In addition to allowing them to keep working while not in their computer labs, the wireless networks allow them to keep in touch with their family, better organize time, complete coursework in shorter periods of time, collaborate with other students and bring computing power into classrooms not available before.
More like play games and download music all day... That's pretty much all they use the computers for when the offered them at my school!
And of course grades don't suffer, because there's always at least 2 or 3 people who actually do the work, and everybody ashares the credit.
If a particular teacher has a problem (and I can't imagine why) perhaps a penalty for using the devices would suffice. One of my professors had a thing about cell phones; if one went off, he gave the entire class an extra-hard quiz the next class (grade couldn't be dropped). He always made good on it, too. (Worked so good that everybody was checking everybody else before class to make sure all the phones and beepers were off!)
1. Go to the store and pick up some ready-made beef patties at $2.50/lb
1.1 Fill up precious cargo room in the ship with it (Enough for several months round-trip supply)
1.2 Find a way to keep it edible for months on end
1.3 Blast it all into space at a cost of a few thousand dollars per pound, still costing taxpayers bazillions of dollars and making the ship much larger and heavier that it needs to be, which could possibly jeapordize the whole mission....or...
2. At a cost of $97 bazillion in taxpayer money, invent cowless beef in a laboratory.
2.1 Use a fraction of the space and weight on the ship for the required equipment and renewable supplies
2.2 Recycle nearly all of the material in the ship (Sewage processing. Already done with water!) Thus reducing the total cargo requirements while extendign the availability of fresh food almost indefinately
2.3 Develop long-lasting food supply sytems for future deep-space missions
2.4 Aquire nifty spin-off technologies and generally advance scientific progress in genetics, cloning, medicine, and resource management, etc etc
Hmmm..... doesn't sound so stupid in the long run. =Smidge=
Now if only we could abolish the tenure system so we could implement standardized qualification guidelines and periodic testing for the teachers, and require teachers to continue their education (Like nearly every other state licensed profession), that would solve a lot of problems, too.
I see computers being put into schools by the hundreds. I help put them there. I also see the students knowing more about the technology than the teachers.
Computers have huge potential as educational tools. They can place an entire library at your fingertips, with interactive and dynamic content that paper can't provide. (This is not to understate the importance of paper books, of course!)
But the teachers are, by and large, completely unable to use the tools provided to them, and it's all just a big waste of money. (And a continuous expense... power, software licenses, etc) =Smidge=
I didn't hear about the closure until the first half of my senior year. And how did I hear about it? I overheard someone at another table mention it in the cafeteria! Three weeks later there was an assembly in the auditorium for a little Q&A with Chan.
Most of the people there were surprized.
Yeah, great to know they made every effort to keep the student population informed.
I happened to pass the campus a few weeks ago. Some guy was selling huge plaster lawn ornaments in front of it.:)
I also wonder about the thousands of dollars worth of equipment they *just* finished installing, and nobody even had time to use. You'ld think that if they were looking to save money they wouldn't have installed network drops at every desk and data projectors in every room... (Most of which was desroyed/stolen because everyone knew the campus was closing in a few months anyway!) =Smidge=
As a graduate of that very same university, (actually, I got my BS, as in bullshit, degree from the Farmingdale campus right before it closed. A week later they had the windows boarded up), I can vouch for the validity of this article.
There were only 6 people in my class for junior and senior year (Mechanicl Engineering). Four of them were taking the aerospace electives, which means the university couldn't justify opening up a whole class for just two students. Fortunately we got through taking senior-level courses from other majors as electives.
In terms of education, though, it really is a pretty good school. Good professors (mostly) and reasonable resources. Administration wise the school is an absolute nightmare. Unfortunately, I'm hearing that most colleges are like that. (I once got a bill for $0 and my account suspended because I didn't pay the balance. It took me three trips to the registrar to fix that one!)
My advice? Hold your breath, close your eyes, and get it over with. You've made it this far, and you'ld be stupid to quit now. And don't forget to bitch to the administration. A lot. The squeeky wheel get the grease.
And hey profet, kick Emperor Chan in the nuts for me if you see him:) =Smidge=
Every computer at my (ex)university had that same problem. Seti@Home (And, actually, all of the distributed-computing project 'screen savers') make extreamly POOR screen savers. If you're going to set it up like that, you should enable the "turn monitor off" option if your monitor is capable. (Saves electricity, too)
I'm sure we've all heard the phrase: "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"
This phrase is typically used to describe how different men and women think at times, as if they are from completely different planets.
Personally speaking, I think the choices of who-got-what-planet are remarkably suitable. Especially considering that Mars has a thin Carbon-dioxide/Nitrogen atmosphere and an averate temperature of -87C, and Venus has a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and carbonic and sulfuric acid, and an average temperature of 453C.
I feel this adequately explains why women always complaining that they're too cold, and men keep turning the thermostat down. They're clearly out of their natural element.
So, the next time a woman nags you for messing something up, remind them whose planet is at least worth considering for (re?)habitation. =Smidge=
Stepping out on your front porch isn't a significant help to getting half way around the globe
So what do you do, climb out the window?
The ISS may not be the a literal 'stepping stone' in that respect, but there's still a lot of technical hurdles that need to be tackled before manned space exploration becomes really viable... and the ISS is (or was intended to be) a great place to develop that technology.
I say we find a way to make it profitable. Everyone knows that once there's money to be made development takes off (no pun intended). Maybe NASA should consider bringing tourists into space just for the extra revenue! =Smidge=
Hard to find toys?
on
Low Tech Toys?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What else is gone?
Gyroscopes! Simple, cheap, die-cast gyroscopes. There's not a store within 50 miles of my place that sells them. (And a few guys I talked to didn't even know what the hell they were)
My home network is comprized entirely of 100-160MHz Pentium machines running Win9x. Phoenix has so far impressed me very much with it's performance and size.
It's nice to see that someone is actually making size and speed a priority rather than an afterthought, and without sacrificing functionality!
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Ah, this must be what they call 'progress'... =Smidge=
...And when that future failed to arrive I began to wonder why.
Because people had been using the imperial system for so long, it became (and still is) a major undertaking to convert. You don't just say "Okay everyone, we're going to use Metric for everything now!"..
There are books of formulas, constants, tables and charts that need to be rewritten. There are machines that need to be rebuilt and redesigned. There are entire conventions that need to be done away with and started afresh. This is extreamely difficult, costly and possibly dangerous to just 'do'.
Only in the more modern technologies has the metric system really taken hold, and everything else has been undergoing a gradual conversion.
The metric system has many advantages over the imperial system... like having destinct units for mass and force: grams and newtons as opposed to just 'pounds' (pound-mass, which must be converted to slugs for calculations, and pound-force). As well as not having any unweildy fractions. Non of that 15/32 of an inch.
However, that does not make the imperial system any less useful. If you really think about it, any measurement system is going to be arbitrary, and it will be valid as long as it's consistent. =Smidge=
The difference is the deep sea fish are dealing with a MUCH higher pressure difference. At just 300 feet, you've got a pressure difference of about 150psi. (And some of these samples are take from over a mile down).
At a pressure difference of 14psi (slightly higher, actually), you could easily rupture some of the ore fragile tissues - ear drums, sinuses and tear ducts perhaps. The rest of the body would hold up fine all things considered.
So the real, immediate enemy would be heat loss. With no air, theres no convection. The only heat loss is radiation... and unfortunately for you the inky blackness of space is about 4 degrees kelvin (last I heard, anyway). You'ld freeze before you'ld suffocate. =Smidge=
It seems to be that, since Microsoft clearly doesn't want open document formats, that they would WANT to make thier products compatable with everybody else's, but not the other way around.
For MS, the perfect office suite would be a package that could read everything and saved in a format nobody else could read. Seems that this is kind if thing would help that along...
Can there be any guarantee that, if we give MS the ability to read OpenOffice files, that OpenOffice will always be able to access MSWord files? =Smidge=
What can I do on the internet that isn't illegal these days?...log off?
Seriously, though. There are a bijillion little ways to get around crap like this. I disabled javascript and Netscape 7 went right in with no problem (and no popup). IE 5 didn't, though... Oh well! One more reason to swap from IE to Moz!
I don't have that big a problem with that, providing all the politicians get their transactions logged and screened as well. That'll probably clean up a lot of problems...
As I understand it, UV light hits the earth at all hours.
UV or IR? I've never head of UV light reaching the dark side of the planet in any quantity (other than whatever light you get from stars & off the moon). IR (mostly thermal energy) is usually quite abundant, though.
The inner ear helps keep you HEAD straight, with the fact that anyplace your head goes your body is likely to be not far behind... inner ear problems effect balance because the brain is trying to compensate for movements that aren't really happening.
Sensations from the feet are required to make sure they stay *under* you, thus helping to keep your head straight as well.
More to the point, senior housing should be built on top of night clubs! A great excuse to visit grandma and grandpa more frequently, too! I'm sure they'll appreciate it!
"The mouse literally glowed under the camera," said Gambhir, a member of the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center. "We 'heard' the proteins 'talk' by watching the communication pathways come to life."
Neat! There must be plenty of other bio-chemical applications too, like studying for nerve cells communicate and repair themselves. Such an interesting way to poke at the inner workings of life...
Plus, you'ld have your own built-in indiglo light!
=Smidge=
Re:Solar Power discussion.
on
Solar Power Play
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
1) Cost.
2) Energy already travels from the sun to earth at the speed of light. You're not going to get it here any faster. Electromagnetic radiation travels through space without loss (save for interference from objects and gravity fields).
3) What if the beam of highly concentrated energy misses the near-earth target?
4) Where are you going to PUT the near-earth target?
5) Everything we use for energy today exists because of the sun (except for nuclear, anyways, but that's leftovers from some other star), so basically we're running on locally stored solar energy...
Slashdot Mirror
Well duh. If you ever talked to a porn star you'ld have all the evidence you need to prove frequent sex does not make you smarter!
=Smidge=
In addition to allowing them to keep working while not in their computer labs, the wireless networks allow them to keep in touch with their family, better organize time, complete coursework in shorter periods of time, collaborate with other students and bring computing power into classrooms not available before.
More like play games and download music all day... That's pretty much all they use the computers for when the offered them at my school!
And of course grades don't suffer, because there's always at least 2 or 3 people who actually do the work, and everybody ashares the credit.
If a particular teacher has a problem (and I can't imagine why) perhaps a penalty for using the devices would suffice. One of my professors had a thing about cell phones; if one went off, he gave the entire class an extra-hard quiz the next class (grade couldn't be dropped). He always made good on it, too. (Worked so good that everybody was checking everybody else before class to make sure all the phones and beepers were off!)
=Smidge=
1. Go to the store and pick up some ready-made beef patties at $2.50/lb
...or...
1.1 Fill up precious cargo room in the ship with it (Enough for several months round-trip supply)
1.2 Find a way to keep it edible for months on end
1.3 Blast it all into space at a cost of a few thousand dollars per pound, still costing taxpayers bazillions of dollars and making the ship much larger and heavier that it needs to be, which could possibly jeapordize the whole mission.
2. At a cost of $97 bazillion in taxpayer money, invent cowless beef in a laboratory.
2.1 Use a fraction of the space and weight on the ship for the required equipment and renewable supplies
2.2 Recycle nearly all of the material in the ship (Sewage processing. Already done with water!)
Thus reducing the total cargo requirements while extendign the availability of fresh food almost indefinately
2.3 Develop long-lasting food supply sytems for future deep-space missions
2.4 Aquire nifty spin-off technologies and generally advance scientific progress in genetics, cloning, medicine, and resource management, etc etc
Hmmm..... doesn't sound so stupid in the long run.
=Smidge=
Now if only we could abolish the tenure system so we could implement standardized qualification guidelines and periodic testing for the teachers, and require teachers to continue their education (Like nearly every other state licensed profession), that would solve a lot of problems, too.
I see computers being put into schools by the hundreds. I help put them there. I also see the students knowing more about the technology than the teachers.
Computers have huge potential as educational tools. They can place an entire library at your fingertips, with interactive and dynamic content that paper can't provide. (This is not to understate the importance of paper books, of course!)
But the teachers are, by and large, completely unable to use the tools provided to them, and it's all just a big waste of money. (And a continuous expense... power, software licenses, etc)
=Smidge=
I didn't hear about the closure until the first half of my senior year. And how did I hear about it? I overheard someone at another table mention it in the cafeteria! Three weeks later there was an assembly in the auditorium for a little Q&A with Chan.
:)
Most of the people there were surprized.
Yeah, great to know they made every effort to keep the student population informed.
I happened to pass the campus a few weeks ago. Some guy was selling huge plaster lawn ornaments in front of it.
I also wonder about the thousands of dollars worth of equipment they *just* finished installing, and nobody even had time to use. You'ld think that if they were looking to save money they wouldn't have installed network drops at every desk and data projectors in every room... (Most of which was desroyed/stolen because everyone knew the campus was closing in a few months anyway!)
=Smidge=
As a graduate of that very same university, (actually, I got my BS, as in bullshit, degree from the Farmingdale campus right before it closed. A week later they had the windows boarded up), I can vouch for the validity of this article.
:)
There were only 6 people in my class for junior and senior year (Mechanicl Engineering). Four of them were taking the aerospace electives, which means the university couldn't justify opening up a whole class for just two students. Fortunately we got through taking senior-level courses from other majors as electives.
In terms of education, though, it really is a pretty good school. Good professors (mostly) and reasonable resources. Administration wise the school is an absolute nightmare. Unfortunately, I'm hearing that most colleges are like that. (I once got a bill for $0 and my account suspended because I didn't pay the balance. It took me three trips to the registrar to fix that one!)
My advice? Hold your breath, close your eyes, and get it over with. You've made it this far, and you'ld be stupid to quit now. And don't forget to bitch to the administration. A lot. The squeeky wheel get the grease.
And hey profet, kick Emperor Chan in the nuts for me if you see him
=Smidge=
Every computer at my (ex)university had that same problem. Seti@Home (And, actually, all of the distributed-computing project 'screen savers') make extreamly POOR screen savers. If you're going to set it up like that, you should enable the "turn monitor off" option if your monitor is capable. (Saves electricity, too)
=Smidge=
(It's only karma...)
I'm sure we've all heard the phrase: "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"
This phrase is typically used to describe how different men and women think at times, as if they are from completely different planets.
Personally speaking, I think the choices of who-got-what-planet are remarkably suitable. Especially considering that Mars has a thin Carbon-dioxide/Nitrogen atmosphere and an averate temperature of -87C, and Venus has a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and carbonic and sulfuric acid, and an average temperature of 453C.
I feel this adequately explains why women always complaining that they're too cold, and men keep turning the thermostat down. They're clearly out of their natural element.
So, the next time a woman nags you for messing something up, remind them whose planet is at least worth considering for (re?)habitation.
=Smidge=
Stepping out on your front porch isn't a significant help to getting half way around the globe
So what do you do, climb out the window?
The ISS may not be the a literal 'stepping stone' in that respect, but there's still a lot of technical hurdles that need to be tackled before manned space exploration becomes really viable... and the ISS is (or was intended to be) a great place to develop that technology.
I say we find a way to make it profitable. Everyone knows that once there's money to be made development takes off (no pun intended). Maybe NASA should consider bringing tourists into space just for the extra revenue!
=Smidge=
What else is gone?
Gyroscopes! Simple, cheap, die-cast gyroscopes. There's not a store within 50 miles of my place that sells them. (And a few guys I talked to didn't even know what the hell they were)
Such amazing little widgets, too.
=Smidge=
My home network is comprized entirely of 100-160MHz Pentium machines running Win9x. Phoenix has so far impressed me very much with it's performance and size.
It's nice to see that someone is actually making size and speed a priority rather than an afterthought, and without sacrificing functionality!
So far so good!
=Smidge=
Global Cooling has been developing more efficient (and safer) CFC-free refrigeration and cooling (even cryo-cooling) systems for quite awhile, now.
=Smidge=
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Ah, this must be what they call 'progress'...
=Smidge=
...And when that future failed to arrive I began to wonder why.
Because people had been using the imperial system for so long, it became (and still is) a major undertaking to convert. You don't just say "Okay everyone, we're going to use Metric for everything now!"..
There are books of formulas, constants, tables and charts that need to be rewritten. There are machines that need to be rebuilt and redesigned. There are entire conventions that need to be done away with and started afresh. This is extreamely difficult, costly and possibly dangerous to just 'do'.
Only in the more modern technologies has the metric system really taken hold, and everything else has been undergoing a gradual conversion.
The metric system has many advantages over the imperial system... like having destinct units for mass and force: grams and newtons as opposed to just 'pounds' (pound-mass, which must be converted to slugs for calculations, and pound-force). As well as not having any unweildy fractions. Non of that 15/32 of an inch.
However, that does not make the imperial system any less useful. If you really think about it, any measurement system is going to be arbitrary, and it will be valid as long as it's consistent.
=Smidge=
The difference is the deep sea fish are dealing with a MUCH higher pressure difference. At just 300 feet, you've got a pressure difference of about 150psi. (And some of these samples are take from over a mile down).
At a pressure difference of 14psi (slightly higher, actually), you could easily rupture some of the ore fragile tissues - ear drums, sinuses and tear ducts perhaps. The rest of the body would hold up fine all things considered.
So the real, immediate enemy would be heat loss. With no air, theres no convection. The only heat loss is radiation... and unfortunately for you the inky blackness of space is about 4 degrees kelvin (last I heard, anyway). You'ld freeze before you'ld suffocate.
=Smidge=
It seems to be that, since Microsoft clearly doesn't want open document formats, that they would WANT to make thier products compatable with everybody else's, but not the other way around.
For MS, the perfect office suite would be a package that could read everything and saved in a format nobody else could read. Seems that this is kind if thing would help that along...
Can there be any guarantee that, if we give MS the ability to read OpenOffice files, that OpenOffice will always be able to access MSWord files?
=Smidge=
What can I do on the internet that isn't illegal these days? ...log off?
Seriously, though. There are a bijillion little ways to get around crap like this. I disabled javascript and Netscape 7 went right in with no problem (and no popup). IE 5 didn't, though... Oh well! One more reason to swap from IE to Moz!
=Smidge=
Don't uncap your cable modem! (It's a federal offence!)
=Smidge=
I don't have that big a problem with that, providing all the politicians get their transactions logged and screened as well. That'll probably clean up a lot of problems...
(I also pay in cash alot, so nyeh!)
=Smidge=
void sex()
{
sex;
};
Yeah, programmers do it recusively...
=Smidge=
As I understand it, UV light hits the earth at all hours.
UV or IR? I've never head of UV light reaching the dark side of the planet in any quantity (other than whatever light you get from stars & off the moon). IR (mostly thermal energy) is usually quite abundant, though.
Got any references?
=Smidge=
The inner ear helps keep you HEAD straight, with the fact that anyplace your head goes your body is likely to be not far behind... inner ear problems effect balance because the brain is trying to compensate for movements that aren't really happening.
Sensations from the feet are required to make sure they stay *under* you, thus helping to keep your head straight as well.
=Smidge=
More to the point, senior housing should be built on top of night clubs! A great excuse to visit grandma and grandpa more frequently, too! I'm sure they'll appreciate it!
=Smidge=
"The mouse literally glowed under the camera," said Gambhir, a member of the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center. "We 'heard' the proteins 'talk' by watching the communication pathways come to life."
Neat! There must be plenty of other bio-chemical applications too, like studying for nerve cells communicate and repair themselves. Such an interesting way to poke at the inner workings of life...
Plus, you'ld have your own built-in indiglo light!
=Smidge=
1) Cost.
2) Energy already travels from the sun to earth at the speed of light. You're not going to get it here any faster. Electromagnetic radiation travels through space without loss (save for interference from objects and gravity fields).
3) What if the beam of highly concentrated energy misses the near-earth target?
4) Where are you going to PUT the near-earth target?
5) Everything we use for energy today exists because of the sun (except for nuclear, anyways, but that's leftovers from some other star), so basically we're running on locally stored solar energy...
=Smidge=