My mother sells costumes on eBay and makes a pretty good business, but she is terrified of negative feedback, or even a mere neutral. She's got 200-something total feedbacks now, all positive, but I swear she's going to kill herself at the first negative.
Conversely, she's also afraid to buy from anyone who has any negatives or neutrals, even if it's something like only 1 in 500.
A good professor can tell if a paper is the writing of a particular student: everyone has a certain "voice." By comparing essays written in class to those papers done outside class, the ones who are cheating are in many cases obvoius. If the professor suspects anything, he can ask the student to justify his argument by asking him or her questions to see if the student really knows what he's talking about. Better yet, make this sort of verbal exchange standard for all major assignments.
Then again, that's only works if you have a good professor, not one of those spooky kind that you never see and whose classes are taught by aids. It seems these days the student is growing farther and farther removed from the teacher: soon we'll have AI instructors for many subjects who give and grade assignments without ever going through human hands.
Would there be any problem with this thing getting too warm? It seems like stuffing any piece of hardware inside of something like a bear would make it heat up a lot.
I can think of only a few things I wouldn't do for a lot of money. Working for Microsoft isn't one of them. Sure, that might be like selling your soul to the devil, but money is what puts the food on the table. I know everyone enjoys being a starving student, but at some point or another you have to start bringing home a paycheck.
I'm a firm believer in that your vocation and your advocation can be two separate things. You might slave away in the coal mines during the day, but then you can come home and do what you really love. While it's always nice to get paid to do what you enjoy doing, a certain amount of happiness can be bought with cold hard cash.
Anyone else think that companies should be a little quicker to register their own domain names? If cybersquatting is becoming that big of a problem, maybe domain name registration should become part of the process for a business license.
As one poster said, the domain name system isn't the dewey decimal system of the web anyway. A web address doesn't have to be more descriptive than a brick and mortar store's physical street address. If you're stuck with "ambrosiasw.com" instead of just "ambrosia.com," you won't go out of business. Customers will find your website if you include the address on advertisements and products. Besides, blindly typing in URLs in the hope of finding the product you're looking for is a hit and miss method of surfing.
...trying to browse the internet on a grainy little screen. PDAs and cell phones might work for accessing little tidbits such as stocks and scores and weather, but in the long run, people are going to want complete moble access to the web, and that isn't going to happen on tiny two-inch screens. However, notebook computers still aren't convenient enough to check the web quickly out on the street, and tablet PCs are still too bulky for my tastes.
I'm looking for a screen with about an area of a jeweled CD case. Not much thicker than that, either. Granted, that wouldn't fit immediately in your pocket like a cell phone, but I see the device as a separate component that works with your phone to provide access on the road and your wireless network at home for connection there.
Until then, accessing the web on my cell phone isn't going to be very appealing to me.
At first the thought of freedom of speech and the First Amendment came to mind when reading the article, but then I was reminded of my many class debates over what forms of speech are protected. You have the right to criticize and speak your mind, but you don't have the right to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater, nor throw slander and libel around casually in a flame against anyone, especially at a company with access to hefty legal resources.
It's entirely possible to create an argument against a company without resorting to speech that would be considered inflammatory and cause for a suit. Granted, they're not as much fun to read sometimes, but a well-reasoned post with thought and backup will be more endearing in the long run.
Take this as a warning that you are responsible for your speech on the Internet, as much as people may try to hide behind the shroud of digital anonymity.
The investment in current DVD technology has already been made, just look at your local video store. Any new standard must be developed so that it doesn't make current DVDs and players completely obsolete. Maybe they could release simultaneously blue and red laser discs of a movie, as they release VHS and DVD versions now. People with older red laser systems would by the more familiar discs, and those with the latest blue laser systems could purchase the new DVDs to take full advantage of their HDTV resolution.
At the end of the day, it comes down to the analogous course that music has taken: the record to 8-track to cassette to CD to MP3 trip. How many times do I have to buy the White Album? How many times do I have to buy Top Gun? How many times are consumers willing? You have to space out these changes, with "mandatory" switches no earlier than ten years apart. Any more frequent and people get burned out chasing the technological carrot.
One could imagine the same thing happening around our landers on the Moon and Mars. I hope somebody out there preserves those monuments and doesn't let them turn into tourist zoos.
Re:We Are Alone - Other Planets are Uninhabitable
on
42 Worlds in 32 Days
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· Score: 1
I think finding some scum under a rock somewhere out there on a cold barren planetoid would be just as significant as finding an intelligent civilization. Granted the latter would make a more exciting feature at the box office.
I am also reminded of the Drake equation, that even with very conservative estimates of the number of planets meeting the conditions for an Earth-like environment, taking into account all of the factors that you mention, the number still comes out to at least many thousands. It is a very large universe out there, and I would bet that somewhere there's a being wondering if he (or it) is alone, just as we are.
I wonder if they have that first post problem too.
It's amazing that they can find planets that quickly, even if they're giants and not terrestrial. The existence of so many jovian worlds out there lends itself to the idea that Earth-sized planets may not be all that uncommon either.
I'm not sure if the "wobble" method of detecting extra-solar planets will ever be sensitive enough to detect planets like our own. I do have confidence however in the developing method of analyzing the light spectrum of a star to detect planets, and am really looking forward to seeing next-generation space interferometry telescopes. In fifty years could we have a visible-light image of another Earth out there?
The biggest kink in any method of faster-than-light travel OR communication is not the actual method of locomotion (wormholes, hyperspace, warp drive, other dimensions, pixie dust) but the problem of causality and the unsolvable paradoxes that can be created with a faster-than-light signal that carries information (or the FTL courier ship carrying a message).
Check out the Relativity and FTL Travel FAQ for a better explanation than I can give. I for one hope that Einstein is wrong... the universe is so much more exciting in Star Wars.
The most disappointing thing to me about OS X has been the missing features that were present in OS 9. The software base station feature for AirPort and USB Printer sharing have hit me the hardest. I decided to shell out the bucks for the flying-saucer base station, as it's more stable anyway, but I'm still having to use file sharing to send documents from other rooms to the print computer and print physically from there. I know there are UNIX-terminal fixes for these things, but I still think Apple has dropped the bomb if they don't reimplement some of these features within a few updates.
...we invent faster-than-light travel. Should we go out there and collect Pioneer 10 and the Voyager probes and everything else we've launched and put them in a museum for posterity? Or should we let them continue to drift through space, humanity's silent ambassadors to the stars?
Although privacy advocates might disagree, the "seamless, roaming connectivity" mentioned is one of the developments I'm looking forward to most. I can't wait until every device I have can communicate wirelessly over a common protocol to exchange data. You don't have to worry about buying a telephone and have it not working with your phone line... why should I have to struggle getting my PDA and my cell phone to talk to each other to exchange contact data? Or a tablet PC and cable box for TV listings?
On another note, with gigs per second of speed, imagine beaming TV shows between televisions and even from your TiVo to your PC... I can already see the lawsuits.
Slashdot Mirror
Just imagining someone so obese that they can only have an effective ultrasound done by a Navy submarine is enough to make me squirt milk out my nose.
My mother sells costumes on eBay and makes a pretty good business, but she is terrified of negative feedback, or even a mere neutral. She's got 200-something total feedbacks now, all positive, but I swear she's going to kill herself at the first negative. Conversely, she's also afraid to buy from anyone who has any negatives or neutrals, even if it's something like only 1 in 500.
The reality distortion field. It works: pick one up today!
Isn't a requiem for Be a little late?
Then again, that's only works if you have a good professor, not one of those spooky kind that you never see and whose classes are taught by aids. It seems these days the student is growing farther and farther removed from the teacher: soon we'll have AI instructors for many subjects who give and grade assignments without ever going through human hands.
Would there be any problem with this thing getting too warm? It seems like stuffing any piece of hardware inside of something like a bear would make it heat up a lot.
Some girls just don't have a sense of humor.
I'm a firm believer in that your vocation and your advocation can be two separate things. You might slave away in the coal mines during the day, but then you can come home and do what you really love. While it's always nice to get paid to do what you enjoy doing, a certain amount of happiness can be bought with cold hard cash.
As one poster said, the domain name system isn't the dewey decimal system of the web anyway. A web address doesn't have to be more descriptive than a brick and mortar store's physical street address. If you're stuck with "ambrosiasw.com" instead of just "ambrosia.com," you won't go out of business. Customers will find your website if you include the address on advertisements and products. Besides, blindly typing in URLs in the hope of finding the product you're looking for is a hit and miss method of surfing.
I'm looking for a screen with about an area of a jeweled CD case. Not much thicker than that, either. Granted, that wouldn't fit immediately in your pocket like a cell phone, but I see the device as a separate component that works with your phone to provide access on the road and your wireless network at home for connection there.
Until then, accessing the web on my cell phone isn't going to be very appealing to me.
It's entirely possible to create an argument against a company without resorting to speech that would be considered inflammatory and cause for a suit. Granted, they're not as much fun to read sometimes, but a well-reasoned post with thought and backup will be more endearing in the long run.
Take this as a warning that you are responsible for your speech on the Internet, as much as people may try to hide behind the shroud of digital anonymity.
At the end of the day, it comes down to the analogous course that music has taken: the record to 8-track to cassette to CD to MP3 trip. How many times do I have to buy the White Album? How many times do I have to buy Top Gun? How many times are consumers willing? You have to space out these changes, with "mandatory" switches no earlier than ten years apart. Any more frequent and people get burned out chasing the technological carrot.
One could imagine the same thing happening around our landers on the Moon and Mars. I hope somebody out there preserves those monuments and doesn't let them turn into tourist zoos.
I am also reminded of the Drake equation, that even with very conservative estimates of the number of planets meeting the conditions for an Earth-like environment, taking into account all of the factors that you mention, the number still comes out to at least many thousands. It is a very large universe out there, and I would bet that somewhere there's a being wondering if he (or it) is alone, just as we are.
I wonder if they have that first post problem too.
At least paperback books are portable from room to room. They can't take those away from us, can they? Right?
I'm not sure if the "wobble" method of detecting extra-solar planets will ever be sensitive enough to detect planets like our own. I do have confidence however in the developing method of analyzing the light spectrum of a star to detect planets, and am really looking forward to seeing next-generation space interferometry telescopes. In fifty years could we have a visible-light image of another Earth out there?
Check out the Relativity and FTL Travel FAQ for a better explanation than I can give. I for one hope that Einstein is wrong... the universe is so much more exciting in Star Wars.
The most disappointing thing to me about OS X has been the missing features that were present in OS 9. The software base station feature for AirPort and USB Printer sharing have hit me the hardest. I decided to shell out the bucks for the flying-saucer base station, as it's more stable anyway, but I'm still having to use file sharing to send documents from other rooms to the print computer and print physically from there. I know there are UNIX-terminal fixes for these things, but I still think Apple has dropped the bomb if they don't reimplement some of these features within a few updates.
Just a question.
On another note, with gigs per second of speed, imagine beaming TV shows between televisions and even from your TiVo to your PC... I can already see the lawsuits.
I just hope they know to stop short of releasing thousands of advanced hunter-killer probes upon the surface of the earth, DoD contract or not. :P