serve to advance the hobby, the art and science, or the emergency services nature of ham radio to limit it to those who can master the morse code when we have such advanced radio technology.
In short, I dont need code because more advanced technology is affordable. We dont need people to experiment with code keys anymore, we need people to experiment with last mile solutions. The only way to encourage that is to change the focus of the license.
Is going to the DMV and waiting on line a DDOS? no, it is following the procedure as it has been recommended by the provider.
Before you can ask if using the function is a denial of service answser this question: Is sending spam a denial of service attack? I have had to cancel email accounts because of all the spam. Did the spammers attack me? Did they deny me access to my email by raising the noise to signal ratio to the point that I could not use it anymore? I certainly feel that they did.
Now, the only reason that the spammers would have a technical issue is if they were not prepared for all the cancellation requests that come through. In that sense it is like a slashdotting. When a site gets slashdotted we laugh and say the site should have been on a better server, with more bandwidth, etc, etc. So...if the spammer cannot handle the cancellation requests maybe it's his fault. Maybe he should have vetted his mailing list and not sent emails to uninterested parties. Maybe 10 year old boys dont need viagra, cheap diabetic supplies, and hot lesbian horse action. Some discretion and discipline in advertising practices could help alleviate this problem.
Fact of the matter is that each spam email out is supposed to offer a chance to cancel the mailings and get off the list. If the spammer cant do that he is in violation of the law. I dont care if he has too many cancellation requests. I dont care if everyone who recieves it cancels.
If they dont want attention then they should not advertise.
I tried to read this article and to me it seems like a diversion from the issue.
The author seems goes to great lengths to find out who Wilson' s wife is, a task he could have accomplished with 2 credit checks. Maybe the author is not very smart or experienced at how to do this sort of research.
The most important detail, the one he glosses over, is that Karl Rove revealed that a particular person was working for CIA and as a result blew her cover, the cover of the front company, and has endangered the sources connected to them. And those sources were placed in important places in Iraq. True Rove did not name HER name, but he did identify her.
Now, the part about the article that is scary to me is that the author uses the chance to call for more restrictions on information, tries to tie the PLame case to the credit card information leaks in the past few weeks. To my liberal eye it reads like a subversive call to advance the march of facist tendencies in th post 9/11 world.
Dont let it succeed. Pay attention to it and brace yourselves. Remember to vote in every election and remember to talk to anyone and everyone about thse issues.
If we dont fight it now with words and votes and legislation we'll have to fight it later...with whatever comes to hand.
I read about it in 73 magazine when I was a very young man. I remember being enthralled by the recumbent bike, and the integration of all that electronics into something he could use while mobile.
---KC2MMW
I fervently hope PC gaming will die cause then no one will have a reason for microsoft on their home copputer.
RIGHT NOW I remain on a microsoft platform at home because I want access to all that commercial grade entertainment stuff. But if the games I want to play are no longer available for Windows then I can make my home machine a linux or bsd box, or switch to Mac, and keep my gaming console seperate.
There are plusses to doing this. 1)gaming consoles are more secure against hax IMHO. 2)Easier to develop for gaming consoles allowing for a smaller variety of bugs and solutions.
THere are things consoles still need before they can kill off PC gaming though. These include keyboards and mice as well as some cross-platform capability. People are going to be sorely disappointed when they cannot play the same game as their friend cause of different brand names on the consoles.
My opinion? Eventually microsoft will release an application which is part emulator to play xbox games on the PC. Sony will follow suit, though Nintendo might not. Dont know what will happen to nintendo.
Essentially, what you see on the horizon is the dawn of true appliance computing where all "simple" processing will be done on a disposable box. Call it thin client, distributed storage, consumer grade computing or whatever.
All of the posts here on slashdot seem to agree that the International Code (Morse Code is used on messaging systems where relays click out the beginning and end of each dot and dash. Oscillators which produce tones enabled the code we know today) is only useful if you use it a lot, that it would only be useful for advanced users. Well, simply put, the case being made is that for advanced users CW might be faster and worth learning.
Not to mention, if morse code pick up as an input method for SMS that would allow new and exciting input devices like bluetooth enabled morse code keys disguised as watches and rings.
I cant even begin to adress all the FUD coming off this discussion. Yes, CW takes practice. No, it is not just for the elite Ham or old fogey. CW does have 26 letters, 10 numerals, and punctuation. It can be altered for other languages with phonetic alphabets. You could use CW as an alternative method of text entry, or record the tones and play them back.
I do wish that CW would become a standard alternative for text input, it would be good for physical portability and not a hard library to implement. No, I do not know CW, but I would learn it if it meant I could enter a msg without looking.
So, the most interesting discoveries are made by people who have masters degrees? Six years is the time it takes to get a master's degree, get a grant and start doing serious work these days. By comparison the Wright brothers were able to work in a bicycle shop. People did not seem to need the same levels of funding to accomplish similar tasks a century ago. I wonder why?
The effect mentioned would simply seem to be a function of longer lifespans and the sorting effect of the education industry.
Of course, I also bet that scientists live longer these days. I also bet that the "scientists making breakthroughs" are coming from a more diverse background now.
I wonder this about the current crop of fly-by-wire, computer controlled, r/c products...for this, and the pico board for the piccolo helicopter.
Are these things scalable? Can I use the same electronics with larger, more powerful servos? And, if not, how far do I have to deconstruct the things to get to the core logic.
See, the way I figure it this could be a way to build an ALIENS-style loader, or a Gundam...or in the case of the picoboard maybe some kind of helicopter.
He's not charging a call out fee. See, this guy will go listen look at anyone's computer. Please note, he also did not quote his rate for repair work, he did not try to make a living off of his work. He also has not mentioned how many folks actually took him up on his offer once they spoke to him.
I've tried this. Most people realize that for the price of parts and labor they can buy a new computer. OR they dont want to pay for three hours of work while I go to their homes, install a piece of software, scan, repeat.
I suppose you are right, that the courts COULD back the student's rights to freedom of speech. I hope they would. I also hope that it never gets that far and that some form of student gov't tells the school that sharing legal files is ok.
I expect that the courts will more than likely treat this as if the school's network is a private library. Consider this: in the current judicial climate the Boy Scouts can were ruled to be a private organization with a right to discrminate based on religious prefrences; high schools get the rights of publishing houses; I expect that the courts would decide that the school's administration gets last say in how to adminster the resources that it provides, be they limited or not.
I disagree. I have often recieved small parts in tiny ziploc bags. Fuses, screws, microchips, etc.
Tiny ziploc bags are made for other uses. No pot dealer has EVER written a spec for a tiny ziploc bag and the reason they are made is for legit uses. The black market has subjugated that use. As is it's nature. In fact, the law even recognizes this. You dont get charged with dealing drugs for having baggies, or for a half ounce of pot (in NY state). But if you have both...then you are charged as a dealer.
I expect that the percenteag of tiny ziploc bags used for drugs is lower than you imagine. Though it is very telling that most of the ones YOU have seen were used for drugs.
Our courts will never declare P2P use legal. It's not what they do.
The legal system in this country is designed around the idea that things are legal and people are innocent until laws make it illegal or you are found guilty.
You are allowed to have and use bitorrent under US law. It's a first amendment right. You are not allowed to share copyrighted works however. By way of analogy it's like having a printing press. It's ok to print your own work, or works you are contracted to print by the creator, or works in the public domain: as long as you dont start printing copies of things like The Lord of The Rings (which did, in fact, happen and resulted in legal fights and too many editions wandering around). You can share free software and your own works with the tool. So you have some recourse. And you might want to investigate whatever student and academic tribunals that you have at your disposal. This is a right worth protecting.
I should mention that IANAL, but I do follow this closely as I did have articles censored in my High School paper, as well as other students at that school. So this is an issue near and dear to my heart.
There are things to condsider...
Is this a private or state run school? That may make a difference if this ever has to go to court. Usually the courts have taken the position that the school is publisher in student censorship cases and so has a right to edit the content of what they publish. So they might have the final right to say no to all P2P sharing on their network as it is "their" bandwidth.
However, you have not committed a crime, right? And you might want to be careful on that count, it would be embarrassing to go before a student/faculty review board and claim you only use it for legit purposes...and then have them show that you spent 2 weeks downlaoding the entire series of Porky's movies. So, be careful. Or build your arguments carefully.
You might want to contact the EFF or the ACLU, they both deal with this kind of thing.
Finally, I expect your best course of action is to try to protect your rights at the academic level. Get an academic review board together and present your case that the tool and the file quoted are not illegal, and show the license that allows you to share the file. Allow the IT deparment to make their case that they have limited bandwidth and dont have time to determine which files are legal and which are not. Demonstrate that you are a responsible citizen, not a wily and witless media bandit and try to paint the IT dept's policy as draconian and possibly a violation of civil rights. Let the students and faculty decide and they will set policy for the school. Then you will know what kind of school you really go to.
Or...host your files off-campus.
---Gorehog
While trying to build a visual programming language I think it would be beneficial to look at systems that have already succeeded at the task. For instance it is possible to design a circuit, draw the schematic of that circuit and have another engineer understand the function. In that sense the schematic is a program, written in a visual language. However, this is only an example, and while it could function as the UI for a visual programming language it would be cumbersome.
Flowcharts address the issues of diagramming and logic flow, while having convenient logic oriented symbols. So why not start there?
For nested logic a zoom function should be used.
Do not ignore object orientation. Much of the language and concepts you need are already there. Things like instances of objects, prototyping.
Dont forget watches. Keep in mind that you need to create visual versions of all the best programming tools you have seen. Visual search and replace, things like that.
Hydrogen is a fuel, not a source of energy. All we can really hope to use it for is as a clean and efficient way to transfer energy from other sources such as solar and wind.
The real fact of the matter is that we can use hydrogen today. It would require a world war 2 sensibility to make the switch however. We could use solar, hydro, wind, and coal to provide the energy to derive hydrogen from water. At the same time, while we are building the distribution infrastructre we need to be retrofitting our vehicles for hydrogen.
The benefits, aside from the ecological, are strategic. The nature of this public works program would solve the United States' employment problems. It would reduce the price of oil on the world stage, which would free up value worlwide. That would result in new investment and new industries. We would release ourselves from the heroin that is middle east oil and stop sending money to that region, where a percentage of it is used to fund atacks on the US.
So to sum up, hydrogen is not and energy source, it is a fuel. It happens to be very clean and enables a clean electric society. It allows us to disengage from immoral and dagerous dealings in the Middle East, it allows us to become self sufficient. The switch will free up trillions in cash and help with unemployment. We can even sell the rest of the world on it first.
So, whats the problem? The cost of this program might be high, possibly rivalling the cost of the Iraq war. We deal with our enemies euther way. Which method would you rather use?
This thing aint a hologram. Calling this a hologram is like calling a movie a play.
A hologram utilizes interference patterns to reproduce a highly detailed model (in photons) of the original. In fact, the reproduced model will reveal details down to the microscopic level due to the fine grain nature of the medium. Though I suspect you can get around that it is a hallmark of a hologram.
This device is essentially nothing more than that clock on thinkgeek that shows the time hovering in midair. He's just added a shutter so he has a way to advance the frames.
If you're looking to get out cheap and easy I can only help with cheap.
Use Blender (blender.org). It's free.
Easy is another matter. You will need to create your enviornments and characters by hand, otherwise risk having your machinima look like it's from the sims or some other game. It works for red vs. blue because of the nature of the jokes. If you were making something else, like "It's a wonderful life" or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" then then stock game models from some game engine might not be appropriate.
Thats a tradeoff you risk in any filmmaking venture though. Are you willing to risk a generic look for a lower budget, or are you willing to find or create the perfect set, character, etc, at the expense of a higher budget and longer production time.
Look up packet radio. I can recall, back in the old days as a wee young one reading my dad's 73 magazines and seeing all the stories about guys with various portable computers (Tandy 100 I think, also some "lightweight" apple variants). These people were hiking up to mountain tops and setting up various packet switched radio data networks. Long before ISP's. This was back in the day when AOL and Compuserve were BBs'es.
Packet controlled. TCP.
Heck, even today us hams get privileges in the 802.11b spectrum that mere mortals DREAM of. Hundreds of watts of power. A lot of hams play with high power wireless networking.
Also, check out the ECHOLINK software. You need a callsign to use it, but it's more crossover.
Though, something to keep in mind...Ham radio serves a purpose involving the civil defense. As a ham I can provide emergency communications services. Ham Radio, because it is a government sponsored license, carries certain privileges and resposibilities.
Yes, there is a lot of crossover. I knew a gifted computer scientist in college who got his ham credentials out of a love of all tech (N2TL I do believe).
I must admit, the ham scene does not benefit as much as the computer scene does. Most hams seem to be stuck in the windows/visual basic model when it comes to designing software. As most hams are...older...they shy away from linux and it's complexities. This is something that needs to be addressed. Maybe a Ham radio linux distro.
73's all---
KC2MMW
What devaluation? This is actually an example of a free market system working. More labor is needed, so they need nurses to work extra shifts. They inducement is the pay they get over their normal weekly salary.
Hey, they're getting paid less than the maximum asking price for a shift. That's certainly devaluing their labor. Keep in mind, there is an abundance of work that needs to be done. LABOR is the scarce commodity. The nurses should be able to post a minimum price and the hospitals should have to bid from there.
The number of nurses willing to work extra shifts is above demand, in which case you have to have a system to assign extra shifts to nurses. The non-market ways are to: play favorites, punish disliked nurses, or do it randomly. None of these are all that great as they either give the whip hand to the person giving out the jobs, or they don't ensure that those who need/want the money the most get it.
On the other hand, the auction method is an equal and open system to determine who gets the extra shift, and allows everyone to decide how much they want it.
OK, your first case is correct, if the ratio of overtime shifts to available labor is 1/1 then yes, that works, but why doesnt the nurse just get paid overtime as the law prescribes. Yes I realize that those laws may change soon, but for the moment they are what they have been for a long time.
Your second case however is not so well thought out. The price for the labor should be going up as it is more scarce. As for the assigning of jobs, that could be decided on a merit system and availability.
No, that is incorrect, in a free market the price drops as scarcity falls.
In this case the labor is scarce but the price for that labor will drop. Clearly the laws of a free market are not at work.
Dont forget, the commodity here is the labor.
Slashdot Mirror
I would expect them to block the union web site from machines that people work on. Blocking customers from the website sounds like censorship, and at the mercy of corporate controllers. Which to me sounds like facism.
There is a line for corporations, when it comes to freedom of speech. In the states we accept that we are not allowed to view or speak as we please on company time. If I were a Telus customer I would cancel my service, as I can no longer count on the provider to suply an objective look at the internet.
As a new ham myself...maybe a year and a half on the air now...I think it's fair to say that the morse REQUIREMENT should die.
The reason is simple. The morse technique can still be used to send packetized data, ala 300 baud modems and the like. Simple enough to keep a psk31 setup and use that instead of code. What I'm saying is that automatic code sending and recieiving is so inexpensive these days so as to make the real use of code by humans...less relevant.
Dont get me wrong, I admire those who can send and recieve code. The purpose of the amateur service is, however, to advance the hobby and science of radio telecommunications. Morse is well established and it WILL be a matter of pride among hams to learn, build, use, and compete with code. It does not serve to advance the hobby, the art and science, or the emergency services nature of ham radio to limit it to those who can master the morse code when we have such advanced radio technology.
In short, I dont need code because more advanced technology is affordable. We dont need people to experiment with code keys anymore, we need people to experiment with last mile solutions. The only way to encourage that is to change the focus of the license.
73's
Is going to the DMV and waiting on line a DDOS? no, it is following the procedure as it has been recommended by the provider.
Before you can ask if using the function is a denial of service answser this question: Is sending spam a denial of service attack? I have had to cancel email accounts because of all the spam. Did the spammers attack me? Did they deny me access to my email by raising the noise to signal ratio to the point that I could not use it anymore? I certainly feel that they did.
Now, the only reason that the spammers would have a technical issue is if they were not prepared for all the cancellation requests that come through. In that sense it is like a slashdotting. When a site gets slashdotted we laugh and say the site should have been on a better server, with more bandwidth, etc, etc. So...if the spammer cannot handle the cancellation requests maybe it's his fault. Maybe he should have vetted his mailing list and not sent emails to uninterested parties. Maybe 10 year old boys dont need viagra, cheap diabetic supplies, and hot lesbian horse action. Some discretion and discipline in advertising practices could help alleviate this problem.
Fact of the matter is that each spam email out is supposed to offer a chance to cancel the mailings and get off the list. If the spammer cant do that he is in violation of the law. I dont care if he has too many cancellation requests. I dont care if everyone who recieves it cancels.
If they dont want attention then they should not advertise.
I tried to read this article and to me it seems like a diversion from the issue.
The author seems goes to great lengths to find out who Wilson' s wife is, a task he could have accomplished with 2 credit checks. Maybe the author is not very smart or experienced at how to do this sort of research.
The most important detail, the one he glosses over, is that Karl Rove revealed that a particular person was working for CIA and as a result blew her cover, the cover of the front company, and has endangered the sources connected to them. And those sources were placed in important places in Iraq. True Rove did not name HER name, but he did identify her.
Now, the part about the article that is scary to me is that the author uses the chance to call for more restrictions on information, tries to tie the PLame case to the credit card information leaks in the past few weeks. To my liberal eye it reads like a subversive call to advance the march of facist tendencies in th post 9/11 world.
Dont let it succeed. Pay attention to it and brace yourselves. Remember to vote in every election and remember to talk to anyone and everyone about thse issues.
If we dont fight it now with words and votes and legislation we'll have to fight it later...with whatever comes to hand.
Ima gunna clean my pump shotty.
I read about it in 73 magazine when I was a very young man. I remember being enthralled by the recumbent bike, and the integration of all that electronics into something he could use while mobile. ---KC2MMW
I fervently hope PC gaming will die cause then no one will have a reason for microsoft on their home copputer.
RIGHT NOW I remain on a microsoft platform at home because I want access to all that commercial grade entertainment stuff. But if the games I want to play are no longer available for Windows then I can make my home machine a linux or bsd box, or switch to Mac, and keep my gaming console seperate.
There are plusses to doing this. 1)gaming consoles are more secure against hax IMHO. 2)Easier to develop for gaming consoles allowing for a smaller variety of bugs and solutions.
THere are things consoles still need before they can kill off PC gaming though. These include keyboards and mice as well as some cross-platform capability. People are going to be sorely disappointed when they cannot play the same game as their friend cause of different brand names on the consoles.
My opinion? Eventually microsoft will release an application which is part emulator to play xbox games on the PC. Sony will follow suit, though Nintendo might not. Dont know what will happen to nintendo.
Essentially, what you see on the horizon is the dawn of true appliance computing where all "simple" processing will be done on a disposable box. Call it thin client, distributed storage, consumer grade computing or whatever.
All of the posts here on slashdot seem to agree that the International Code (Morse Code is used on messaging systems where relays click out the beginning and end of each dot and dash. Oscillators which produce tones enabled the code we know today) is only useful if you use it a lot, that it would only be useful for advanced users. Well, simply put, the case being made is that for advanced users CW might be faster and worth learning.
Not to mention, if morse code pick up as an input method for SMS that would allow new and exciting input devices like bluetooth enabled morse code keys disguised as watches and rings.
I cant even begin to adress all the FUD coming off this discussion. Yes, CW takes practice. No, it is not just for the elite Ham or old fogey. CW does have 26 letters, 10 numerals, and punctuation. It can be altered for other languages with phonetic alphabets. You could use CW as an alternative method of text entry, or record the tones and play them back.
I do wish that CW would become a standard alternative for text input, it would be good for physical portability and not a hard library to implement. No, I do not know CW, but I would learn it if it meant I could enter a msg without looking.
So, the most interesting discoveries are made by people who have masters degrees? Six years is the time it takes to get a master's degree, get a grant and start doing serious work these days. By comparison the Wright brothers were able to work in a bicycle shop. People did not seem to need the same levels of funding to accomplish similar tasks a century ago. I wonder why?
The effect mentioned would simply seem to be a function of longer lifespans and the sorting effect of the education industry.
Of course, I also bet that scientists live longer these days. I also bet that the "scientists making breakthroughs" are coming from a more diverse background now.
I wonder this about the current crop of fly-by-wire, computer controlled, r/c products...for this, and the pico board for the piccolo helicopter.
Are these things scalable? Can I use the same electronics with larger, more powerful servos? And, if not, how far do I have to deconstruct the things to get to the core logic.
See, the way I figure it this could be a way to build an ALIENS-style loader, or a Gundam...or in the case of the picoboard maybe some kind of helicopter.
Just an idea.
He's not charging a call out fee. See, this guy will go listen look at anyone's computer. Please note, he also did not quote his rate for repair work, he did not try to make a living off of his work. He also has not mentioned how many folks actually took him up on his offer once they spoke to him. I've tried this. Most people realize that for the price of parts and labor they can buy a new computer. OR they dont want to pay for three hours of work while I go to their homes, install a piece of software, scan, repeat.
I suppose you are right, that the courts COULD back the student's rights to freedom of speech. I hope they would. I also hope that it never gets that far and that some form of student gov't tells the school that sharing legal files is ok.
I expect that the courts will more than likely treat this as if the school's network is a private library. Consider this: in the current judicial climate the Boy Scouts can were ruled to be a private organization with a right to discrminate based on religious prefrences; high schools get the rights of publishing houses; I expect that the courts would decide that the school's administration gets last say in how to adminster the resources that it provides, be they limited or not.
I disagree. I have often recieved small parts in tiny ziploc bags. Fuses, screws, microchips, etc.
Tiny ziploc bags are made for other uses. No pot dealer has EVER written a spec for a tiny ziploc bag and the reason they are made is for legit uses. The black market has subjugated that use. As is it's nature. In fact, the law even recognizes this. You dont get charged with dealing drugs for having baggies, or for a half ounce of pot (in NY state). But if you have both...then you are charged as a dealer.
I expect that the percenteag of tiny ziploc bags used for drugs is lower than you imagine. Though it is very telling that most of the ones YOU have seen were used for drugs.
Our courts will never declare P2P use legal. It's not what they do. The legal system in this country is designed around the idea that things are legal and people are innocent until laws make it illegal or you are found guilty. You are allowed to have and use bitorrent under US law. It's a first amendment right. You are not allowed to share copyrighted works however. By way of analogy it's like having a printing press. It's ok to print your own work, or works you are contracted to print by the creator, or works in the public domain: as long as you dont start printing copies of things like The Lord of The Rings (which did, in fact, happen and resulted in legal fights and too many editions wandering around). You can share free software and your own works with the tool. So you have some recourse. And you might want to investigate whatever student and academic tribunals that you have at your disposal. This is a right worth protecting. I should mention that IANAL, but I do follow this closely as I did have articles censored in my High School paper, as well as other students at that school. So this is an issue near and dear to my heart. There are things to condsider... Is this a private or state run school? That may make a difference if this ever has to go to court. Usually the courts have taken the position that the school is publisher in student censorship cases and so has a right to edit the content of what they publish. So they might have the final right to say no to all P2P sharing on their network as it is "their" bandwidth. However, you have not committed a crime, right? And you might want to be careful on that count, it would be embarrassing to go before a student/faculty review board and claim you only use it for legit purposes...and then have them show that you spent 2 weeks downlaoding the entire series of Porky's movies. So, be careful. Or build your arguments carefully. You might want to contact the EFF or the ACLU, they both deal with this kind of thing. Finally, I expect your best course of action is to try to protect your rights at the academic level. Get an academic review board together and present your case that the tool and the file quoted are not illegal, and show the license that allows you to share the file. Allow the IT deparment to make their case that they have limited bandwidth and dont have time to determine which files are legal and which are not. Demonstrate that you are a responsible citizen, not a wily and witless media bandit and try to paint the IT dept's policy as draconian and possibly a violation of civil rights. Let the students and faculty decide and they will set policy for the school. Then you will know what kind of school you really go to. Or...host your files off-campus. ---Gorehog
While trying to build a visual programming language I think it would be beneficial to look at systems that have already succeeded at the task. For instance it is possible to design a circuit, draw the schematic of that circuit and have another engineer understand the function. In that sense the schematic is a program, written in a visual language. However, this is only an example, and while it could function as the UI for a visual programming language it would be cumbersome. Flowcharts address the issues of diagramming and logic flow, while having convenient logic oriented symbols. So why not start there? For nested logic a zoom function should be used. Do not ignore object orientation. Much of the language and concepts you need are already there. Things like instances of objects, prototyping. Dont forget watches. Keep in mind that you need to create visual versions of all the best programming tools you have seen. Visual search and replace, things like that.
Hydrogen is a fuel, not a source of energy. All we can really hope to use it for is as a clean and efficient way to transfer energy from other sources such as solar and wind. The real fact of the matter is that we can use hydrogen today. It would require a world war 2 sensibility to make the switch however. We could use solar, hydro, wind, and coal to provide the energy to derive hydrogen from water. At the same time, while we are building the distribution infrastructre we need to be retrofitting our vehicles for hydrogen. The benefits, aside from the ecological, are strategic. The nature of this public works program would solve the United States' employment problems. It would reduce the price of oil on the world stage, which would free up value worlwide. That would result in new investment and new industries. We would release ourselves from the heroin that is middle east oil and stop sending money to that region, where a percentage of it is used to fund atacks on the US. So to sum up, hydrogen is not and energy source, it is a fuel. It happens to be very clean and enables a clean electric society. It allows us to disengage from immoral and dagerous dealings in the Middle East, it allows us to become self sufficient. The switch will free up trillions in cash and help with unemployment. We can even sell the rest of the world on it first. So, whats the problem? The cost of this program might be high, possibly rivalling the cost of the Iraq war. We deal with our enemies euther way. Which method would you rather use?
This thing aint a hologram. Calling this a hologram is like calling a movie a play.
A hologram utilizes interference patterns to reproduce a highly detailed model (in photons) of the original. In fact, the reproduced model will reveal details down to the microscopic level due to the fine grain nature of the medium. Though I suspect you can get around that it is a hallmark of a hologram.
This device is essentially nothing more than that clock on thinkgeek that shows the time hovering in midair. He's just added a shutter so he has a way to advance the frames.
If you're looking to get out cheap and easy I can only help with cheap.
Use Blender (blender.org). It's free.
Easy is another matter. You will need to create your enviornments and characters by hand, otherwise risk having your machinima look like it's from the sims or some other game. It works for red vs. blue because of the nature of the jokes. If you were making something else, like "It's a wonderful life" or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" then then stock game models from some game engine might not be appropriate.
Thats a tradeoff you risk in any filmmaking venture though. Are you willing to risk a generic look for a lower budget, or are you willing to find or create the perfect set, character, etc, at the expense of a higher budget and longer production time.
RUNNING SHOE SHIP...It's supposed to look like a running shoe...it looks like....not a shoe.
Look up packet radio. I can recall, back in the old days as a wee young one reading my dad's 73 magazines and seeing all the stories about guys with various portable computers (Tandy 100 I think, also some "lightweight" apple variants). These people were hiking up to mountain tops and setting up various packet switched radio data networks. Long before ISP's. This was back in the day when AOL and Compuserve were BBs'es. Packet controlled. TCP. Heck, even today us hams get privileges in the 802.11b spectrum that mere mortals DREAM of. Hundreds of watts of power. A lot of hams play with high power wireless networking. Also, check out the ECHOLINK software. You need a callsign to use it, but it's more crossover. Though, something to keep in mind...Ham radio serves a purpose involving the civil defense. As a ham I can provide emergency communications services. Ham Radio, because it is a government sponsored license, carries certain privileges and resposibilities. Yes, there is a lot of crossover. I knew a gifted computer scientist in college who got his ham credentials out of a love of all tech (N2TL I do believe). I must admit, the ham scene does not benefit as much as the computer scene does. Most hams seem to be stuck in the windows/visual basic model when it comes to designing software. As most hams are...older...they shy away from linux and it's complexities. This is something that needs to be addressed. Maybe a Ham radio linux distro. 73's all--- KC2MMW
Erm...you reminded me of something from my Dad's old 73 magazines, and here it is, The Winnebiko! There's more if you google +ham +bike ---KC2MMW
Bravo man, bravo
and 73's
---KC2MMW
what about "Battle Beyond the Stars"?
Hey, they're getting paid less than the maximum asking price for a shift. That's certainly devaluing their labor. Keep in mind, there is an abundance of work that needs to be done. LABOR is the scarce commodity. The nurses should be able to post a minimum price and the hospitals should have to bid from there.
OK, your first case is correct, if the ratio of overtime shifts to available labor is 1/1 then yes, that works, but why doesnt the nurse just get paid overtime as the law prescribes. Yes I realize that those laws may change soon, but for the moment they are what they have been for a long time.
Your second case however is not so well thought out. The price for the labor should be going up as it is more scarce. As for the assigning of jobs, that could be decided on a merit system and availability.
Yep, you're right.
I should have, though I thought the author was Pete Seeger.
At any rate, thanks for catching that.
No, that is incorrect, in a free market the price drops as scarcity falls. In this case the labor is scarce but the price for that labor will drop. Clearly the laws of a free market are not at work. Dont forget, the commodity here is the labor.