In the real world, Pykrete was never designed to be a miraculous substance that didn't melt. [...] One I kind of like is called "Biorock" or "Seacrete"; you build a steel skeleton in the shape of what you want, then run a small DC current through it; this causes minerals (mainly calcium carbonate, aka limestone) to precipitate out on it, forming a very hard steel-reinforced rock. Even better, it's self-healing, as anywhere that gets damaged becomes the easy path for current to conduct, and most growth switches to that area.
Sounds like a reasonable way to make walls of a space station. If not in reality, at least in decent science fiction. It may not be able to handle the accelerations of a space ship, but space stations don't need much of that.
First of all, I agree with most others that Graphic Novels (Trade Paperbacks) are much better than individual issues.
I would suggest picking up a series that has actually completed and well regarded. There's so much fantastic works out there that you shouldn't waste time on trying something that you haven't heard of.
Also, when I read novels, I love science fiction. For some reason, in comic books, I tend to read a lot of fantasy. Prepare to be interested in genres that you would not otherwise like.
Some of my favorite Trade Paperbacks: Lucifer by Mike Carey - 11 volumes, totaling ~75 issues of the series. Fables by Bill Willingham - 22 volumes, totaling 150 issues of the series. Batman by Jeff Loeb Justice League by Grant Morrison Justice League International by Keith Giffen Justice League: Identity Crisis by Meltzer New Avengers (the first or second run) by Brian Michael Bendis New Avengers: Illuminati by Brian Michael Bendis Blue/White/Gray/Yellow by Jeff Loeb Deadpool by Daniel Way Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman
I love my Model S and had minimal factory defect issues when I got it.
My next car will certainly be all-electric, and I really want it to be another Tesla.
90k miles in 4 years, and it still handles like day one. Battery hasn't lost any capacity and I barely do one service a year. And every service is just them replacing the windshield wipers and tightening a few bolts and such.
Frankly, my one complaint is that they don't tell me when to come back for service. Every other car I had would say to come back in X miles or Y months. Tesla service just tells me to come back at some point for another look. I ask them to give me a certain timeframe, and they say that what I'm doing now (once a year) seems to work for me.
I'm not going to say that is impossible for AI to do what I do, but AI is itself another layer of technology, subject to both failures in the underlying layers and failures in its own implementation.
I think the concern is that other programmers would lose their jobs to AI and compete for your job at lower wage (since they'll be desperate for work), potentially causing you to lose your job.
There will be a downward pressure on wages on any jobs left.
This is really bizarre. I'm not sure why projecting onto the road is better than using tried-and-true technology like HUD (Heads up Display). Surely it would be better to project warnings etc. via HUD vs. onto the road? I have a HUD in my BMW and it is one of those technologies that I found genuinely useful and non-obtrusive.
They probably could avoid the HUD patents.
I've driven a BMW with HUD. It's awesome, inobtrusive, and very natural to use. The only thing is that I wish it would display more information. Bet it's not available to others due to a bazillion patents.
Don't those people also have power lines to their houses?
As for the solar panels... that's what homeowner's insurance is for. We're thinking of getting panels put up. The saleperson reminded us that we need to let State Farm know so that they can adjust (increase) our homeowner's policy.
And, yes, we will still have power lines to the house, even though I hope to be independent of the power company for 7 months of the year. (I hope to get on-site battery backup for nights and cloudy days.)
I love LibreOffice Writer and Calc. I use both of them quite extensively.
That being said, I'm not a fan of Impress (their PowerPoint clone). I give presentations to lay people and Impress doesn't have as many WOW features as Keynote (my presentation software of choice).
Haha guys very funny. Hopefully it's a joke some astrophyscist played on whoever wrote this story. Got drunk with some friends and "Hey you know what I bet we could get some idiot to print?"
My thoughts exactly.
A blueprint for all the data in the world? What's the difference between that and a textbook that they have to read in college or during a PhD?
It's all just knowledge you use as a baseline and build on top of.
Or do you believe that aliens have an absolute knowledge that cannot be built on top of? That gives the answers to everything. (Why time travel is impossible, the history of the pre-universe, why faster than light communication is impossible, etc.) LOL. Yeah, good luck with that!
But don't call it computer science. As I'm sure you know, computer science has little to do with computers and much more to do with mathematics and algorithms.
How about Computer Civics?
And throw in Copyright, Copyleft, and various commonly used software licenses. "Cloud" computing (and it's ramifications on the importance of maintenance of historic and deprecated software).
I wouldn't mind Salon and some other news agencies using my computers to mine for e-coins. Essentially it's a micropayment system in lieu of seeing ads.
If this catches on, Salon may just rid of ads completely and use crypto-mining to generate money.
The plus side of this is that the more you read the site, the more you pay. If you just go to them because of click-bait, you won't stay on their pages long and end up not generating a lot of money for them.
Sounds like a win situation for the newspaper (they make money) and the reader (no ads). The Ad agencies lose out. But who cares about them?
I think that the real problem for tablets is that there's no compelling reason to upgrade them as often as phones. The iPad Air 2 that I bought when it first came out is over 3 years old at this point and isn't showing any particular signs of aging. The browser is still plenty speedy and even if that started to suck, I can't see the Netflix app being too slow for it to be usable for that.
This is definitely the answer for me. I bought an original iPad when it came out. Use it for light reading and just a couple years ago gave it to my mother in law, who uses it to look at pictures of our family (she lives on the other side of the world) and sudoku.
I've had my iPad Air when it came out (i got it because the original iPad screen is difficult to read in sunlight) and see no reason to get a new one. You can read books outdoors and the storage holds my entire music collection, over a hundred comic books, my entire ebook library, etc.
I figure I'll get a new one when I either physically break this one or something like that. I see no reason to stay on a yearly (or even every-three-year) upgrade treadmill.
I invested a lot of money in Bitcoin when it hit $10k. I better just hold onto it until it goes over $10k again, then I will sell. Until then, I'll just sit back and collect the dividends from it.
LOL. Yeah, dividends.
Currencies and commodities don't give out dividends.
Where the fuck are we supposed to grab a window in order to move it if the title bar is crammed full of junk?
Keep the title bar and bring back the menu bar as well. those of us that actually use a windowing operating system need them.
You want to determine whether the user is using a touch interface and adjust the UI accordingly? Fine. But some of us actually produce content on desktop computers, where design elements are made to conform to a keyboard and mouse interface.
The ratings peaked at an IQ of around 120, which is higher than roughly 80 percent of office workers.
I call BS. Higher than 80 percent of office workers? Do they have any proof of that? Did they do IQ tests on the office workers?
My guess is that the office staff have more people with an IQ over 120 than under 80...
IQs in the general population are skewed above 100 because people with the low IQs either died earlier or are more likely to be institutionalized (either in long term care facilities or prisons).
Develop an e911 system and mandate (or even suggest) that mobile software makers have an option to turn it on. The mobile software makers can decide whether it defaults to on or off and the end user can switch the switch as often as they like.
Of course this is just a data point, but it goes with the general trend.
Kids are getting exposed to comic characters but not that interested in the comics themselves.
My kids were exposed to comic books at a young age. They're 11 and 14 now and love the trade paperbacks (but are not at all interested in getting individual issues).
Their friends, for the most part, just like the movies and TV shows and aren't at all interested in the back stories from the comics.
My personal take on DC beating Marvel this year: DC's previous reboot failed so miserably that there was a pent up demand for something readable in the DC universe. DC Rebirth fits the bill so more DC purchases this year.
The elephant in the room is physician continuing education.
These drug reps go into the physicians' offices and buy them and their staff a lunch and give them a 10 minute talk about all the research about why their drug is the best in class.
For some physicians, this is almost all the Continuing Medical Education they get. They cram for their recertification exam every 10 years and that's it.
Watch out for your own best interest. Your employer will be doing the same
I hope most of us have a better work environment than the above.
My dad retired a couple years ago. He gave 1 year's notice (The requirement was 3 months.). During that year he helped groom a replacement. At the end of the time his boss asked him to be on retainer for emergencies. He declined but did promise to answer the occasional operational question if they called during normal hours without cost.
So far he's been retired a couple years and said they call him once a month or so and invited him to a couple meetings (offering to pay airfare). He's declined the meetings.
A phone is a commodity. I can't particularly name any killer apps that require me to stay on either iOS or Android (well, except perhaps their differing use of their messaging apps over SMS).
I don't need anonymous cowards telling me that I should feel a particular outrage regarding my choice of phone manufacturer.
If a person wants to use an iPhone or an Android, why get angry over it? Are you equally angry over what car they drive?
Slashdot Mirror
In the real world, Pykrete was never designed to be a miraculous substance that didn't melt. [...] One I kind of like is called "Biorock" or "Seacrete"; you build a steel skeleton in the shape of what you want, then run a small DC current through it; this causes minerals (mainly calcium carbonate, aka limestone) to precipitate out on it, forming a very hard steel-reinforced rock. Even better, it's self-healing, as anywhere that gets damaged becomes the easy path for current to conduct, and most growth switches to that area.
Sounds like a reasonable way to make walls of a space station. If not in reality, at least in decent science fiction. It may not be able to handle the accelerations of a space ship, but space stations don't need much of that.
First of all, I agree with most others that Graphic Novels (Trade Paperbacks) are much better than individual issues.
I would suggest picking up a series that has actually completed and well regarded. There's so much fantastic works out there that you shouldn't waste time on trying something that you haven't heard of.
Also, when I read novels, I love science fiction. For some reason, in comic books, I tend to read a lot of fantasy. Prepare to be interested in genres that you would not otherwise like.
Some of my favorite Trade Paperbacks:
Lucifer by Mike Carey - 11 volumes, totaling ~75 issues of the series.
Fables by Bill Willingham - 22 volumes, totaling 150 issues of the series.
Batman by Jeff Loeb
Justice League by Grant Morrison
Justice League International by Keith Giffen
Justice League: Identity Crisis by Meltzer
New Avengers (the first or second run) by Brian Michael Bendis
New Avengers: Illuminati by Brian Michael Bendis
Blue/White/Gray/Yellow by Jeff Loeb
Deadpool by Daniel Way
Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman
Ahh I remember fifth grade, that was when my public middle school set up a few minutes of prayer every morning lead by the vice vice principals.
You had a vice principal of vice? Where did you go to school, Vegas?
Hope they get there soon.
I love my Model S and had minimal factory defect issues when I got it.
My next car will certainly be all-electric, and I really want it to be another Tesla.
90k miles in 4 years, and it still handles like day one. Battery hasn't lost any capacity and I barely do one service a year. And every service is just them replacing the windshield wipers and tightening a few bolts and such.
Frankly, my one complaint is that they don't tell me when to come back for service. Every other car I had would say to come back in X miles or Y months. Tesla service just tells me to come back at some point for another look. I ask them to give me a certain timeframe, and they say that what I'm doing now (once a year) seems to work for me.
I'm not going to say that is impossible for AI to do what I do, but AI is itself another layer of technology, subject to both failures in the underlying layers and failures in its own implementation.
I think the concern is that other programmers would lose their jobs to AI and compete for your job at lower wage (since they'll be desperate for work), potentially causing you to lose your job.
There will be a downward pressure on wages on any jobs left.
This is really bizarre. I'm not sure why projecting onto the road is better than using tried-and-true technology like HUD (Heads up Display). Surely it would be better to project warnings etc. via HUD vs. onto the road? I have a HUD in my BMW and it is one of those technologies that I found genuinely useful and non-obtrusive.
They probably could avoid the HUD patents.
I've driven a BMW with HUD. It's awesome, inobtrusive, and very natural to use. The only thing is that I wish it would display more information. Bet it's not available to others due to a bazillion patents.
I love the current MacBook Air. Just the right size screen, good resolution, enough USB3 slots, a card slot for camera cards.
If they could just update the processor, solid state drive, and ram every year or so, that would be all I would ask for.
Don't those people also have power lines to their houses?
As for the solar panels ... that's what homeowner's insurance is for. We're thinking of getting panels put up. The saleperson reminded us that we need to let State Farm know so that they can adjust (increase) our homeowner's policy.
And, yes, we will still have power lines to the house, even though I hope to be independent of the power company for 7 months of the year. (I hope to get on-site battery backup for nights and cloudy days.)
I love LibreOffice Writer and Calc. I use both of them quite extensively.
That being said, I'm not a fan of Impress (their PowerPoint clone). I give presentations to lay people and Impress doesn't have as many WOW features as Keynote (my presentation software of choice).
Haha guys very funny. Hopefully it's a joke some astrophyscist played on whoever wrote this story. Got drunk with some friends and "Hey you know what I bet we could get some idiot to print?"
My thoughts exactly.
A blueprint for all the data in the world? What's the difference between that and a textbook that they have to read in college or during a PhD?
It's all just knowledge you use as a baseline and build on top of.
Or do you believe that aliens have an absolute knowledge that cannot be built on top of? That gives the answers to everything. (Why time travel is impossible, the history of the pre-universe, why faster than light communication is impossible, etc.) LOL. Yeah, good luck with that!
Agree with just about all of the above.
But don't call it computer science. As I'm sure you know, computer science has little to do with computers and much more to do with mathematics and algorithms.
How about Computer Civics?
And throw in Copyright, Copyleft, and various commonly used software licenses.
"Cloud" computing (and it's ramifications on the importance of maintenance of historic and deprecated software).
It's the Ad agencies who should be worried.
I wouldn't mind Salon and some other news agencies using my computers to mine for e-coins. Essentially it's a micropayment system in lieu of seeing ads.
If this catches on, Salon may just rid of ads completely and use crypto-mining to generate money.
The plus side of this is that the more you read the site, the more you pay. If you just go to them because of click-bait, you won't stay on their pages long and end up not generating a lot of money for them.
Sounds like a win situation for the newspaper (they make money) and the reader (no ads). The Ad agencies lose out. But who cares about them?
I think the next thing we'll see is an uptick in requests for new batteries from current phone owners.
People will decide that the phone they have is "good enough" and just replace batteries when the charge isn't enough to get them through the day,
I think that the real problem for tablets is that there's no compelling reason to upgrade them as often as phones. The iPad Air 2 that I bought when it first came out is over 3 years old at this point and isn't showing any particular signs of aging. The browser is still plenty speedy and even if that started to suck, I can't see the Netflix app being too slow for it to be usable for that.
This is definitely the answer for me. I bought an original iPad when it came out. Use it for light reading and just a couple years ago gave it to my mother in law, who uses it to look at pictures of our family (she lives on the other side of the world) and sudoku.
I've had my iPad Air when it came out (i got it because the original iPad screen is difficult to read in sunlight) and see no reason to get a new one. You can read books outdoors and the storage holds my entire music collection, over a hundred comic books, my entire ebook library, etc.
I figure I'll get a new one when I either physically break this one or something like that. I see no reason to stay on a yearly (or even every-three-year) upgrade treadmill.
I invested a lot of money in Bitcoin when it hit $10k. I better just hold onto it until it goes over $10k again, then I will sell. Until then, I'll just sit back and collect the dividends from it.
LOL. Yeah, dividends.
Currencies and commodities don't give out dividends.
How sane are the KDE developers, and is there a good KDE distribution with a Cinnamon-style desktop interface?
You're thinking like someone that uses a computer with a keyboard and mouse.
The initiative is focused on users that use a touch device.
In other words, the project is run by UI idiots.
Where the fuck are we supposed to grab a window in order to move it if the title bar is crammed full of junk?
Keep the title bar and bring back the menu bar as well. those of us that actually use a windowing operating system need them.
You want to determine whether the user is using a touch interface and adjust the UI accordingly? Fine. But some of us actually produce content on desktop computers, where design elements are made to conform to a keyboard and mouse interface.
The ratings peaked at an IQ of around 120, which is higher than roughly 80 percent of office workers.
I call BS. Higher than 80 percent of office workers? Do they have any proof of that? Did they do IQ tests on the office workers?
My guess is that the office staff have more people with an IQ over 120 than under 80...
IQs in the general population are skewed above 100 because people with the low IQs either died earlier or are more likely to be institutionalized (either in long term care facilities or prisons).
Does it even need to be this hard?
Develop an e911 system and mandate (or even suggest) that mobile software makers have an option to turn it on. The mobile software makers can decide whether it defaults to on or off and the end user can switch the switch as often as they like.
Of course this is just a data point, but it goes with the general trend.
Kids are getting exposed to comic characters but not that interested in the comics themselves.
My kids were exposed to comic books at a young age. They're 11 and 14 now and love the trade paperbacks (but are not at all interested in getting individual issues).
Their friends, for the most part, just like the movies and TV shows and aren't at all interested in the back stories from the comics.
My personal take on DC beating Marvel this year: DC's previous reboot failed so miserably that there was a pent up demand for something readable in the DC universe. DC Rebirth fits the bill so more DC purchases this year.
And get bad press if the rocket explodes and takes out a dozen university projects with it?
On the other hand, I think the idea of exploding an electric car is pretty cool.
The elephant in the room is physician continuing education.
These drug reps go into the physicians' offices and buy them and their staff a lunch and give them a 10 minute talk about all the research about why their drug is the best in class.
For some physicians, this is almost all the Continuing Medical Education they get. They cram for their recertification exam every 10 years and that's it.
Watch out for your own best interest. Your employer will be doing the same
I hope most of us have a better work environment than the above.
My dad retired a couple years ago. He gave 1 year's notice (The requirement was 3 months.). During that year he helped groom a replacement. At the end of the time his boss asked him to be on retainer for emergencies. He declined but did promise to answer the occasional operational question if they called during normal hours without cost.
So far he's been retired a couple years and said they call him once a month or so and invited him to a couple meetings (offering to pay airfare). He's declined the meetings.
Overall, a nice transition out for him.
A phone is a commodity. I can't particularly name any killer apps that require me to stay on either iOS or Android (well, except perhaps their differing use of their messaging apps over SMS).
I don't need anonymous cowards telling me that I should feel a particular outrage regarding my choice of phone manufacturer.
If a person wants to use an iPhone or an Android, why get angry over it? Are you equally angry over what car they drive?