Am I the only person who hates those ridiculous jokes that have a made-up story just to set up a pun? The whole point of a pun is that both meanings make sense. Otherwise you can turn anything into a pun. An example: When Victoria and David Beckham got married on thrones someone on the now show said:
People in crass houses shouldn't stow thrones.
See? It relates to something that wasn't just made up for the pun.
I did read that page, but it only says what she *could* have done. It makes no claim to say what she *did* do, let alone provide evidence. The page that that page links to states that the figure caption indicates area is used, but it would be good to see actual numbers.
When that comparison between easy English and hard Chinese exams was in the news I asked a Chinese guy about it. He said that although the questions are harder, they vary very little across years so the students all just practice the question forms a lot beforehand, and regurgitate the method with minor changes during the exam.
Still, I'm sure exams have got easier over the years. It would be interesting to see if this has happened to university exams - Oxford and Cambridge must have records going back hundreds of years...
You seem to have the impression that the oyster card is no good. Actually it is great - much faster, more convenient and cheaper (artificially admittedly) than using paper tickets. It also has high uptime (only down two days in the last several years, and it's not like that was bad for anyone because they just made transport free).
As for the security flaws. They have only managed to change the 'cached' cash value on the card. When the back-end notices the discrepancy then the card can be banned. Although it's a serious flaw it is hardly the downfall of the system that many people here seem to think.
No the main advantage is that you can store all your books/papers/other printed material electronically on one device, and read it comfortably (i.e. not like an LCD).
"Why should I buy a Kindle when I have a perfectly good laptop and a palmtop or two (phone, PDA) that have basically the same technology?"
They don't have the same technology though. The advantages over LCD are that they are much much nicer to read, the battery lasts (apparently) for weeks and they are (at least in plastic logic's case) considerably more light-weight.
The advantage over actual paper is that they can store many more pages, and they don't waste paper.
They will succeed even if they aren't quite as nice as paper simply because you can carry your entire collection of books/papers/sheet music around with you. You might say 'Why do I need that?' but then why do you need to carry your entire music collection with you?
It looks really really nice. This would be amazing for reading scientific papers, sheet music, newspapers & books. Unlike the kindle it has a decent sized screen, can show PDFs and doesn't look like shit.
On the other hand, I've yet to see what the UI is like (they haven't shown it in any videos), and in all the videos I've seen it takes almost 2 seconds to turn the page. That could get really annoying.
If they fix that I'd gladly pay the £300+ they're probably asking...
The speed of sound in wood is approx 0.6-5 km/s making it not only highly anisotropic (due to the grain structure) but also giving it a long wavelength (20-160 cm @ 3 kHz).
"Which brings up a point: it is not the wattage that matters, beyond a certain minimum. That 50KW laser will seldom burn anything, because the pulse is so short."
Exactly. This one is continuous 15 kW, not nano-second 50 kW.
Yeah maybe in the past, but these days it is trivial for the average person to download an MP3 ringtone & transfer it to their phone via USB or bluetooth. You can even share them over bluetooth easily.
"you could make expensive calls over IP and pay the telecom, nothing more than the monthly rent."
Bullshit. At least in the UK the monthly line rental usually includes more than enough minutes/texts for most people. The vast majority of their income must come from the base line rental (which isn't cheap!).
They're just used to being able to control everything and don't want to give that up. Hopefully it will change eventually.
I once went to a very small bar in America that had ten TVs! Not only that, but one entire side of the bar (it was one of those long thin ones) was a mirror! Twenty TVs in a room that could fit maybe 40 people...
Pretty insane; I can see why people would want this.
Slashdot Mirror
"The simple joy of a pun is the "ugh" moment when you realise you've been had."
A pun doesn't have to go with a story. They aren't supposed to fool you. Contrived puns just aren't funny.
Am I the only person who hates those ridiculous jokes that have a made-up story just to set up a pun? The whole point of a pun is that both meanings make sense. Otherwise you can turn anything into a pun. An example: When Victoria and David Beckham got married on thrones someone on the now show said:
People in crass houses shouldn't stow thrones.
See? It relates to something that wasn't just made up for the pun.
I did read that page, but it only says what she *could* have done. It makes no claim to say what she *did* do, let alone provide evidence. The page that that page links to states that the figure caption indicates area is used, but it would be good to see actual numbers.
Apparently she was also a pioneer of deception. I seriously doubt that that graph is by area rather than by radius.
Yeah but they won't have exams records dating back to their founding!
And now that I think about it, lots of the maths (e.g. vector calculus) was invented quite recently so it might be tricky to compare.
When that comparison between easy English and hard Chinese exams was in the news I asked a Chinese guy about it. He said that although the questions are harder, they vary very little across years so the students all just practice the question forms a lot beforehand, and regurgitate the method with minor changes during the exam.
Still, I'm sure exams have got easier over the years. It would be interesting to see if this has happened to university exams - Oxford and Cambridge must have records going back hundreds of years...
Slashdot has stories about speculative technologies. None of those are actually a reality yet.
You seem to have the impression that the oyster card is no good. Actually it is great - much faster, more convenient and cheaper (artificially admittedly) than using paper tickets. It also has high uptime (only down two days in the last several years, and it's not like that was bad for anyone because they just made transport free).
As for the security flaws. They have only managed to change the 'cached' cash value on the card. When the back-end notices the discrepancy then the card can be banned. Although it's a serious flaw it is hardly the downfall of the system that many people here seem to think.
"I love the advert projectors too"
I hate those too. And the LCD adverts. Sadly they don't seem to have been stupid enough to leave the infrared bit of the projectors exposed...
No the main advantage is that you can store all your books/papers/other printed material electronically on one device, and read it comfortably (i.e. not like an LCD).
And have you never heard of hard-back books?
Sorry but you're wrong. While the 'frontplane' - the e-ink display is the same, the 'backplane' - i.e. the drive electronics is different.
Plastic logic use some kind of plastic circuitry that allows them to make the device so thin (apparently).
Fair point about the refresh rate & row/column defects though. Hopefully they'll fix those for the production version.
At least we have a long history!
Yep. At least in this case. You could use ultrasound in isotropic materials (e.g. metal) but I don't think scratching produces any ultrasound.
"Why should I buy a Kindle when I have a perfectly good laptop and a palmtop or two (phone, PDA) that have basically the same technology?"
They don't have the same technology though. The advantages over LCD are that they are much much nicer to read, the battery lasts (apparently) for weeks and they are (at least in plastic logic's case) considerably more light-weight.
The advantage over actual paper is that they can store many more pages, and they don't waste paper.
They will succeed even if they aren't quite as nice as paper simply because you can carry your entire collection of books/papers/sheet music around with you. You might say 'Why do I need that?' but then why do you need to carry your entire music collection with you?
It looks really really nice. This would be amazing for reading scientific papers, sheet music, newspapers & books. Unlike the kindle it has a decent sized screen, can show PDFs and doesn't look like shit.
On the other hand, I've yet to see what the UI is like (they haven't shown it in any videos), and in all the videos I've seen it takes almost 2 seconds to turn the page. That could get really annoying.
If they fix that I'd gladly pay the £300+ they're probably asking...
(Sidenote: fix your character encoding slashdot!)
The speed of sound in wood is approx 0.6-5 km/s making it not only highly anisotropic (due to the grain structure) but also giving it a long wavelength (20-160 cm @ 3 kHz).
Sorry; blame physics.
"Which brings up a point: it is not the wattage that matters, beyond a certain minimum. That 50KW laser will seldom burn anything, because the pulse is so short."
Exactly. This one is continuous 15 kW, not nano-second 50 kW.
Yes you are stupid.
Yeah maybe in the past, but these days it is trivial for the average person to download an MP3 ringtone & transfer it to their phone via USB or bluetooth. You can even share them over bluetooth easily.
I'm surprised this comes as a surprise to people:
http://digg.com/apple/T_Mobile_sets_stage_for_Android_iPhone_showd?t=18888103#c18889920
"you could make expensive calls over IP and pay the telecom, nothing more than the monthly rent."
Bullshit. At least in the UK the monthly line rental usually includes more than enough minutes/texts for most people. The vast majority of their income must come from the base line rental (which isn't cheap!).
They're just used to being able to control everything and don't want to give that up. Hopefully it will change eventually.
Mmmmm readable.
This must only work with translucent objects. The other method works with any object.
I once went to a very small bar in America that had ten TVs! Not only that, but one entire side of the bar (it was one of those long thin ones) was a mirror! Twenty TVs in a room that could fit maybe 40 people...
Pretty insane; I can see why people would want this.
"instead of paying $1.00 for a McDonalds hamburger, I pay $1.20. I don't think that's going to kill me"
A McDonald's hamburger? I think it will!
In my experience no-one rates files or even deletes fake ones from their computers.