General Graphics:
Real-time Rendering: Tomas Akenine-Moller
Any OpenGL Red Book
Physically Based Rendering: Humphreys and Pharr
GPU Gems: Published by nVidia
Intro to Graphics: Shirley
Visualization
Real-time Volume Graphics: Engel et al.
Computational Geometry
Computational Geometry: de Berg et al.
Introduction to Algorithms: CLRS
Physical Animation
Fluid Simulation for Computer Graphics: Bridson (I haven't read it but I have read his '06 and '07 SIGGRAPH course notes)
Numerical Recipes: Press et al. (In general, a must have book for Computer Science)
Image Processing/Vision
Digital Image Processing: Gonzalez et al.
Computer Vision: Forsynth and Ponce (not a huge fan, but apparently lots of people use it)
Shape from Shading: Horn and Brooks (kind of old)
I'm sure there are plenty others as well that are still packed away in boxes. These are the ones on my shelf atm.
And don't forget, GEM is a subsidiary of Chrysler.
Everyone seems to believe designing and manufacturing a car that everyone can drive is easy. Tesla didn't design their chassis, its Lotus derived. Tesla didn't deliver on time and didn't deliver what they promised because they couldn't get their transmissions done properly. They laid off their workers via a blog post. They've got 100s of pre-order checks, but no money to build them.
Release a great product: Goldfinger = Apple II
Make some sequels: Diamonds are Forever = Apple III
Realize you've absolutely screwed everything up and reboot.
Release a great product: Original Macintosh = For Your Eyes Only
Make some Sequels: Moore era Bond = Performa
Realize you've absolutely screwed everything up and reboot.
Release a great product: Goldeneye = iPod
Make some sequels: Die Another Day = fat iPod Nano
Realize you've absolutely screwed everything up and reboot.
Release a great product: Casino Royale = iPhone
Make some sequels: ????
You could also look at it from an operating system perspective. Copeland = George Lazenby (never given a chance), Roger Moore = System 7 (Long in tooth, not quite up to the modern challenge), Pierce Brosnan = original OSX (such promise (shiny!), but compromised in the end), and Sean Connery = System 1-4 (one dimensional, but set the standard). Timothy Dalton can suck it.
If they really want to do something useful, they could try to integrate science subjects into non-science disciplines, to restore the notion of getting a 'well rounded education' and to give students of those disciplines a broader, better developed understanding of their discipline's context in the world. E.g. get science journalists to study math; get lawyers to lawyers study computer science; get business majors to study subjects which encourage a more holistic understanding of the effect of their discipline and the ways in which it can help or damage the engineers they will soon "manage".
There, I fixed that for you. I knew English majors that were proud of the fact that they never had to take a math class in college. Or anything related to engineering/physics/math. But I also knew engineers who were proud that they never had to read fiction in college. Being well-rounded goes both ways, its not like being a humanities major makes you well rounded.
No flashing logos? On the MacBook I'm using right now there's a giant glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen. I also get the spinning disk quite a bit. =D Or how about when something happens in an application that's out of context and the Dock tells you about...by bouncing the icon until you switch over. I think that counts as a flashing logo. =D
As for not "moving my hand from one place" try moving between open files in Xcode within the same window pane without using a mouse or the touchpad. Its <option><command><left arrow> or <option><command><right arrow>. I don't mind having to use two modifiers but I do mind having to use two hands. Or how about page-up and page-down? Again, on my MacBook, for aesthetic sake, page up and down were left off. So, I have to use two hands (<fn><arrow up> to page up. Or Home and End. Is it <command><left arrow> or <fn><left arrow>. I've found it depends on the application. Will it take me to the end of the line or the end of the text? And will the cursor come with it? Or Delete. Again, depends on the application.
Yes, no stupid buttons on a MacBook (or Apple keyboard) Instead, Apple decided to appropriate the functions keys. Who needs those right? I do: Parallels or VMWare is worthless without re-assigning all the Expose and Spaces keys. <Command><F12> here I come!
Also, on my 4 year old eMachines I can click, right click, scroll and middle click without having to move my hand off the trackpad either. And, there are trackpads out there that pan too. Sure, it doesn't do it with two fingers like the Mac trackpad, but at least I get two real buttons which can then simulate a third (for true Unix goodness)
Look, my primary machine is my MacBook and I love it. Further, I do Visualization research on a Quad core Mac pro. But OS X and Apple are not the end all be all of of good design. I love the MacBook keyboard but guess what? Showed up on the Vaio first. And the matte grey finish for the hand rests? Mine are kind of scummy and discolored. I've had a bunch of Dell laptops (D610, D620, Inspiron 3200, 700m) and I've never had the hand rests of them go all scummy. And don't get me started on the Dock...
P.S. I think the m1330 is actually a pretty nice piece of kit. Its designed well and its got discrete graphics and can be had for cheaper than a MacBook if you wait for a sale (which happen about every other day).
Most states have Sales and Use tax. The use tax is for goods purchased for use within the state. So, the GP is correct: in most states you're supposed to pay taxes on goods purchased over the Internet or through catalogs or if you purchased it from a state with no sales tax.
If you look at most state personal income tax forms you'll generally see an area for calculating tax on goods purchased from other states or over the internet. I know off the top of my head that Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio and Utah all have some type of line for calculating Use tax on their personal income tax forms.
and its more of the same! Its hinged but cleverly! Its a slider instead of hinges! Its glorified Nintendo DS combined with an iPhone!
Or, they pick the low hanging fruit of "It'll be faster and more efficient!"
How about stuff like what Andy Van Dam and his students are working on? MathPad lets you use a tablet to write equations and have the computer solve them for you, or draw a primitive sketch and have it animate depending on an equation you wrote. Or there's ChemPad which lets you draw chemical equations and then it generates the 3-d structure on the fly.
If we extrapolate what their research does today, 7 years from now could be brilliant. In the end wouldn't it be great open up your computer, and start writing on your desktop? And you could write anything and your computer (with more computing power 7 years from now) would be able to contextualize what you're writing and immediately know that the diagram you drew was an animation for your graphics class that was a pinwheel dependent on an equation? Or, perhaps you're a manager and you draw a lot of diagrams and write notes like "Setup meeting with Jim and Susan, 2:30 tomorrow" and your computer can figure it all out and do it for you?
Yes, designers are great when they get it correct (iPhone is brilliant) but I'm waiting for the computer to understand what I'm doing as well.
From the article:
'"In order to prolong the life of the battery in my car, they only use it over the middle 10 to 15 percent of its range he says. "So actually I'm only using perhaps 15 percent of the capacity. With an ultracapacitor you can use it all, or almost all."'
So, if you're only using 10%-15% of the battery, then 5% for current ultracapacitor isn't too far off. With the ultracapacitor you don't have to worry about battery memory or the explosiveness of LiIon. So, in the researcher's eyes, this is a win-win situation. Whether he's correct when he states manufacturers only use 10-15% of the battery remains to be seen. I don't know if I quite buy the math...
"If we accept the fact that the greatest hurdle in arresting international cyber criminals is that various legal systems just aren't prepared to address the speed at which these crimes occur or the various nuances that are unique to computer crimes, then the question is: What can we do to fix the problem?"
So, he goes from acknowledging that there's a jurisdictional problem and a speed problem when it comes to law enforcement to creating a new "verified" internet where you have to "prove" who you are? Umm..no.
And he goes on to hit every hot topic in security today: DDOS, identity theft. spam, etc. And then, he makes the claim "the fact is that Internet crimes are almost always international crimes." And he doesn't back it up, rather gives anecdotal evidence of a hacker in Russia using computers in Thailand to steal data.
I am not a security expert (and I'm not pretending to be) but this "sky is falling" mentality is crap. Most identity theft (the act of stealing) is not done over the internet, its done locally. Yes, selling lists of thousands of SSNs and credit card #s happens over the internet, but the thievery itself doesn't.
In fact, this would make things worse: you're creating a global ID. Once someone steals your global ID they can do whatever they want. And once again, your ID wouldn't be stolen over the "new" internet, it would be stolen because you didn't shred a document and someone went dumpster diving.
This doesn't solve any problems.
Re:What about his fellow travelers?
on
Kimchi in Space
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· Score: 1
There, I fixed that for you...
Taking tomatoes up in space - man, the smell of that stuff is brutal - and in space, you can't exactly crack the windows when he starts farting now, can you? Seriously, just because you _can_ take a smelly, nasty food up in space because people of your ethnicity eat it doesn't mean you _should_ take it up. There's the "bringing home with you so you don't get so lonely" deal but there's also the "having to live in a confined space with several other people that have nothing in common with you" deal. And bringing food that has a >0 chance of really bugging your fellow astronauts isn't the greatest idea. What's next, having an Icelandic astronaut bring some håkarl up, too?
Your ethnocentric views make me laugh. The smell and taste of tomatoes make me want to puke. The smell and taste of kimchee make me salivate. Just because you find it "nasty" doesn't mean everybody does. I didn't ask my roommates to stop buying tomatoes because they don't understand that almost all food is an acquired taste. And I don't buy kimchee for the sake of civility in the apartment. But to them, whatever they were raised on is "normal" and everything outside of that boundary is "weird." Another example is sushi: one of them refuses because "its just weird" and "unsanitary". And another only recently started eating it but it still makes him queasy. I'm sure in the past someone has brought meatloaf or some other awful concoction up into space for the sake of comfort. Why can't this Korean bring kimchee?
First, vehicle information is very proprietary. Why is it that cars can't report status information via a simple USB connection? There is a standard reporting system on your car: its your OBD-II port and its been standard on cars sold in the United States since 1996. And yes there are OBD to USB adapters available as well as software to check with a computer. And the OBD-II is a bit more comprehensive than "oil level low" since it gets data from many places including the ECU. Why does it have to be USB?
I've used an OBD-II reader on a occasion. For instance, my car threw a CEL last winter and I went to Autozone, borrowed their OBD-II reader and it told me that at some point my wheels were spinning significantly faster than the vehicle was actually moving. Guess what? Earlier that morning I high-centered my car on 2 feet of snow and to get unstuck I spun the wheels and threw a CEL.
As for the washer fluid levels, yeah that sucks, my cars don't have it either. On the other hand, I can also understand the reasoning behind it. "Do we want to add X feet of wiring so we can put yet another light on the instrument panel to tell the driver?" If you've ever stripped down a vehicle you know how much wiring there is in a car and how much weight it adds.
My favorite example...
on
Geekonomics
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The book tells of how Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the city of London used formal engineering practices in the mid-1800's to deal with the city's growing sewage problem. Why is it that any time someone talks about software engineering they always bring up bridge/house/skyscraper building? Yes, Joseph Bazalgette used "formal engineering practices" to build London's sewers, but where did these formal practices come from? Why yes, through trial and error. Thousands of years of trial and error. Use concrete. Yes, it makes sense looking back because it worked, but what if it didn't work? What if the concrete failed? Or, What if he used clay pipes instead? Then we'd be saying "[insert name here] used formal engineering practices to deal with the city's growing sewage problem. Some guy before him failed miserably though." We simply haven't built up the software engineering toolbox yet. Software hasn't even been around for 100 years! But we're learning, and if you look in specific industries like medicine, banking, and avionics spring to my mind, they all spend billions of dollars to make sure their software works correctly because being correct for them is worth the cost.
The second problem is that Cloverfield doesn't explain anything.
I enjoyed that aspect of the movie. I don't remember the beginning of the movie precisely, but I thought it framed the movie in the sense of "The Department of Defense has no idea what Cloverfield is, and this is the best intel we have on the monster." From that perspective, not only don't *we* know what's going on, but the military doesn't know what's going on either. And that was the whole point of the movie, wasn't it? Unlike Bourne or Bond, we don't get the nifty clips of the baddies to tell us their nefarious plot. In these types of movies the audience always seems to have knowledge that the protagonist doesn't. Or even movies like Godzilla which always has the professor/doctor plot device: "Godzilla was created because of our atomic weapons testing!" We're supposed to be Hud; we don't know what's going on and we're there for the ride. I found that to be quite refreshing.
"The Iranian supercomputer falls far behind the world's fastest computers. In November, the BlueGene/L System, jointly developed by IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy was ranked No. 1 in the world with a benchmark performance of 478.2 teraflops. A teraflop equals a trillion calculations per second."
Indeed, the article mentions at the end that it falls far behind the rest of the world. In fact, to make the Top 500 this year you had to have a supercomputer worthy of 5.9 Teraflops.
"Consumers might also be more patient with a graphic-intensive site that has images they truly want to see. Victoria's Secret, for example, experienced a huge slowdown Thursday night--from a 5-second response to a 15-second response--but White speculated that its customers might be more tolerant of delays because they're expecting a more graphic-intensive experience, and the delay is thus worth waiting through."
Right, I tolerated the delays because VS is simply "graphic-intensive". Uh-huh... yeah, that's it.
couldn't we have picked a better source for the info? Yes, Google acknowledges Remembrance Day in Canada (as pointed out in this blog/whatever), but that doesn't mean they have to acknowledge Veterans/Memorial Day. Am I glad they did it? Sure. Do I believe they have to? No. Does World Net Daily have to go off on how Google is supposedly left leaning? Umm...no. I got to this part, and threw up a little in my mouth and called it a day.
"In addition, the company came under fire for an editorial decision giving preferential placement to large, elite media outlets such as CNN and the BBC over independent news sources, such as WND, even if they are more recent, pertinent and exhaustive in their coverage."
Who bloody cares? And "elite" media outlets? WTF does that mean? Independent news sources? How is the BBC not an independent news source? And what does this have to do with acknowledging Veterans Day? I would have preferred they simply said "Those commie pinkos in Silicon Valley aren't red blooded Americans for supporting Veterans." What a bunch of crap.
"Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm"? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I'm accusing you of anything like that. I'm fired, aren't I?"
Pro-Basketball stars compete in the Basketball tournaments as do Pro-Ice Skaters (Michelle Quan?)
You should have picked a better example than Michelle Kwan. A Pro-skater would be someone like Nancy Kerrigan. Although Michelle has done some commercials, she is still an amateur because she doesn't do things like "Lilo and Stitch: On Ice!" or "Skating All-Stars with Brian Boitano!" and earn a living skating. Instead she competes at the US National Figure Skating Championships or The World Championships and doesn't take a paycheck for performing on the ice. And her devotion to winning at the amateur level instead of jumping to the Pros where should would make money is highly regarded by most people.
Perhaps a better example would have been the Dream Team '92(or 96, or 2000 or 2004): Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson etc. Those players got paid outside the Olympics for playing basketball and won Gold at the Olympics for playing basketball.
I think you give a huge disservice to athletes who truly compete as amateurs.
Even with more refined diesel that's available elsewhere, its still not as clean as gasoline. Also, diesel cars are not subject to increasing regulations in California because new diesel vehicles are no longer sold in California (and Eastern states that have adopted CARB standards). Diesels cannot match CARB standards and therefore cannot be sold in CA. On VW's website (VW and MB I believe are the only two companies that sell passenger cars with diesel engines in the US) it specifically states diesel engines not sold in Ca, Me, Vt, Ma, or NY.
Love your country, Mullen. Just don't love it too much. The Constitution is a pitiful and weak thing -- it is not the protector of our great democracy.
We are.
I wholeheartedly agree. And I agree with many things you've said: corporations and their bitches, aka lawyers, are consolidating power at an alarming rate and Americans don't do enough to protect our liberties. However, I have issues with your idea of freedom.
If I'm blocked from attending a town hall meeting put on by my President because I'm a Democrat, I'm not very free.
If my uncle down south, along with others, is asked to leave his church because he's a card-carrying Democrat, I'm not very free.
Your idea of freedom seems misguided. You can flip it and look at it from the other point of view. If a congregation believes that a Democrat in their midst is a bad thing, then its their freedom to turn that person or persons away. Is that truly what God would want? Most decidedly not, but its their choice to do so. Likewise, banning someone from a town hall meeting because of their political persuasion is their choice as well. Is it politically savvy to do so? Probably not. Will it create anger and unrest? Yes. Does it infringe on your rights to attend that meeting?
If you always look from the perspective of how you were screwed of your freedom then any decision anyone makes is an infringment of your freedom. Get pulled over for speeding? Infringment of my freedom! Why? Because I'm obviously not free to speed.
If neoconservatives can threaten to impeach judges because they don't decide cases based on religious contrine, I'm not very free.
Sure you're free. Just as neocons are free to threaten to impeach judges for not voting along neocon lines, you're free to fight back if you disagree with them. Simply because you disagree with people doesn't mean your freedom is trampled on. You are guilty of what you imply: that we don't do enough to protect our freedoms.
That's just plain sad. Teachers are supposed to impart knowledge to the next generation, and they can't care enough to learn how to use the tools of the trade.
I didn't know computers were the tools of the trade for teachers. I could've sworn it was textbooks, lesson plans and a chalkboard/whiteboard. So what if a teacher *only* knows how to turn the bloody thing on and off, check their email and open Word. Do you know anything about your car besides hopping in, turning it on and that the round thing in front of you turns the car, and the two pedals (or three if your an enthiusiast) stop and go?
The thing is, for just about anyone, teachers or students, all you need to know is (G)AIM, Word, Outlook, Google and (hopefully) common sense to not open attachments. The computer viewed this way is a tool.
I'm in my mid-twenties and I have a hippie, baby-boomer friend. And guess what? He said *exactly* what the parent-poster stated. He was even harsher on his generation than the parent poster as well.
His conclusion is the baby boomer generation sold out and completely failed to live up to the changes they demanded of their parents in the 60's. All those protesters of the 60's are todays lawyers, bankers, etc. In essence, the rebels became their parents, only without the idea of sacrificing today for tomorrow's children. They're the true "Me" generation.
Slashdot Mirror
Here are some graphics books on my shelf:
General Graphics:
Real-time Rendering: Tomas Akenine-Moller
Any OpenGL Red Book
Physically Based Rendering: Humphreys and Pharr
GPU Gems: Published by nVidia
Intro to Graphics: Shirley
Visualization
Real-time Volume Graphics: Engel et al.
Computational Geometry
Computational Geometry: de Berg et al.
Introduction to Algorithms: CLRS
Physical Animation
Fluid Simulation for Computer Graphics: Bridson (I haven't read it but I have read his '06 and '07 SIGGRAPH course notes)
Numerical Recipes: Press et al. (In general, a must have book for Computer Science)
Image Processing/Vision
Digital Image Processing: Gonzalez et al.
Computer Vision: Forsynth and Ponce (not a huge fan, but apparently lots of people use it)
Shape from Shading: Horn and Brooks (kind of old)
I'm sure there are plenty others as well that are still packed away in boxes. These are the ones on my shelf atm.
Yes, but that means Telsa is only playing catch-up. Not to mention Toyota and Honda.
And don't forget, GEM is a subsidiary of Chrysler.
Everyone seems to believe designing and manufacturing a car that everyone can drive is easy. Tesla didn't design their chassis, its Lotus derived. Tesla didn't deliver on time and didn't deliver what they promised because they couldn't get their transmissions done properly. They laid off their workers via a blog post. They've got 100s of pre-order checks, but no money to build them.
I think movie studios are a lot like Apple.
Release a great product: Goldfinger = Apple II
Make some sequels: Diamonds are Forever = Apple III
Realize you've absolutely screwed everything up and reboot.
Release a great product: Original Macintosh = For Your Eyes Only
Make some Sequels: Moore era Bond = Performa
Realize you've absolutely screwed everything up and reboot.
Release a great product: Goldeneye = iPod
Make some sequels: Die Another Day = fat iPod Nano
Realize you've absolutely screwed everything up and reboot.
Release a great product: Casino Royale = iPhone
Make some sequels: ????
You could also look at it from an operating system perspective. Copeland = George Lazenby (never given a chance), Roger Moore = System 7 (Long in tooth, not quite up to the modern challenge), Pierce Brosnan = original OSX (such promise (shiny!), but compromised in the end), and Sean Connery = System 1-4 (one dimensional, but set the standard). Timothy Dalton can suck it.
If they really want to do something useful, they could try to integrate science subjects into non-science disciplines, to restore the notion of getting a 'well rounded education' and to give students of those disciplines a broader, better developed understanding of their discipline's context in the world. E.g. get science journalists to study math; get lawyers to lawyers study computer science; get business majors to study subjects which encourage a more holistic understanding of the effect of their discipline and the ways in which it can help or damage the engineers they will soon "manage".
There, I fixed that for you. I knew English majors that were proud of the fact that they never had to take a math class in college. Or anything related to engineering/physics/math. But I also knew engineers who were proud that they never had to read fiction in college. Being well-rounded goes both ways, its not like being a humanities major makes you well rounded.
And the ray tracing group at Utah, Pete Shirley and Steve Parker, now both work for nVidia as well.
No flashing logos? On the MacBook I'm using right now there's a giant glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen. I also get the spinning disk quite a bit. =D Or how about when something happens in an application that's out of context and the Dock tells you about...by bouncing the icon until you switch over. I think that counts as a flashing logo. =D
As for not "moving my hand from one place" try moving between open files in Xcode within the same window pane without using a mouse or the touchpad. Its <option><command><left arrow> or <option><command><right arrow>. I don't mind having to use two modifiers but I do mind having to use two hands. Or how about page-up and page-down? Again, on my MacBook, for aesthetic sake, page up and down were left off. So, I have to use two hands (<fn><arrow up> to page up. Or Home and End. Is it <command><left arrow> or <fn><left arrow>. I've found it depends on the application. Will it take me to the end of the line or the end of the text? And will the cursor come with it? Or Delete. Again, depends on the application.
Yes, no stupid buttons on a MacBook (or Apple keyboard) Instead, Apple decided to appropriate the functions keys. Who needs those right? I do: Parallels or VMWare is worthless without re-assigning all the Expose and Spaces keys. <Command><F12> here I come!
Also, on my 4 year old eMachines I can click, right click, scroll and middle click without having to move my hand off the trackpad either. And, there are trackpads out there that pan too. Sure, it doesn't do it with two fingers like the Mac trackpad, but at least I get two real buttons which can then simulate a third (for true Unix goodness)
Look, my primary machine is my MacBook and I love it. Further, I do Visualization research on a Quad core Mac pro. But OS X and Apple are not the end all be all of of good design. I love the MacBook keyboard but guess what? Showed up on the Vaio first. And the matte grey finish for the hand rests? Mine are kind of scummy and discolored. I've had a bunch of Dell laptops (D610, D620, Inspiron 3200, 700m) and I've never had the hand rests of them go all scummy. And don't get me started on the Dock...
P.S. I think the m1330 is actually a pretty nice piece of kit. Its designed well and its got discrete graphics and can be had for cheaper than a MacBook if you wait for a sale (which happen about every other day).
Most states have Sales and Use tax. The use tax is for goods purchased for use within the state. So, the GP is correct: in most states you're supposed to pay taxes on goods purchased over the Internet or through catalogs or if you purchased it from a state with no sales tax.
If you look at most state personal income tax forms you'll generally see an area for calculating tax on goods purchased from other states or over the internet. I know off the top of my head that Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado, Ohio and Utah all have some type of line for calculating Use tax on their personal income tax forms.
and its more of the same! Its hinged but cleverly! Its a slider instead of hinges! Its glorified Nintendo DS combined with an iPhone!
Or, they pick the low hanging fruit of "It'll be faster and more efficient!"
How about stuff like what Andy Van Dam and his students are working on? MathPad lets you use a tablet to write equations and have the computer solve them for you, or draw a primitive sketch and have it animate depending on an equation you wrote. Or there's ChemPad which lets you draw chemical equations and then it generates the 3-d structure on the fly.
If we extrapolate what their research does today, 7 years from now could be brilliant. In the end wouldn't it be great open up your computer, and start writing on your desktop? And you could write anything and your computer (with more computing power 7 years from now) would be able to contextualize what you're writing and immediately know that the diagram you drew was an animation for your graphics class that was a pinwheel dependent on an equation? Or, perhaps you're a manager and you draw a lot of diagrams and write notes like "Setup meeting with Jim and Susan, 2:30 tomorrow" and your computer can figure it all out and do it for you?
Yes, designers are great when they get it correct (iPhone is brilliant) but I'm waiting for the computer to understand what I'm doing as well.
From the article:
'"In order to prolong the life of the battery in my car, they only use it over the middle 10 to 15 percent of its range he says. "So actually I'm only using perhaps 15 percent of the capacity. With an ultracapacitor you can use it all, or almost all."'
So, if you're only using 10%-15% of the battery, then 5% for current ultracapacitor isn't too far off. With the ultracapacitor you don't have to worry about battery memory or the explosiveness of LiIon. So, in the researcher's eyes, this is a win-win situation. Whether he's correct when he states manufacturers only use 10-15% of the battery remains to be seen. I don't know if I quite buy the math...
"If we accept the fact that the greatest hurdle in arresting international cyber criminals is that various legal systems just aren't prepared to address the speed at which these crimes occur or the various nuances that are unique to computer crimes, then the question is: What can we do to fix the problem?"
So, he goes from acknowledging that there's a jurisdictional problem and a speed problem when it comes to law enforcement to creating a new "verified" internet where you have to "prove" who you are? Umm..no.
And he goes on to hit every hot topic in security today: DDOS, identity theft. spam, etc. And then, he makes the claim "the fact is that Internet crimes are almost always international crimes." And he doesn't back it up, rather gives anecdotal evidence of a hacker in Russia using computers in Thailand to steal data.
I am not a security expert (and I'm not pretending to be) but this "sky is falling" mentality is crap. Most identity theft (the act of stealing) is not done over the internet, its done locally. Yes, selling lists of thousands of SSNs and credit card #s happens over the internet, but the thievery itself doesn't.
In fact, this would make things worse: you're creating a global ID. Once someone steals your global ID they can do whatever they want. And once again, your ID wouldn't be stolen over the "new" internet, it would be stolen because you didn't shred a document and someone went dumpster diving.
This doesn't solve any problems.
There, I fixed that for you...
Taking tomatoes up in space - man, the smell of that stuff is brutal - and in space, you can't exactly crack the windows when he starts farting now, can you? Seriously, just because you _can_ take a smelly, nasty food up in space because people of your ethnicity eat it doesn't mean you _should_ take it up. There's the "bringing home with you so you don't get so lonely" deal but there's also the "having to live in a confined space with several other people that have nothing in common with you" deal. And bringing food that has a >0 chance of really bugging your fellow astronauts isn't the greatest idea. What's next, having an Icelandic astronaut bring some håkarl up, too?
Your ethnocentric views make me laugh. The smell and taste of tomatoes make me want to puke. The smell and taste of kimchee make me salivate. Just because you find it "nasty" doesn't mean everybody does. I didn't ask my roommates to stop buying tomatoes because they don't understand that almost all food is an acquired taste. And I don't buy kimchee for the sake of civility in the apartment. But to them, whatever they were raised on is "normal" and everything outside of that boundary is "weird." Another example is sushi: one of them refuses because "its just weird" and "unsanitary". And another only recently started eating it but it still makes him queasy. I'm sure in the past someone has brought meatloaf or some other awful concoction up into space for the sake of comfort. Why can't this Korean bring kimchee?
First, vehicle information is very proprietary. Why is it that cars can't report status information via a simple USB connection?
There is a standard reporting system on your car: its your OBD-II port and its been standard on cars sold in the United States since 1996. And yes there are OBD to USB adapters available as well as software to check with a computer. And the OBD-II is a bit more comprehensive than "oil level low" since it gets data from many places including the ECU. Why does it have to be USB?
I've used an OBD-II reader on a occasion. For instance, my car threw a CEL last winter and I went to Autozone, borrowed their OBD-II reader and it told me that at some point my wheels were spinning significantly faster than the vehicle was actually moving. Guess what? Earlier that morning I high-centered my car on 2 feet of snow and to get unstuck I spun the wheels and threw a CEL.
As for the washer fluid levels, yeah that sucks, my cars don't have it either. On the other hand, I can also understand the reasoning behind it. "Do we want to add X feet of wiring so we can put yet another light on the instrument panel to tell the driver?" If you've ever stripped down a vehicle you know how much wiring there is in a car and how much weight it adds.
The book tells of how Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the city of London used formal engineering practices in the mid-1800's to deal with the city's growing sewage problem.
Why is it that any time someone talks about software engineering they always bring up bridge/house/skyscraper building? Yes, Joseph Bazalgette used "formal engineering practices" to build London's sewers, but where did these formal practices come from? Why yes, through trial and error. Thousands of years of trial and error. Use concrete. Yes, it makes sense looking back because it worked, but what if it didn't work? What if the concrete failed? Or, What if he used clay pipes instead? Then we'd be saying "[insert name here] used formal engineering practices to deal with the city's growing sewage problem. Some guy before him failed miserably though." We simply haven't built up the software engineering toolbox yet. Software hasn't even been around for 100 years! But we're learning, and if you look in specific industries like medicine, banking, and avionics spring to my mind, they all spend billions of dollars to make sure their software works correctly because being correct for them is worth the cost.
The second problem is that Cloverfield doesn't explain anything.
I enjoyed that aspect of the movie. I don't remember the beginning of the movie precisely, but I thought it framed the movie in the sense of "The Department of Defense has no idea what Cloverfield is, and this is the best intel we have on the monster." From that perspective, not only don't *we* know what's going on, but the military doesn't know what's going on either. And that was the whole point of the movie, wasn't it? Unlike Bourne or Bond, we don't get the nifty clips of the baddies to tell us their nefarious plot. In these types of movies the audience always seems to have knowledge that the protagonist doesn't. Or even movies like Godzilla which always has the professor/doctor plot device: "Godzilla was created because of our atomic weapons testing!" We're supposed to be Hud; we don't know what's going on and we're there for the ride. I found that to be quite refreshing.
"The Iranian supercomputer falls far behind the world's fastest computers. In November, the BlueGene/L System, jointly developed by IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy was ranked No. 1 in the world with a benchmark performance of 478.2 teraflops. A teraflop equals a trillion calculations per second."
Indeed, the article mentions at the end that it falls far behind the rest of the world. In fact, to make the Top 500 this year you had to have a supercomputer worthy of 5.9 Teraflops.
"Consumers might also be more patient with a graphic-intensive site that has images they truly want to see. Victoria's Secret, for example, experienced a huge slowdown Thursday night--from a 5-second response to a 15-second response--but White speculated that its customers might be more tolerant of delays because they're expecting a more graphic-intensive experience, and the delay is thus worth waiting through."
Right, I tolerated the delays because VS is simply "graphic-intensive". Uh-huh... yeah, that's it.
couldn't we have picked a better source for the info? Yes, Google acknowledges Remembrance Day in Canada (as pointed out in this blog/whatever), but that doesn't mean they have to acknowledge Veterans/Memorial Day. Am I glad they did it? Sure. Do I believe they have to? No. Does World Net Daily have to go off on how Google is supposedly left leaning? Umm...no. I got to this part, and threw up a little in my mouth and called it a day.
"In addition, the company came under fire for an editorial decision giving preferential placement to large, elite media outlets such as CNN and the BBC over independent news sources, such as WND, even if they are more recent, pertinent and exhaustive in their coverage."
Who bloody cares? And "elite" media outlets? WTF does that mean? Independent news sources? How is the BBC not an independent news source? And what does this have to do with acknowledging Veterans Day? I would have preferred they simply said "Those commie pinkos in Silicon Valley aren't red blooded Americans for supporting Veterans." What a bunch of crap.
but I thought it'd be nice to look back to the announcement of the auction that was posted here before
The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show
"Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm"? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I'm accusing you of anything like that. I'm fired, aren't I?"
Pro-Basketball stars compete in the Basketball tournaments as do Pro-Ice Skaters (Michelle Quan?)
You should have picked a better example than Michelle Kwan. A Pro-skater would be someone like Nancy Kerrigan. Although Michelle has done some commercials, she is still an amateur because she doesn't do things like "Lilo and Stitch: On Ice!" or "Skating All-Stars with Brian Boitano!" and earn a living skating. Instead she competes at the US National Figure Skating Championships or The World Championships and doesn't take a paycheck for performing on the ice. And her devotion to winning at the amateur level instead of jumping to the Pros where should would make money is highly regarded by most people.
Perhaps a better example would have been the Dream Team '92(or 96, or 2000 or 2004): Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson etc. Those players got paid outside the Olympics for playing basketball and won Gold at the Olympics for playing basketball.
I think you give a huge disservice to athletes who truly compete as amateurs.
Even with more refined diesel that's available elsewhere, its still not as clean as gasoline. Also, diesel cars are not subject to increasing regulations in California because new diesel vehicles are no longer sold in California (and Eastern states that have adopted CARB standards). Diesels cannot match CARB standards and therefore cannot be sold in CA. On VW's website (VW and MB I believe are the only two companies that sell passenger cars with diesel engines in the US) it specifically states diesel engines not sold in Ca, Me, Vt, Ma, or NY.
Yeah, but "normal" people watch CSI (and its derivatives) but "normal" people don't watch Sci-Fi. So obviously they couldn't put CSI on the list.
Love your country, Mullen. Just don't love it too much. The Constitution is a pitiful and weak thing -- it is not the protector of our great democracy.
We are.
I wholeheartedly agree. And I agree with many things you've said: corporations and their bitches, aka lawyers, are consolidating power at an alarming rate and Americans don't do enough to protect our liberties. However, I have issues with your idea of freedom.
If I'm blocked from attending a town hall meeting put on by my President because I'm a Democrat, I'm not very free.
If my uncle down south, along with others, is asked to leave his church because he's a card-carrying Democrat, I'm not very free.
Your idea of freedom seems misguided. You can flip it and look at it from the other point of view. If a congregation believes that a Democrat in their midst is a bad thing, then its their freedom to turn that person or persons away. Is that truly what God would want? Most decidedly not, but its their choice to do so. Likewise, banning someone from a town hall meeting because of their political persuasion is their choice as well. Is it politically savvy to do so? Probably not. Will it create anger and unrest? Yes. Does it infringe on your rights to attend that meeting?
If you always look from the perspective of how you were screwed of your freedom then any decision anyone makes is an infringment of your freedom. Get pulled over for speeding? Infringment of my freedom! Why? Because I'm obviously not free to speed.
If neoconservatives can threaten to impeach judges because they don't decide cases based on religious contrine, I'm not very free.
Sure you're free. Just as neocons are free to threaten to impeach judges for not voting along neocon lines, you're free to fight back if you disagree with them. Simply because you disagree with people doesn't mean your freedom is trampled on. You are guilty of what you imply: that we don't do enough to protect our freedoms.
That's just plain sad. Teachers are supposed to impart knowledge to the next generation, and they can't care enough to learn how to use the tools of the trade.
I didn't know computers were the tools of the trade for teachers. I could've sworn it was textbooks, lesson plans and a chalkboard/whiteboard. So what if a teacher *only* knows how to turn the bloody thing on and off, check their email and open Word. Do you know anything about your car besides hopping in, turning it on and that the round thing in front of you turns the car, and the two pedals (or three if your an enthiusiast) stop and go?
The thing is, for just about anyone, teachers or students, all you need to know is (G)AIM, Word, Outlook, Google and (hopefully) common sense to not open attachments. The computer viewed this way is a tool.
I'm in my mid-twenties and I have a hippie, baby-boomer friend. And guess what? He said *exactly* what the parent-poster stated. He was even harsher on his generation than the parent poster as well.
His conclusion is the baby boomer generation sold out and completely failed to live up to the changes they demanded of their parents in the 60's. All those protesters of the 60's are todays lawyers, bankers, etc. In essence, the rebels became their parents, only without the idea of sacrificing today for tomorrow's children. They're the true "Me" generation.