According to Wikipedia: There's a minimum age of 16 and you can't be currently enrolled in high school; some jurisdictions may raise the age limit to 18. If I had known this when I was in high school, I probably would have dropped out to become eligible.
I agree with you: This kid is, probably, bored out of his skull. I know I was in high school. The only reason I bothered doing enough work to graduate is that I wanted to learn engineering, which (I thought) meant going to an engineering college, which in turn would not be possible without a high school diploma.
Have him take the GED (from your description, he'll pass easily) and either apply to college or get a job. Clearly, school is torture for him, and totally unnecessary to his further development, so why are you, as a loving parent, forcing him to stay in school?
And an AZERTY keyboard makes sense if you're...um, French, I think. Or live in a French-speaking country.
Hunt & peck works surprisingly well for a large number of people. Most people I know don't touch-type but achieve reasonable typing speeds. Even with thumb-typing on a cell phone with fully keyboard, a reasonable speed can be achieved without much effort as long as the layout is one you are familiar with.
Regardless of how you feel about piracy, RIAA's idiotic tactics are going to make people want to stop supporting musicians entirely.
Which is too bad, since as you mentioned, shows are where the musicians really make money. I try to go to more shows by local bands at small, local venues; I sometimes go to shows by major-label artists but I'd rather spend $10 to hear $RANDOM_DEATH_METAL_BAND than $30 or more to hear bands that maybe everyone's heard of but their music is the same pablum that gets played on the radio every day.
But anyway, the reason I'm bother to reply is to ask these questions: Do you create original music? If so, is it available online? And (although this is off-topic for this discussion, but you don't have your e-mail shown to the public so I have to ask here) can I use it in my podcast? Feel free to e-mail me at my slashdot user name @yahoo.com to discuss further if you'd like.
System memory = counter top; where stuff that's being worked on now is Hard drive = refrigerator and cabinets; stuff you want to keep/use, but aren't using now CPU = oven Programs = food processor, blender, etc.
No. The scientists have to get their funding from somewhere; and the government throws a lot of money around. The other options for funding are worse: You can get it from corporations, who will only fund research if they see a way to make a profit from it in the next three to five years; or you can get from universities, but I understand that the political games in academia are far more vicious than they are in government.
For a reporter, I don't think you did a good job checking up on your "facts". The Boston Herald was started in the 1840s, the Boston Globe wasn't founded until 1872. I haven't found any indication that either of them ever had a lapse in publishing; so I don't think there was ever a time when one's only option for news in Boston was the Globe.
That was my interpretation as well. An app can duplicate functionality (alternate dialers, browsers, etc.) but not overwrite the existing MS-provided apps or, in the install process, make itself the default behavior for certain actions.
Hopefully the state of Virginia follows proper backup procedures, and has a copies of the data that are off-site and off-line. It may take a day or so for someone to go fetch the tapes, but the data shouldn't be lost. So the people trying to ransom this data should be screwed.
If I recall correctly, they didn't get the Starship Troopers movie from the book. The movie script had the working title "Bug Hunt at Outpost 9" or something similar and the writing team had probably never heard of the novel. When the got the rights to the Starship Troopers title, they changed some names of characters and places to match what's in the book. Beyond that, there's no relation between the two.
That mindset of "the average person who uses some trendy service I reject because I'm trendily un-trendy is stupid" really gets to me.
For me, it's not about a "trendy service that I reject because I'm trendily un-trendy". A stupid idea is stupid whether it's trendy or not, and a good idea is good whether it's trendy or not. And in my opinion, sites that ONLY do social networking are stupid. (I also think Twitter - the great trend of the past month - is stupid.) Slashdot's friends/foes system is an awesome addition to this site - but none of us are on this site for the social networking aspect of it; we're all here because we want "news for nerds" and any social networking that happens is a bonus.
Nice job reading a bunch of stuff I didn't say into my post. I stated that I was going by evidence of other social networking sites that I have seen; several people have POLITELY disagreed with me, you had to be rude about it. (Based on the polite responses, I may go take a look tonight after work - the firewall here blocks it - as apparently it's considerably less idiotic than the social networking sites I have seen.)
I never said that "anyone who has a need for something like it is an idiot". I understand that other people have a different set of needs than I do. Social networking sites may be the best solution in some cases - I just can't think of any.
As for communicating with others in different timezones or those who are unavailable for long periods: E-mail will wait to be read until your brothers are awake; forum posts are always available and can be responded to; a personal blog would allow your submariner cousin to catch up what you've been up to when he surfaces.
Obviously there is a niche for social networking websites; I just don't understand the appeal of them, and I don't see how they could be a better solution for communicating with friends than other methods that were out before social networking sites.
Karpinski emphasized that correlation does not equal causation and that the grades association could be caused by something else.
I would posit that the "something else" is that Facebook (and MySpace, etc.) users are idiots. I've never looked at Facebook, but if what I see on MySpace is any indication, it will be at least 98% crud (and that's giving Facebook users a lot of credit - 99.999% of MySpace content is crud).
You didn't make your point very clear in your first paragraph - it sounded like you were just saying "using this thing one-handed is going to be a pain in the ass and I think people will drop it all the time", which is something that happens frequently with PDAs in those environments today (mostly because people are holding onto railings/poles with their elbow and attempting to use the PDA with the stylus). Now that I know that your issue with it is that you think it will be harder to hold onto, thus making the dropping problem worse; I agree with you on that point. Actually, allowing (but not forcing) a pointer controlled with a small trackball like is used on Blackberries might solve the "hard to use one handed because thumbs are wide" issue just as well and without requiring a looser grip on the device.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to making linking the the Wikipedia article on thumbs. This technology allows for a PDA that can be used without a stylus and without your thumb getting in the way of the screen. I think this is great, as I often miss the button I intended to hit when using my thumb rather than the stylus on my smartphone. I am somewhat disinclined to believe that an index finger is dextrous enough to cover the whole screen of a typical modern PDA, though.
As for Codex, it's not a DS with an accelerometer. It's a DS with a position sensor in the hinge, and (apparently) the ability to turn both screens to the outside. Tablet PC on table - hinge at 105 degrees, screens to the inside; book on table - hinge at 180 degrees; battleship mode - hinge at 0 degrees, screens to the outside. I'm not sure how you think that even a simple program would have trouble distinguishing between these.
Mod parent up...to +50 bazillion. If every programmer working on Linux or Linux apps understood this, it really could be the year of the Linux desktop!
I don't play WoW, either. I think it would be nice if they had included the ability to link to characters in other games, as well. Specifically, I think they should have included ability to link to characters in Kingdom of Loathing, since the game itself is essentially a giant, geeky, joke. However, they would have to limit to a single character link, otherwise we'd get people trying to play 50 different MMO games and link all their characters to get more achievements.
I remember running across a reference to one additional language - IIRC, its name began with symbol used for the unit angstrom, and it was developed in one of the Scandinavian countries.
About as many times as we have heard "The network is the computer"...um, I mean, "thin clients"...no, that's it not, I think it was "client-server architecture". Or was it "AJAX and Web 2.0 will allow us to move more applications on to the web"? I'm so confused! (Or maybe I'm just getting old. Everybody but mcgrew, get off my lawn!)
The desktop isn't going away. Distributed computing will be stick around as well, as will AJAX and "Web 2.0" (whatever that means). How much software is created for each of these, and the distribution of how much we spend working with applications that use each of these models, will change over time. Increased network speeds and availability have made models that require access networks less cumbersome and will probably continue to do so, but I don't think that there will ever be a complete "death of the desktop" (just like there has never been a complete death of COBOL).
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot the low-cost, low-power Lizard CPU (being developed by the designers of ARM CPUs) and the highly logical Spock CPU (from AMD, of course).
According to Wikipedia: There's a minimum age of 16 and you can't be currently enrolled in high school; some jurisdictions may raise the age limit to 18. If I had known this when I was in high school, I probably would have dropped out to become eligible.
I agree with you: This kid is, probably, bored out of his skull. I know I was in high school. The only reason I bothered doing enough work to graduate is that I wanted to learn engineering, which (I thought) meant going to an engineering college, which in turn would not be possible without a high school diploma.
Have him take the GED (from your description, he'll pass easily) and either apply to college or get a job. Clearly, school is torture for him, and totally unnecessary to his further development, so why are you, as a loving parent, forcing him to stay in school?
And an AZERTY keyboard makes sense if you're...um, French, I think. Or live in a French-speaking country.
Hunt & peck works surprisingly well for a large number of people. Most people I know don't touch-type but achieve reasonable typing speeds. Even with thumb-typing on a cell phone with fully keyboard, a reasonable speed can be achieved without much effort as long as the layout is one you are familiar with.
what makes you think it wasn't designed by a concerned parent who is also a dominatrix? They're not mutually exclusive, you know!
Which is too bad, since as you mentioned, shows are where the musicians really make money. I try to go to more shows by local bands at small, local venues; I sometimes go to shows by major-label artists but I'd rather spend $10 to hear $RANDOM_DEATH_METAL_BAND than $30 or more to hear bands that maybe everyone's heard of but their music is the same pablum that gets played on the radio every day.
But anyway, the reason I'm bother to reply is to ask these questions: Do you create original music? If so, is it available online? And (although this is off-topic for this discussion, but you don't have your e-mail shown to the public so I have to ask here) can I use it in my podcast? Feel free to e-mail me at my slashdot user name @yahoo.com to discuss further if you'd like.
Try the "computer as kitchen" analogy.
System memory = counter top; where stuff that's being worked on now is
Hard drive = refrigerator and cabinets; stuff you want to keep/use, but aren't using now
CPU = oven
Programs = food processor, blender, etc.
I've found it to work surprisingly well.
No. The scientists have to get their funding from somewhere; and the government throws a lot of money around. The other options for funding are worse: You can get it from corporations, who will only fund research if they see a way to make a profit from it in the next three to five years; or you can get from universities, but I understand that the political games in academia are far more vicious than they are in government.
For a reporter, I don't think you did a good job checking up on your "facts". The Boston Herald was started in the 1840s, the Boston Globe wasn't founded until 1872. I haven't found any indication that either of them ever had a lapse in publishing; so I don't think there was ever a time when one's only option for news in Boston was the Globe.
That was my interpretation as well. An app can duplicate functionality (alternate dialers, browsers, etc.) but not overwrite the existing MS-provided apps or, in the install process, make itself the default behavior for certain actions.
Hopefully the state of Virginia follows proper backup procedures, and has a copies of the data that are off-site and off-line. It may take a day or so for someone to go fetch the tapes, but the data shouldn't be lost. So the people trying to ransom this data should be screwed.
Came for a reference to the X-ray laser in The Mote in God's Eye...leaving only mildly disappointed that Footfall got mentioned first...
What, you don't do your browsing from inside emacs? Get with the program, man!
If I recall correctly, they didn't get the Starship Troopers movie from the book. The movie script had the working title "Bug Hunt at Outpost 9" or something similar and the writing team had probably never heard of the novel. When the got the rights to the Starship Troopers title, they changed some names of characters and places to match what's in the book. Beyond that, there's no relation between the two.
For me, it's not about a "trendy service that I reject because I'm trendily un-trendy". A stupid idea is stupid whether it's trendy or not, and a good idea is good whether it's trendy or not. And in my opinion, sites that ONLY do social networking are stupid. (I also think Twitter - the great trend of the past month - is stupid.) Slashdot's friends/foes system is an awesome addition to this site - but none of us are on this site for the social networking aspect of it; we're all here because we want "news for nerds" and any social networking that happens is a bonus.
Nice job reading a bunch of stuff I didn't say into my post. I stated that I was going by evidence of other social networking sites that I have seen; several people have POLITELY disagreed with me, you had to be rude about it. (Based on the polite responses, I may go take a look tonight after work - the firewall here blocks it - as apparently it's considerably less idiotic than the social networking sites I have seen.)
I never said that "anyone who has a need for something like it is an idiot". I understand that other people have a different set of needs than I do. Social networking sites may be the best solution in some cases - I just can't think of any.
As for communicating with others in different timezones or those who are unavailable for long periods: E-mail will wait to be read until your brothers are awake; forum posts are always available and can be responded to; a personal blog would allow your submariner cousin to catch up what you've been up to when he surfaces.
Obviously there is a niche for social networking websites; I just don't understand the appeal of them, and I don't see how they could be a better solution for communicating with friends than other methods that were out before social networking sites.
From TFS:
I would posit that the "something else" is that Facebook (and MySpace, etc.) users are idiots. I've never looked at Facebook, but if what I see on MySpace is any indication, it will be at least 98% crud (and that's giving Facebook users a lot of credit - 99.999% of MySpace content is crud).
You didn't make your point very clear in your first paragraph - it sounded like you were just saying "using this thing one-handed is going to be a pain in the ass and I think people will drop it all the time", which is something that happens frequently with PDAs in those environments today (mostly because people are holding onto railings/poles with their elbow and attempting to use the PDA with the stylus). Now that I know that your issue with it is that you think it will be harder to hold onto, thus making the dropping problem worse; I agree with you on that point. Actually, allowing (but not forcing) a pointer controlled with a small trackball like is used on Blackberries might solve the "hard to use one handed because thumbs are wide" issue just as well and without requiring a looser grip on the device.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to making linking the the Wikipedia article on thumbs. This technology allows for a PDA that can be used without a stylus and without your thumb getting in the way of the screen. I think this is great, as I often miss the button I intended to hit when using my thumb rather than the stylus on my smartphone. I am somewhat disinclined to believe that an index finger is dextrous enough to cover the whole screen of a typical modern PDA, though.
As for Codex, it's not a DS with an accelerometer. It's a DS with a position sensor in the hinge, and (apparently) the ability to turn both screens to the outside. Tablet PC on table - hinge at 105 degrees, screens to the inside; book on table - hinge at 180 degrees; battleship mode - hinge at 0 degrees, screens to the outside. I'm not sure how you think that even a simple program would have trouble distinguishing between these.
Mod parent up...to +50 bazillion. If every programmer working on Linux or Linux apps understood this, it really could be the year of the Linux desktop!
Hehe, got around the lameness filter with HTML escape sequences! (Maybe the lameness filter needs some improvement?)
ME TOO!
</AOL>
I don't play WoW, either. I think it would be nice if they had included the ability to link to characters in other games, as well. Specifically, I think they should have included ability to link to characters in Kingdom of Loathing, since the game itself is essentially a giant, geeky, joke. However, they would have to limit to a single character link, otherwise we'd get people trying to play 50 different MMO games and link all their characters to get more achievements.
Not only do they exist, Wikipedia has a (probably incomplete) list of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages
I remember running across a reference to one additional language - IIRC, its name began with symbol used for the unit angstrom, and it was developed in one of the Scandinavian countries.
About as many times as we have heard "The network is the computer"...um, I mean, "thin clients"...no, that's it not, I think it was "client-server architecture". Or was it "AJAX and Web 2.0 will allow us to move more applications on to the web"? I'm so confused! (Or maybe I'm just getting old. Everybody but mcgrew, get off my lawn!)
The desktop isn't going away. Distributed computing will be stick around as well, as will AJAX and "Web 2.0" (whatever that means). How much software is created for each of these, and the distribution of how much we spend working with applications that use each of these models, will change over time. Increased network speeds and availability have made models that require access networks less cumbersome and will probably continue to do so, but I don't think that there will ever be a complete "death of the desktop" (just like there has never been a complete death of COBOL).