Mention of the Turing Award brings back memories of all the fun times we had with MegaHAL (http://megahal.sourceforge.net/). We set up a machine in my local dorm kitchen and our MegaHAL rapidly became a horrible swearing bigot; it provided endless amusement for all.
I tend to, at least, glance at every email that I receive (spam included) and I have to say that they're not all bad. Some spam is actually pretty amusing (the time travel spam was a good example.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that if every spam that I received was that entertaining, I probably wouldn't mind receiving spam at my current rate.
Stained glass windows use a similar kind of nanoparticle emulsion concept to get their different colors (also based on particle size). We've known all of this for quite a while; it's nothing new.
Personally, I've always thought that a good disclosure policy would be one that informs the software's source of the problem and then waits some period of time befoer disclosing to the public.
Of course, I'd reccomend a very short wait time, probably between 48 hours and one week. Just enough time to solve the problem if enough resources are diverted to it but not long enough to allow anyone to ignore the problem until later.
If all you want is to be able to mix two liquids and get a precipitate, which is the extent of most chemistry sets that I've seen, then I wouldn't bother getting a chemistry set because you can do that with household chemicals. If you want to do something more interesting, you'll need to get the chemicals on your own as all the interesting stuff is too dangerous or too expensive to put in a kit.
Being from MIT myself, I have actually read the article that is being referred to here and although I agree it was a pretty poor thing to do, it's not as bad as it sounds. The truth of the matter is not that Dolby bought MIT's vote for $30 million, but that if the standard was chosen MIT would be in line for $30 million in royalties. In the end it's more halfway between bribery and voting for oneself than strict bribery.
I can do nothing but agree that the visuals, CG and effects are all getting better, but what is the cost?
I don't know about the rest of you but it seems to me that the quality of the movies themselves have been going steadily down. The plots are getting thinner, the acting poorer and it seems that everyone is just using visual quality as a crutch.
I'd take a good old silent, black and white coemdy by the likes of Chaplin or and old Akira Kirusawa (spelling?) samurai film over most comedies and action movies that come out these days. Or a little more recently, compare the older Star Wars or James Bond movies to the newer ones; sure the fight scenes have gotten cooler, but the acting and stories are nowhere near as good.
I love visuals, but can we use them to make good movies instead of just more pulp.
I have always been a big fan of using recipes as guidelines for cooking and winging the rest, but I do acknowledge the need for a good recipe or other point to start from. Also, I have found that some cookbooks and recipe collections are better than others and would like to know where you like to turn for inspiration? What cookbooks or online resources do you find to be the best, in general or for specific types of recipes?
I have a friend who was running a Win2K machine with no floppy drive and asked me to help him upgrade to XP. I agreed and proceeded to format his system drive (I prefer a new clean install over upgrades it's easier). So we go and get to installing XP and install various drivers and stuff which were downloaded beforehand and burned to a single CD.
In the end it turns out that I forgot one file that was a few hundred KB. Normally I'd just drop the file onto a floppy disk and be done, but he has no floppy drive and I'll be damned if I'm wasting a fill 700MB CD for a 1MB file.
In the end I had to hunt down my network equipment (mine was all packed away because I'm home for the summer). Sure would have been more convenient if he had a floppy drive.
Having, over the course of many years, ended up as a Windows user, I have to say that I don't believe the accumulation of cruft to be the fault of the operating system at all, but rather, the fault of the user.
Throughout all of my experience I have seen more than my fair share of crufty computers. Most of the crufty machines I have seen have been Windows machines but I have seen some very crufty Macs and a couple crufty *nix machines. The one thing all of these crufty machines had in common was a user who either didn't care enough or didn't know enough to prevent the buildup of cruft.
This brings us to an important question: Do most Windows machines develop more cruft than most *nix machines because Windows is more prone to cruft acquisition or because Windows is more likely to be used by someone who doesn't know very much about taking care of a computer?
Or for a quick analogy, the average IQ in the US is about 100, while the average IQ of brain surgeons in the US is probably higher.
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Of course, I'm an idiot because that's the Turing Test not the Turing Award. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Mention of the Turing Award brings back memories of all the fun times we had with MegaHAL (http://megahal.sourceforge.net/). We set up a machine in my local dorm kitchen and our MegaHAL rapidly became a horrible swearing bigot; it provided endless amusement for all.
I tend to, at least, glance at every email that I receive (spam included) and I have to say that they're not all bad. Some spam is actually pretty amusing (the time travel spam was a good example.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that if every spam that I received was that entertaining, I probably wouldn't mind receiving spam at my current rate.
Stained glass windows use a similar kind of nanoparticle emulsion concept to get their different colors (also based on particle size). We've known all of this for quite a while; it's nothing new.
That's funny, there hasn't been a patch for NT4 in a very long time. What support is it that they're not going to be providing anymore.
that's all that I've got to say, just nice
Personally, I've always thought that a good disclosure policy would be one that informs the software's source of the problem and then waits some period of time befoer disclosing to the public.
Of course, I'd reccomend a very short wait time, probably between 48 hours and one week. Just enough time to solve the problem if enough resources are diverted to it but not long enough to allow anyone to ignore the problem until later.
I don't know about anyone else, but I still wake up early every Saturday morning to watch cartoons.
runofthe.mil
If all you want is to be able to mix two liquids and get a precipitate, which is the extent of most chemistry sets that I've seen, then I wouldn't bother getting a chemistry set because you can do that with household chemicals. If you want to do something more interesting, you'll need to get the chemicals on your own as all the interesting stuff is too dangerous or too expensive to put in a kit.
Being from MIT myself, I have actually read the article that is being referred to here and although I agree it was a pretty poor thing to do, it's not as bad as it sounds. The truth of the matter is not that Dolby bought MIT's vote for $30 million, but that if the standard was chosen MIT would be in line for $30 million in royalties. In the end it's more halfway between bribery and voting for oneself than strict bribery.
I can do nothing but agree that the visuals, CG and effects are all getting better, but what is the cost? I don't know about the rest of you but it seems to me that the quality of the movies themselves have been going steadily down. The plots are getting thinner, the acting poorer and it seems that everyone is just using visual quality as a crutch. I'd take a good old silent, black and white coemdy by the likes of Chaplin or and old Akira Kirusawa (spelling?) samurai film over most comedies and action movies that come out these days. Or a little more recently, compare the older Star Wars or James Bond movies to the newer ones; sure the fight scenes have gotten cooler, but the acting and stories are nowhere near as good. I love visuals, but can we use them to make good movies instead of just more pulp.
I have always been a big fan of using recipes as guidelines for cooking and winging the rest, but I do acknowledge the need for a good recipe or other point to start from. Also, I have found that some cookbooks and recipe collections are better than others and would like to know where you like to turn for inspiration? What cookbooks or online resources do you find to be the best, in general or for specific types of recipes?
I have a friend who was running a Win2K machine with no floppy drive and asked me to help him upgrade to XP. I agreed and proceeded to format his system drive (I prefer a new clean install over upgrades it's easier). So we go and get to installing XP and install various drivers and stuff which were downloaded beforehand and burned to a single CD.
In the end it turns out that I forgot one file that was a few hundred KB. Normally I'd just drop the file onto a floppy disk and be done, but he has no floppy drive and I'll be damned if I'm wasting a fill 700MB CD for a 1MB file.
In the end I had to hunt down my network equipment (mine was all packed away because I'm home for the summer). Sure would have been more convenient if he had a floppy drive.
Having, over the course of many years, ended up as a Windows user, I have to say that I don't believe the accumulation of cruft to be the fault of the operating system at all, but rather, the fault of the user.
Throughout all of my experience I have seen more than my fair share of crufty computers. Most of the crufty machines I have seen have been Windows machines but I have seen some very crufty Macs and a couple crufty *nix machines. The one thing all of these crufty machines had in common was a user who either didn't care enough or didn't know enough to prevent the buildup of cruft.
This brings us to an important question: Do most Windows machines develop more cruft than most *nix machines because Windows is more prone to cruft acquisition or because Windows is more likely to be used by someone who doesn't know very much about taking care of a computer?
Or for a quick analogy, the average IQ in the US is about 100, while the average IQ of brain surgeons in the US is probably higher.