Even if it's really new, the first line of the minimum system requirements is "Microsoft® Windows® Vista/XP," so I guess I won't get to try it. At least with WoW I can do my rhythmic-button-mashing on a Mac or (if I cross my fingers) on Wine, but if a game is solidly tied to Windows, I betcha it ain't gonna run on any of the non-Windows systems I'm likely to own.
Lets you figure out why your site is slow, eh? Cool! Now if only the web developers at Yahoo could use this wonderful tool to learn how to make their script-laden web pages (yes, Yahoo Mail Beta, I'm looking at you) load on my laptop in under 30 seconds.:)
Oh, please. Is it also sad that people use washing machines instead of taking their clothes down to the creek? Is it sad that you have to depend on your browser to use DNS to resolve slashdot.org into an IP address? Or that most of us use a car to drive to town instead of walking like they did in the "old days?"
I think if I had an eight-year old, I'd *prefer* they had a cell phone. Not so they can use 1500 minutes a month yakking with their friends, but so there's another option for communication with them (whether it's emergency calls or just letting me know that they're getting out of school 2 hours early because of a power failure or something).
Maybe you'll feel better when you get older and can be disgusted with generations other than your own, just like every grumpy old person should.:)
"Oh," I say, "you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes. "
Of course, Feynman could also have caught up so fast because he was an abnormally smart guy with decades of experience in assimilating and making sense of lots of new scientific/technical information. I generally agree with his point, and I'm against memorizing things instead of learning concepts, but there are times (and fields) when you just have to do a little bit of memorization in order to learn and *use* some concepts.
Honestly, I don't see how it's a big deal that I have a hard time remembering my own phone number. I had the same problem before I had gadgets to remember it for me, since I almost never call it. And somehow I think lots of people have always had difficulty remembering the birthdays of everybody in their family. It seems like me there's a little bit of grumpy old man attitude about the good old days going on here...and get off my lawn!
No I didn't RTFA, because I was stumped by something before I could even care about the topic of TFA: Why does my radio need to be secure?
I've got several analog radios around the house, and the FCC apparently doesn't give a damn about whether they're secure or not. I don't need an encryption key to turn them on and listen to the news or music. I could go get a bucketful of electronic parts and build a device to receive AM or FM signals. If I wanted to sell such a device I might have to get certification that it doesn't interfere with any other receiving equipment, but I don't recall seeing any FCC notices on my radios about security or anything.
Surely this isn't just because somebody wants to create a locked-in environment where you have to pay to play (or listen)? Surely there's a more fundamental reason why the FCC is worried about the security of my radio. If there is, somebody please point it out.
Yeah it bugs me too, although I'd never bothered to look it up. It also bugs me that I've heard the same story with many other scientists' names and scientific issues substituted into the story: Darwin/evolution, Einstein/relativity, etc. It seems like a convenient story to tell when your audience doesn't know any better: some scientific figure (or generally non-believing-like-us-person) saw the error of their ways on their deathbed, and you'd better take note or you'll find yourself in the same boat.
So there are foreign nationals that have access to classified information, then? WTF is up with that? Last time I worked with anything classified it had NOFORN (NO access by FORiegn Nationals or some such) plastered all over it. If it's so damned precious why are they even allowed to work on it to start with?
If there's a foreign national is working with anthrax at a US college, then he's probably already been checked out...oh, wait: he's been "checked out" by the ultra-competent US government, which means that he'll be sent a renewed visa six months after his anthrax attack kills 100 people. Somehow I think that informing the FBI that some student is working odd hours or wants to know more is gonna matter as much as if I'd reported Muhammed Attah to them for just wanting to know how to fly a plane but not land one.
Seriously, though, do we let foreign nationals work with things like anthrax in this country without *some* kind of background check?
Come on in stead of finding out if linux really does violate microsofts patents and fixing them...
Well, I've not been following this whole thing very closely, but I do recall seeing the frequent complaint that Microsoft refuses to identify which patents are being infringed upon. Given that Microsoft probably holds thousands upon thousands of patents, I expect that it's not reasonable to expect the Linux community to proactively slog through them all and make sure all violations are corrected.
If I understand correctly, at least part of the burden is on Microsoft to defend their patents. I'm sure if they provided a list of the violations, the community would take care of the violations. It just seems to me that not releasing the list means either (1) there's not really any substantial violations, or (2) Microsoft just wants the spectre of patent infringement hanging over Linux as long as possible. Or maybe a little of both.
Just my uninformed two cents, though...take it with a block of salt.
Also, in a single-player RPG, there are no griefing assholes out there to camp your corpse or talk smack about how you're a n00b or spam the chat.
Sometimes griefers can be annoying, but it can be immensely satisfying in those cases where you're able to beat their ass (whether it's because you were able to log into a more powerful alt, your guild buddies come to your aid, or you just get a lucky outcome). I know everybody's got their own preferences, but mine is to put up with the minor inconvenience of a small percentage of idiots to gain the entertainment value of interacting with others.
"If you know the name of the felony being committed, press one. To choose from a list of felonies, press two. If you are being murdered or calling from a non-finger enabled phone, please stay on the line."
...fumbles with newfangled phone UI...
"You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one."
What they try to hire is simply someone with a qualification or experience that you can't find in the US, or at the very least, not in enough quantity.
...or at a low enough salary. While there may be some shortage of US citizens willing to learn to do "difficult" things like science, math, engineering and good programming, I think the desire of many companies to pay (much) less for such talent is at least as big a factor as any shortage.
The result is Universities being forced to provide remedial math classes for science students who haven't done math for two years. The BBC provides a comparison between Chinese and UK university entrance tests -- a comparison that makes the UK look woefully behind."
Yeah, because, you know, it's not like they're actually behind or anything....
Science suffers for this, and the mind-numbingly slow pace of advancement on the cutting edge is only half the problem.
Since your godlike understanding of the situation allows you to see what the problem is, why don't you step forward and advance the cutting edge in a way that those dumbass, non-new-term-creating scientists are too slow-witted to do. Hop to it!;)
I'm a fan of Nikola Tesla; he was pretty much my childhood hero. I think he was a really sharp guy that developed a lot of useful technology. However, I think some of the things he thought were possible probably aren't - especially stuff he was talking about later in his life. Everybody goes over the hill at some point, and even if you're still really bright at the end of your life, you still don't know everything and are bound to make some speculations that are totally unfeasible.
I think it's unfortunate that the woo-woo crowd (no offense to the poster above - not assuming you're in that crowd) has elevated Tesla to the position of an almost godlike figure that just magically knew things about the universe that have somehow managed to elude every other scientist in the last 100 years. Yes, he was smart, and apparently had good intuition about things electrical, but I don't think he took to his grave any knowledge that would have allowed him to implement his superweapons/superdefenses, regardless of how much money he might have had at his disposal.
Hmm, what would be the energy requirements to create a "magnet bottle" to a distance of 20-30 kilometers?
Well, since the energy density of a magnetic field is (B^2)/(2*u0) (as given here), filling a sphere of radius 30km with 1 gauss (roughly the strength of the earth's field) would require 450 gigajoules. Of course, that's a really rough guess, and probably low, since the field would be a stronger as you get nearer the ship.
If you happen to have a time machine (which might look suspiciously like a DeLorean) handy, it would take 6.2 minutes to charge up the shields.:P
'Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science.'
Given that the computer "science" program at many colleges (at least the ones I've been exposed to) is mostly just a vocational technology program for programmers, how is it going to help anybody to turn out graduates that are even less proficient at programming?
"They think of it as programming," Dr. Cuny said. "They don't think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth."
Maybe I'm just a big meanie, but if you can't cut the programming aspect of CS, I doubt you'll really be all that useful when it comes to using computers to "revolutionize" solving those big, complex medical/physics/climate problems. If you're good at working on those problems in their domain, but suck at programming, maybe you're in the wrong degree program.
I'm all for coming up with new ways to get people interested in CS, so long as it doesn't involve trying to convince them that it's not all about the "hard" stuff that's kinda central to the field.
Depends on your business model. Some businesses (like those making a living burning up pork-barrel funds from their Congresscritter) like people that will put in a fair amount of overtime, whether they get much of anything done or not. As long as they can write up a snazzy report about how hard they worked and bluff their way through the next funding cycle, "everybody wins" and they all get another round of paychecks and the member of Congress gets to brag about how many jobs they created.
Personally, I like working with people who can "get shit done." But apparently there's not much demand for that in American business nowadays. Not that I'm jaded or anything.
Oh, wow, that's nice. I hadn't really looked into the gear that you can only get through raids. Maybe it will finally be possible to choose to play the game in a way that doesn't involve sitting around waiting on 25 people to get on with a raid, and still get good gear.:)
It would be nice if there was some equivalent to the "rested XP" bonus once you've reached max level; some benefit that casual gamers would receive for not being online all the time. I'm sure the hard-core people would whine about it, but I doubt many of them would quit over it (as long as it wasn't some outrageous benefit).
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Even if it's really new, the first line of the minimum system requirements is "Microsoft® Windows® Vista/XP," so I guess I won't get to try it. At least with WoW I can do my rhythmic-button-mashing on a Mac or (if I cross my fingers) on Wine, but if a game is solidly tied to Windows, I betcha it ain't gonna run on any of the non-Windows systems I'm likely to own.
Lets you figure out why your site is slow, eh? Cool! Now if only the web developers at Yahoo could use this wonderful tool to learn how to make their script-laden web pages (yes, Yahoo Mail Beta, I'm looking at you) load on my laptop in under 30 seconds. :)
Oh, please. Is it also sad that people use washing machines instead of taking their clothes down to the creek? Is it sad that you have to depend on your browser to use DNS to resolve slashdot.org into an IP address? Or that most of us use a car to drive to town instead of walking like they did in the "old days?"
:)
I think if I had an eight-year old, I'd *prefer* they had a cell phone. Not so they can use 1500 minutes a month yakking with their friends, but so there's another option for communication with them (whether it's emergency calls or just letting me know that they're getting out of school 2 hours early because of a power failure or something).
Maybe you'll feel better when you get older and can be disgusted with generations other than your own, just like every grumpy old person should.
Of course, Feynman could also have caught up so fast because he was an abnormally smart guy with decades of experience in assimilating and making sense of lots of new scientific/technical information. I generally agree with his point, and I'm against memorizing things instead of learning concepts, but there are times (and fields) when you just have to do a little bit of memorization in order to learn and *use* some concepts.
Honestly, I don't see how it's a big deal that I have a hard time remembering my own phone number. I had the same problem before I had gadgets to remember it for me, since I almost never call it. And somehow I think lots of people have always had difficulty remembering the birthdays of everybody in their family. It seems like me there's a little bit of grumpy old man attitude about the good old days going on here...and get off my lawn!
No I didn't RTFA, because I was stumped by something before I could even care about the topic of TFA: Why does my radio need to be secure?
I've got several analog radios around the house, and the FCC apparently doesn't give a damn about whether they're secure or not. I don't need an encryption key to turn them on and listen to the news or music. I could go get a bucketful of electronic parts and build a device to receive AM or FM signals. If I wanted to sell such a device I might have to get certification that it doesn't interfere with any other receiving equipment, but I don't recall seeing any FCC notices on my radios about security or anything.
Surely this isn't just because somebody wants to create a locked-in environment where you have to pay to play (or listen)? Surely there's a more fundamental reason why the FCC is worried about the security of my radio. If there is, somebody please point it out.
Yeah it bugs me too, although I'd never bothered to look it up. It also bugs me that I've heard the same story with many other scientists' names and scientific issues substituted into the story: Darwin/evolution, Einstein/relativity, etc. It seems like a convenient story to tell when your audience doesn't know any better: some scientific figure (or generally non-believing-like-us-person) saw the error of their ways on their deathbed, and you'd better take note or you'll find yourself in the same boat.
So there are foreign nationals that have access to classified information, then? WTF is up with that? Last time I worked with anything classified it had NOFORN (NO access by FORiegn Nationals or some such) plastered all over it. If it's so damned precious why are they even allowed to work on it to start with?
If there's a foreign national is working with anthrax at a US college, then he's probably already been checked out...oh, wait: he's been "checked out" by the ultra-competent US government, which means that he'll be sent a renewed visa six months after his anthrax attack kills 100 people. Somehow I think that informing the FBI that some student is working odd hours or wants to know more is gonna matter as much as if I'd reported Muhammed Attah to them for just wanting to know how to fly a plane but not land one.
Seriously, though, do we let foreign nationals work with things like anthrax in this country without *some* kind of background check?
For a second there, I figured the link above must have gone to something truly incomprehensible. Come on, it really wasn't that bad. :)
Well, I've not been following this whole thing very closely, but I do recall seeing the frequent complaint that Microsoft refuses to identify which patents are being infringed upon. Given that Microsoft probably holds thousands upon thousands of patents, I expect that it's not reasonable to expect the Linux community to proactively slog through them all and make sure all violations are corrected.
If I understand correctly, at least part of the burden is on Microsoft to defend their patents. I'm sure if they provided a list of the violations, the community would take care of the violations. It just seems to me that not releasing the list means either (1) there's not really any substantial violations, or (2) Microsoft just wants the spectre of patent infringement hanging over Linux as long as possible. Or maybe a little of both.
Just my uninformed two cents, though...take it with a block of salt.
..because I think you make some good points.
"If you know the name of the felony being committed, press one. To choose from a list of felonies, press two. If you are being murdered or calling from a non-finger enabled phone, please stay on the line."
...fumbles with newfangled phone UI...
"You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one."
[artist.money.belong('RIAA') for artist in artists if on_internet_radio(artist)]
It seems the more times they've watched the episodes, the more they feel they've achieved something.
There, fixed that typo for ya. :P
I'm a fan of Nikola Tesla; he was pretty much my childhood hero. I think he was a really sharp guy that developed a lot of useful technology. However, I think some of the things he thought were possible probably aren't - especially stuff he was talking about later in his life. Everybody goes over the hill at some point, and even if you're still really bright at the end of your life, you still don't know everything and are bound to make some speculations that are totally unfeasible.
I think it's unfortunate that the woo-woo crowd (no offense to the poster above - not assuming you're in that crowd) has elevated Tesla to the position of an almost godlike figure that just magically knew things about the universe that have somehow managed to elude every other scientist in the last 100 years. Yes, he was smart, and apparently had good intuition about things electrical, but I don't think he took to his grave any knowledge that would have allowed him to implement his superweapons/superdefenses, regardless of how much money he might have had at his disposal.
Well, since the energy density of a magnetic field is (B^2)/(2*u0) (as given here), filling a sphere of radius 30km with 1 gauss (roughly the strength of the earth's field) would require 450 gigajoules. Of course, that's a really rough guess, and probably low, since the field would be a stronger as you get nearer the ship.
If you happen to have a time machine (which might look suspiciously like a DeLorean) handy, it would take 6.2 minutes to charge up the shields. :P
Maybe I'm just a big meanie, but if you can't cut the programming aspect of CS, I doubt you'll really be all that useful when it comes to using computers to "revolutionize" solving those big, complex medical/physics/climate problems. If you're good at working on those problems in their domain, but suck at programming, maybe you're in the wrong degree program.
I'm all for coming up with new ways to get people interested in CS, so long as it doesn't involve trying to convince them that it's not all about the "hard" stuff that's kinda central to the field.
Depends on your business model. Some businesses (like those making a living burning up pork-barrel funds from their Congresscritter) like people that will put in a fair amount of overtime, whether they get much of anything done or not. As long as they can write up a snazzy report about how hard they worked and bluff their way through the next funding cycle, "everybody wins" and they all get another round of paychecks and the member of Congress gets to brag about how many jobs they created.
Personally, I like working with people who can "get shit done." But apparently there's not much demand for that in American business nowadays. Not that I'm jaded or anything.
Oh, wow, that's nice. I hadn't really looked into the gear that you can only get through raids. Maybe it will finally be possible to choose to play the game in a way that doesn't involve sitting around waiting on 25 people to get on with a raid, and still get good gear. :)
It would be nice if there was some equivalent to the "rested XP" bonus once you've reached max level; some benefit that casual gamers would receive for not being online all the time. I'm sure the hard-core people would whine about it, but I doubt many of them would quit over it (as long as it wasn't some outrageous benefit).