As far as I can tell the graphing function is primarily used in schools. The use is to do just what you suggested enter equations and see multiple zeros, exponential growth, changing shapes of parabolas, etc. Obviously exact answers are not what they're after with this, it's about teaching the concept, e.g. when you increase an exponent in an equation what happens to the shape of the answers. In addition some schools use the more advanced geometric drawing functions of the TI-89 or 92 to show what things such as rotations and translations look like. The bottom line is they are another way to reach students and teach concepts, not something all that practical.
I'm on a PBS viewer survey panel and they asked about titles and descriptions for these new shows. I believe that all of the proposed shows were in the newsmagazine format, they weren't even looking at anything else. My guess is these glossy shows are less expensive to produce and gain a wider audience because people tune in to the same show to see a wide variety of topics. With a traditional single topic documentary you get fewer viewers because some people simply won't be interested in that topic. This is not a defense of PBS by any means, I really enjoy traditional documentaries and watch almost no newsmagazine style shows finding them disappointing and lacking any information I didn't already know. I don't know that you'll see a commitment to a series based only on traditional documentaries though, more likely periodic specials or mini-series.
Speaking as someone who grew up with both 3-2-1 Contact and Newton's Apple I concur about resurrecting both of those. There is nothing in the current lineup (PBS or otherwise) of science shows that even approximates the quality found in these. Some of the early Bill Nye (it really was better towards the beginning, trust me) are as close as you come to a pre-teen/teen show like 3-2-1 Contact and he's no longer producing shows. Dragonfly TV doesn't cut it. The Newton's Apple viewer question format was also fantastic and did agreat job of utilizing local subject matter experts from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area including major researchers at the University of Minnesota. There is no question in my mind that such a program was and still is viable, they just took their eye off the ball trying to grow into a multi-host show.
I've actually called my congresspeople and asked about who is in charge of videorecording proceedings because it's not very clear. They had never had such an interesting question and it took several days to get a response (these are people who normally can send a canned response to any question in minutes). I still didn't get a very good answer from them, something about "House and Senate Media Services" but no answer about how it gets out of the building or if truly public domain (no C-SPAN logo) copies are available anywhere.
As a citizen I personally feel the government should make an effort to make all of the internally produced (public domain) media it generates easily available. This means live video feeds of floor proceedings, conference proceedings (not currently public domain), press conferences (the White House and Pentagon too)should all be streamed on free-to-air satellites without any interference from C-SPAN or anyone else. In addition, all the photos from staff photographers (I'm talking specifically about congressional and internal White House photographers here, many other government agencies already do a great job of sharing photos) should be available in full resolution from a web gallery.
I'm paying for all this media to be generated and I think it's important that it is generated and recorded but I want access to it as well.
Maybe Microsoft could buy it and change the name to WinFS. It seems this might be the only way for them to get it out the door. It worked wonders for them with QDOS.
Yes. Stop using RBLs, they're much less useful than in the past. See the article:
...open relay RBLs are no longer the most effective way of preventing spam from entering
your network as spammers have changed tactics in recent years, as have the anti-spam community.
We encourage system owners to remove ORDB checks from their mailer immediately and start investigating alternative methods of spam filtering. We recommend a combination involving greylisting and content-based analysis (such as the dspam project, bmf or Spam Assassin).
We encourage system owners to remove ORDB checks from their mailers
immediately and start investigating alternative methods of spam
filtering. We recommend a combination involving greylisting and
content-based analysis (such as the dspam project, bmf or Spam Assassin).
I agree! I also run my own mailserver for myself and some clients. After trying lots of different ISPs and web hosting companies I have come to the conclusion that most people are completely inept at keeping a mailserver running and keeping spam levels low. Big ISPs are especially bad at it in my experience, I was using them until I got fed up with misconfigured servers that bounced back messages routinely and which seemed to go down all the time.
Yep, I was going to point out that Spam Gourmet has been doing this for years. Granted this is a different slat where the addresses expire in some period of time instead of some number of messages but they are roughly equivalent.
Actually, any graduate student worth much can bang out a pretty good essay in 25 minutes. When you're cranking out four essays a week in addition to attending classes and teaching you get pretty good at writing thoughtful pieces in a limited amount of time. Granted, there are times when you need to spend more time on research or reading prior to the writing, but the writing itself still goes quite quickly. As for an opinion essay such as those used on the SAT, half and hour is more than sufficient. Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go write a grad school paper that's due tonight.
The internet is meant to be searched and information wants to be free, no? Posting on the internet that someone is out of town is a bad idea. Especially if they don't want their house broken into. What, you think criminals don't use the internet?
If you don't "feel like broadcasting it to the world" don't say it online. Better yet, don't say it at all. You are responsible for what you say.
If it makes people think twice about what they say and do in public I don't think it will be an all bad outcome. The internet is a public space. Just because data is only directly available to one group doesn't mean it will stay in that group, someone is bound to be collecting it and selling it in anyone interested.
I agree. It amazes me that even after a lifetime of exposure to computers and the internet today's students (and corporations for that matter) still fail to grasp that once the cat is out of the bag on the internet there's no going back. If people don't think that someone isn't archiving all the data they can get their hands on through Facebook they're completely naieve. Does this mean I don't use Facebook? No. It just means I'm aware that anything I post on the internet is fair game for anyone else to read and do what they want with. See my commentary from a few months ago for additional thoughts on this matter.
I would agree with this, avoiding vendor lock-in is a great reason. Another great reason is that in my experience ISPs are terrible at running reliable mail servers. Several previous ISPs of mine had mail server outages on a regular basis. Since switching to my own server and domain I have had no problems.
I think we're miscommunicating. The cabinets are usually as close to the base of the tower as possible. When I read your original post it sounded like you were implying the tranceivers were up on the tower itself, which I ahve never seen with cell equipment. On buildings I have seen equipment on the ground with antenna cables going up to the antennas, equipment in a penthouse with cables going just through a wall to the antennas or in a cabinet on the roof with antennas nearby.
In any case, as another poster mentioned, a properly installed system should have very little RF leakage except from the antennas themselves which can have quite controlled RF patterns.
I certainly agree with this. The entire point of antenna cables is to move as much of the RF energy as possible, leakage is quite undesirable from a technical standpoint. I think the story is mostly about people looking for something to blame, myself I jsut wanted to point out that many antenna cables do run up the sides of buildings.
This is incorrect information. I have worked on cell sites and the standard installation procedure, at least regionally, is to have transmission and switching equipment in a cabinet on the ground level and run several antennta cables up the tower to the antennas. On buildings sometimes the equipment cabinet is on the roof, shortening the antenna runs but I have seen a lot of building with installations similar to towers where the antenna runs go all the way from ground level to the roof on the exterior of the building.
"Even though the program has received bi-partisan criticism from Congress, it appears that the public values security over privacy."
This is why the framers set up a republic and not a democracy. At the time citizens were uneducated and they could not be trusted to make decisions on their own. The same appears to hold true today. The difference is the leaders aren't much better these days.
I most certainly did read both articles. Really, there's nothing new other than the law has now been passed. The rest is just a rehash. The fact that the Slashdot article summary doesn't point out this was discussed before and the only new information is the law is not in effect makes it a dupe as far as I'm concerned.
As others have mentioned, this belongs in slashback or should clearly be marked as a continuation of an old story. This is a dupe.
Maybe they think if the dupes are spread out by a few months instead of a few weeks we'll forget about them. This story was covered in November. Maybe if the Slashdot search system was improved the editors could find this out themselves.
Yes, believe it or not. You obviously haven't ever read many state statues, I suggest you do, it can be both educational and entertaining. They always start off by defining terms. In this case:
"Open standards" means specifications for the encoding and transfer of computer data that: (1) is free for all to implement and use in perpetuity, with no royalty or fee; (2) has no restrictions on the use of data stored in the format; (3) has no restrictions on the creation of software that stores, transmits, receives, or accesses data codified in such way; (4) has a specification available for all to read, in a human-readable format, written in commonly accepted technical language; (5) is documented, so that anyone can write software that can read and interpret the complete semantics of any data file stored in the data format; (6) if it allows extensions, ensures that all extensions of the data format are themselves documented and have the other characteristics of an open data format; (7) allows any file written in that format to be identified as adhering or not adhering to the format; (8) if it includes any use of encryption, provides that the encryption algorithm is usable on a royalty-free, nondiscriminatory manner in perpetuity, and is documented so that anyone in possession of the appropriate encryption key or keys is able to write software to unencrypt the data.
For those that aren't aware MECC was responsible for those memorable educational games in the late 1980s and early 90s. Most notably Number Munchers and Oregon Trail.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I can tell the graphing function is primarily used in schools. The use is to do just what you suggested enter equations and see multiple zeros, exponential growth, changing shapes of parabolas, etc. Obviously exact answers are not what they're after with this, it's about teaching the concept, e.g. when you increase an exponent in an equation what happens to the shape of the answers. In addition some schools use the more advanced geometric drawing functions of the TI-89 or 92 to show what things such as rotations and translations look like. The bottom line is they are another way to reach students and teach concepts, not something all that practical.
I'm on a PBS viewer survey panel and they asked about titles and descriptions for these new shows. I believe that all of the proposed shows were in the newsmagazine format, they weren't even looking at anything else. My guess is these glossy shows are less expensive to produce and gain a wider audience because people tune in to the same show to see a wide variety of topics. With a traditional single topic documentary you get fewer viewers because some people simply won't be interested in that topic. This is not a defense of PBS by any means, I really enjoy traditional documentaries and watch almost no newsmagazine style shows finding them disappointing and lacking any information I didn't already know. I don't know that you'll see a commitment to a series based only on traditional documentaries though, more likely periodic specials or mini-series.
Speaking as someone who grew up with both 3-2-1 Contact and Newton's Apple I concur about resurrecting both of those. There is nothing in the current lineup (PBS or otherwise) of science shows that even approximates the quality found in these. Some of the early Bill Nye (it really was better towards the beginning, trust me) are as close as you come to a pre-teen/teen show like 3-2-1 Contact and he's no longer producing shows. Dragonfly TV doesn't cut it. The Newton's Apple viewer question format was also fantastic and did agreat job of utilizing local subject matter experts from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area including major researchers at the University of Minnesota. There is no question in my mind that such a program was and still is viable, they just took their eye off the ball trying to grow into a multi-host show.
I've actually called my congresspeople and asked about who is in charge of videorecording proceedings because it's not very clear. They had never had such an interesting question and it took several days to get a response (these are people who normally can send a canned response to any question in minutes). I still didn't get a very good answer from them, something about "House and Senate Media Services" but no answer about how it gets out of the building or if truly public domain (no C-SPAN logo) copies are available anywhere. As a citizen I personally feel the government should make an effort to make all of the internally produced (public domain) media it generates easily available. This means live video feeds of floor proceedings, conference proceedings (not currently public domain), press conferences (the White House and Pentagon too)should all be streamed on free-to-air satellites without any interference from C-SPAN or anyone else. In addition, all the photos from staff photographers (I'm talking specifically about congressional and internal White House photographers here, many other government agencies already do a great job of sharing photos) should be available in full resolution from a web gallery. I'm paying for all this media to be generated and I think it's important that it is generated and recorded but I want access to it as well.
Maybe Microsoft could buy it and change the name to WinFS. It seems this might be the only way for them to get it out the door. It worked wonders for them with QDOS.
Maybe this will clarify what they do.
I agree! I also run my own mailserver for myself and some clients. After trying lots of different ISPs and web hosting companies I have come to the conclusion that most people are completely inept at keeping a mailserver running and keeping spam levels low. Big ISPs are especially bad at it in my experience, I was using them until I got fed up with misconfigured servers that bounced back messages routinely and which seemed to go down all the time.
Yep, I was going to point out that Spam Gourmet has been doing this for years. Granted this is a different slat where the addresses expire in some period of time instead of some number of messages but they are roughly equivalent.
Or you could use IAX which has many of the benefits of SIP without the NAT headaches...
Actually, any graduate student worth much can bang out a pretty good essay in 25 minutes. When you're cranking out four essays a week in addition to attending classes and teaching you get pretty good at writing thoughtful pieces in a limited amount of time. Granted, there are times when you need to spend more time on research or reading prior to the writing, but the writing itself still goes quite quickly. As for an opinion essay such as those used on the SAT, half and hour is more than sufficient. Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go write a grad school paper that's due tonight.
The internet is meant to be searched and information wants to be free, no? Posting on the internet that someone is out of town is a bad idea. Especially if they don't want their house broken into. What, you think criminals don't use the internet? If you don't "feel like broadcasting it to the world" don't say it online. Better yet, don't say it at all. You are responsible for what you say.
If it makes people think twice about what they say and do in public I don't think it will be an all bad outcome. The internet is a public space. Just because data is only directly available to one group doesn't mean it will stay in that group, someone is bound to be collecting it and selling it in anyone interested.
I agree. It amazes me that even after a lifetime of exposure to computers and the internet today's students (and corporations for that matter) still fail to grasp that once the cat is out of the bag on the internet there's no going back. If people don't think that someone isn't archiving all the data they can get their hands on through Facebook they're completely naieve. Does this mean I don't use Facebook? No. It just means I'm aware that anything I post on the internet is fair game for anyone else to read and do what they want with. See my commentary from a few months ago for additional thoughts on this matter.
He made this change after switching from the GPL to the CDDL which is a bit suspicious as far as I'm concerned.
I would agree with this, avoiding vendor lock-in is a great reason. Another great reason is that in my experience ISPs are terrible at running reliable mail servers. Several previous ISPs of mine had mail server outages on a regular basis. Since switching to my own server and domain I have had no problems.
I think we're miscommunicating. The cabinets are usually as close to the base of the tower as possible. When I read your original post it sounded like you were implying the tranceivers were up on the tower itself, which I ahve never seen with cell equipment. On buildings I have seen equipment on the ground with antenna cables going up to the antennas, equipment in a penthouse with cables going just through a wall to the antennas or in a cabinet on the roof with antennas nearby. In any case, as another poster mentioned, a properly installed system should have very little RF leakage except from the antennas themselves which can have quite controlled RF patterns.
I certainly agree with this. The entire point of antenna cables is to move as much of the RF energy as possible, leakage is quite undesirable from a technical standpoint. I think the story is mostly about people looking for something to blame, myself I jsut wanted to point out that many antenna cables do run up the sides of buildings.
This is incorrect information. I have worked on cell sites and the standard installation procedure, at least regionally, is to have transmission and switching equipment in a cabinet on the ground level and run several antennta cables up the tower to the antennas. On buildings sometimes the equipment cabinet is on the roof, shortening the antenna runs but I have seen a lot of building with installations similar to towers where the antenna runs go all the way from ground level to the roof on the exterior of the building.
I most certainly did read both articles. Really, there's nothing new other than the law has now been passed. The rest is just a rehash. The fact that the Slashdot article summary doesn't point out this was discussed before and the only new information is the law is not in effect makes it a dupe as far as I'm concerned. As others have mentioned, this belongs in slashback or should clearly be marked as a continuation of an old story. This is a dupe.
Maybe they think if the dupes are spread out by a few months instead of a few weeks we'll forget about them. This story was covered in November. Maybe if the Slashdot search system was improved the editors could find this out themselves.
Yes, believe it or not. You obviously haven't ever read many state statues, I suggest you do, it can be both educational and entertaining. They always start off by defining terms. In this case:
"Open standards" means specifications for the encoding and transfer of computer data that:
(1) is free for all to implement and use in perpetuity, with no royalty or fee;
(2) has no restrictions on the use of data stored in the format;
(3) has no restrictions on the creation of software that stores, transmits, receives, or accesses data codified in such way;
(4) has a specification available for all to read, in a human-readable format, written in commonly accepted technical language;
(5) is documented, so that anyone can write software that can read and interpret the complete semantics of any data file stored in the data format;
(6) if it allows extensions, ensures that all extensions of the data format are themselves documented and have the other characteristics of an open data format;
(7) allows any file written in that format to be identified as adhering or not adhering to the format;
(8) if it includes any use of encryption, provides that the encryption algorithm is usable on a royalty-free, nondiscriminatory manner in perpetuity, and is documented so that anyone in possession of the appropriate encryption key or keys is able to write software to unencrypt the data.
For those that aren't aware MECC was responsible for those memorable educational games in the late 1980s and early 90s. Most notably Number Munchers and Oregon Trail.