WPS is the sort of thing that we need more of - simple to set up, and until now, quite secure.
Hmmm. I heard of WPS for the first time not quite a week ago: I was given a Sony PRS-T1 ebook reader for Christmas, and the little leaflet that came with it said something about WPS, so I looked it up.
Having found out what it was (and ascertained that my WAP doesn't support it), I discarded the guide and just followed my nose in the usual way for a WiFi setup. I see no reason why we need WPS at all: if we are incapable of typing a password when our device already recognises the network and protocol, then we have no business being attached to the internet at all.
The e-reader is verrrrry specific in what it does and it replaces books.
Well, in fairness, at the moment it replaces hard-copy, text-only books. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I got a Sony PRS-T1 for Christmas, and I'm very happy with it.
But the technology just isn't there yet for e-readers to fully hit mainstream education. We need low-cost, high resolution colour displays (probably in a larger format than most current offerings) and more consistent file formats with much less fragmented DRM (assuming we're stuck with that) before the devices can become universally useful in education.
How do you separate the publishers that provide value from the ones that don't?
That is a very good question. There have been many instances over the last 30 or so years when I have had occasion to wonder whether the quality of the literature is typically measured in inverse proportion to quality of binding and paper etc. Excellent quality literature is routinely marketed on crap materials.
Given that with e-books, hard production costs (printing, binding, warehousing and distribution) are nearly non-existent, the inescapable conclusion we must reach is that most publishers are just plain fucking greedy.
Genetic sequences, with their billions of possible combinations, and thousands of genes that are dormant and do nothing, should be incredibly easy to do this with.
It's not quite as simple as that. A few years ago, it was assumed that the extensive non-coding sequences of DNA in eukaryotic cells were just "junk", but it is becoming increasingly apparent that they play a part in the expression of proteins, which are often also subject to post-translational modification. A cheap knock-off with just a few modified bases might suffer from being a too-closely "derivative" work from a legal point of view, but with further modification might not function in the intended manner at all.
Most of the major biotech companies make their seeds intentionally sterile, so farmers will generally only get one generation of "pure" product out of any one sowing. Of course, as you say, there is scope for inclusion of modified genetic material in wild or indigenous crops, but nobody can ever hope to re-use Monsanto's products profitably in subsequent generations.
True, but this can occur with any kind of food. But the application of the words "genetic modification" seem to elicit a response of "OMGOMGWe'reAllGoingToDie,WhatAboutTheFuckingChildren" amongst the uninformed.
For the most part, nucleic acids and proteins are stripped apart by our cunning biochemical metabolism into simple component parts that are completely harmless, and any kind of reaction is usually hysterical.
I also want to add that all the popularity of Firefox is due to it's own quality.
True. Firefox is now a rock-solid, stable and mature browser. Having said that, I have actually been using Chromium as my default browser for a few months, for just two reasons:
1. Chromium loads webpages perceptibly faster, and
2. because Chromium by default takes up marginally less real-estate on my laptop screen with menubars, toolbars and whatnot that are not necessary.
However, if Chromium were not available, I would not be persuaded to use Chrome, as I am not happy about the possibility of anything I do being relayed to Google.
but I'd sure still want one if I were walking around parts of Yemen.
Fortunately, other people seem to be doing that for me. I seem to have become a bit of a coffee nerd, and IMO most of the Yemen beans I've tried are the fucking shizznit, and I love them. Oh, and BTW, not getting blown to bits is quite nice too.
Well, the clue there is in the name. "Subprime" is just a euphemism for "dodgy". I am not an economist (I'd rather be dead), but it stands to reason that if a nation's economy is based on a notion of regarding a poorly-judged loan as an asset, then that economy deserves to fail. Simple as that.
Worse, what verification could possibly be carried out that the Facebook/Twatter/whatever account is actually associated with the person in question? My name isn't anywhere nearly as common as "John Smith", but if I do a casual search for Facebook accounts with my name, I get 8 (approximate) hits. Who's to say that someone else can't poison my reputation, despite the fact that I do not have a Facebook account?
Well, try again. You could easily put this story into perspective by thinking "20 minutes into the future": Max Headroom. A film (and later, series) that should appeal to anyone who qualifies as a nerd. Of course, if you don't care to be associated with such riffraff as nerds or geeks, then you are free to leave.
With some skill you might be able to get a normal android tablet to fulfill your needs.
You could certainly use it to run console apps, but running any of the major desktop environments (maybe with the exception of twm) might be a challenge that would occupy weeks (at least) of free time.
I went back to Android after a bit just because my OS choices were more for the "cause I could" factor.
Fair enough, but since you mention it, I'm curious as to what you found worked, and what doesn't. I assume that since you went back to Android, Open/LibreOffice isn't high on your scale of must-haves, but did it work at all under Arch on that box? And I presume it's too much to ask for the GIMP to work?
So what will you do if you just happen to press the wrong button on your calculator? Without the mental arithmetic skills of estimating a ballpark value for your final value, you have no way of knowing whether or not the value on the display of your calculator is of any use.
When I was in high school, calculators were only newly available and not permitted in examinations. We had to use books of tables (or slide rules, if you had one and knew how to use it). Either way, we got fairly proficient at establishing a correct order of magnitude in our calculations.
Seems to me that the school board member who was so candid about his performance in that test might have hailed from the wrong side of the "arts vs. sciences divide", where arts-focused people for some reason just don't "get" maths.
When I was in high school (back in the early 14th century, before we had calculators), I fell into this camp (bottom 20% of the school), but when I changed direction (long story) into engineering in the early '90s, I suddenly found I could romp through the maths with absolutely no difficulty. Maybe it's something to do with motivation.
But even so, I was a bit astounded when browsing through the NAEP questions tool to see this entry: "Convert temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius (calculator available)" classified as "hard". With a calculator, it should be possible to arrive at a plausible result pretty damn quickly, even if you do have to make a few stabs at what to do with the factors of 5, 9 and 32.
...he is perfectly entitled to ask on Slashdot as much as on the Python forums. And I guess he'd get the vitriol on either of them.
Both of those statements are true, but where there are appropriate forums for specific topics, it is a good policy to use them. A generalised question like "what do you guys reckon is the best smartphone for non-urban use at the moment?" might generate useful responses, but picky details on coding have a habit of degenerating into redundant or off-topic rambling or flamewars, since many readers seem to have a problem with sticking to the topic.
Nah. At the level of abstraction you're operating at w/ asm you're not going to do too much damage if you cock up.
???
Errr, you *DO* know what assembly is, don't you? Hint: go have a look at Wikipedia or something. Another hint: Assembly simply gives you more memorable mnemonics for machine-code instructions. No abstraction at all, just bare-wire programming made a little easier.
I wouldn't count on it. I may be completely off-beam here, but given Chrome's parentage, I would expect it to call home to report whatever information Google might find useful. I don't yet know to what extent (if any) the OSS version, Chromium does this, but I'm looking now. So far, I like what I see. If anyone has any insight on caveats here, I'll be interested to hear of them.
Hardly. Consider the most finely sharpened straight razor: an instrument that is capable of the finest precision, but which can also pretty nearly cut your head off if you're careless.
Slashdot Mirror
WPS is the sort of thing that we need more of - simple to set up, and until now, quite secure.
Hmmm. I heard of WPS for the first time not quite a week ago: I was given a Sony PRS-T1 ebook reader for Christmas, and the little leaflet that came with it said something about WPS, so I looked it up.
Having found out what it was (and ascertained that my WAP doesn't support it), I discarded the guide and just followed my nose in the usual way for a WiFi setup. I see no reason why we need WPS at all: if we are incapable of typing a password when our device already recognises the network and protocol, then we have no business being attached to the internet at all.
The crane driver might be better paid, though... :|
The e-reader is verrrrry specific in what it does and it replaces books.
Well, in fairness, at the moment it replaces hard-copy, text-only books. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I got a Sony PRS-T1 for Christmas, and I'm very happy with it.
But the technology just isn't there yet for e-readers to fully hit mainstream education. We need low-cost, high resolution colour displays (probably in a larger format than most current offerings) and more consistent file formats with much less fragmented DRM (assuming we're stuck with that) before the devices can become universally useful in education.
But bring it on...
How do you separate the publishers that provide value from the ones that don't?
That is a very good question. There have been many instances over the last 30 or so years when I have had occasion to wonder whether the quality of the literature is typically measured in inverse proportion to quality of binding and paper etc. Excellent quality literature is routinely marketed on crap materials.
Given that with e-books, hard production costs (printing, binding, warehousing and distribution) are nearly non-existent, the inescapable conclusion we must reach is that most publishers are just plain fucking greedy.
Back to the point: why would a vending machine need facial recognition at all if it is not selling some sort of controlled substance or product?
Genetic sequences, with their billions of possible combinations, and thousands of genes that are dormant and do nothing, should be incredibly easy to do this with.
It's not quite as simple as that. A few years ago, it was assumed that the extensive non-coding sequences of DNA in eukaryotic cells were just "junk", but it is becoming increasingly apparent that they play a part in the expression of proteins, which are often also subject to post-translational modification. A cheap knock-off with just a few modified bases might suffer from being a too-closely "derivative" work from a legal point of view, but with further modification might not function in the intended manner at all.
Most of the major biotech companies make their seeds intentionally sterile, so farmers will generally only get one generation of "pure" product out of any one sowing. Of course, as you say, there is scope for inclusion of modified genetic material in wild or indigenous crops, but nobody can ever hope to re-use Monsanto's products profitably in subsequent generations.
True, but this can occur with any kind of food. But the application of the words "genetic modification" seem to elicit a response of "OMGOMGWe'reAllGoingToDie,WhatAboutTheFuckingChildren" amongst the uninformed.
For the most part, nucleic acids and proteins are stripped apart by our cunning biochemical metabolism into simple component parts that are completely harmless, and any kind of reaction is usually hysterical.
True, but the last thing anyone wants is an *informed* debate.
I also want to add that all the popularity of Firefox is due to it's own quality.
True. Firefox is now a rock-solid, stable and mature browser. Having said that, I have actually been using Chromium as my default browser for a few months, for just two reasons:
1. Chromium loads webpages perceptibly faster, and
2. because Chromium by default takes up marginally less real-estate on my laptop screen with menubars, toolbars and whatnot that are not necessary.
However, if Chromium were not available, I would not be persuaded to use Chrome, as I am not happy about the possibility of anything I do being relayed to Google.
but I'd sure still want one if I were walking around parts of Yemen.
Fortunately, other people seem to be doing that for me. I seem to have become a bit of a coffee nerd, and IMO most of the Yemen beans I've tried are the fucking shizznit, and I love them. Oh, and BTW, not getting blown to bits is quite nice too.
Well, the clue there is in the name. "Subprime" is just a euphemism for "dodgy". I am not an economist (I'd rather be dead), but it stands to reason that if a nation's economy is based on a notion of regarding a poorly-judged loan as an asset, then that economy deserves to fail. Simple as that.
Worse, what verification could possibly be carried out that the Facebook/Twatter/whatever account is actually associated with the person in question? My name isn't anywhere nearly as common as "John Smith", but if I do a casual search for Facebook accounts with my name, I get 8 (approximate) hits. Who's to say that someone else can't poison my reputation, despite the fact that I do not have a Facebook account?
Well, try again. You could easily put this story into perspective by thinking "20 minutes into the future": Max Headroom. A film (and later, series) that should appeal to anyone who qualifies as a nerd. Of course, if you don't care to be associated with such riffraff as nerds or geeks, then you are free to leave.
No problem - your post was informative enough in any case, so thanks for sharing. :-)
With some skill you might be able to get a normal android tablet to fulfill your needs.
You could certainly use it to run console apps, but running any of the major desktop environments (maybe with the exception of twm) might be a challenge that would occupy weeks (at least) of free time.
Of course, there are lots of Linux users who might say that Ubuntu doesn't run well on any platform. ;-D
*ducks*
I went back to Android after a bit just because my OS choices were more for the "cause I could" factor.
Fair enough, but since you mention it, I'm curious as to what you found worked, and what doesn't. I assume that since you went back to Android, Open/LibreOffice isn't high on your scale of must-haves, but did it work at all under Arch on that box? And I presume it's too much to ask for the GIMP to work?
but mental arithmatic is dead.
So what will you do if you just happen to press the wrong button on your calculator? Without the mental arithmetic skills of estimating a ballpark value for your final value, you have no way of knowing whether or not the value on the display of your calculator is of any use.
When I was in high school, calculators were only newly available and not permitted in examinations. We had to use books of tables (or slide rules, if you had one and knew how to use it). Either way, we got fairly proficient at establishing a correct order of magnitude in our calculations.
Seems to me that the school board member who was so candid about his performance in that test might have hailed from the wrong side of the "arts vs. sciences divide", where arts-focused people for some reason just don't "get" maths.
When I was in high school (back in the early 14th century, before we had calculators), I fell into this camp (bottom 20% of the school), but when I changed direction (long story) into engineering in the early '90s, I suddenly found I could romp through the maths with absolutely no difficulty. Maybe it's something to do with motivation.
But even so, I was a bit astounded when browsing through the NAEP questions tool to see this entry: "Convert temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius (calculator available)" classified as "hard". With a calculator, it should be possible to arrive at a plausible result pretty damn quickly, even if you do have to make a few stabs at what to do with the factors of 5, 9 and 32.
...he is perfectly entitled to ask on Slashdot as much as on the Python forums. And I guess he'd get the vitriol on either of them.
Both of those statements are true, but where there are appropriate forums for specific topics, it is a good policy to use them. A generalised question like "what do you guys reckon is the best smartphone for non-urban use at the moment?" might generate useful responses, but picky details on coding have a habit of degenerating into redundant or off-topic rambling or flamewars, since many readers seem to have a problem with sticking to the topic.
Nah. At the level of abstraction you're operating at w/ asm you're not going to do too much damage if you cock up.
???
Errr, you *DO* know what assembly is, don't you? Hint: go have a look at Wikipedia or something. Another hint: Assembly simply gives you more memorable mnemonics for machine-code instructions. No abstraction at all, just bare-wire programming made a little easier.
I think Chrome has something like that.
I wouldn't count on it. I may be completely off-beam here, but given Chrome's parentage, I would expect it to call home to report whatever information Google might find useful. I don't yet know to what extent (if any) the OSS version, Chromium does this, but I'm looking now. So far, I like what I see. If anyone has any insight on caveats here, I'll be interested to hear of them.
Sharpened flint?
Hardly. Consider the most finely sharpened straight razor: an instrument that is capable of the finest precision, but which can also pretty nearly cut your head off if you're careless.