There are whole classes of weapons that have never been used for ethical(and realist) reasons, from hydrogen bombs to uranium in the water supply, but chief among them are the biologicals. Never has a modern biological weapon, such as smallpox, been used against a military or civilian target. Not by a nation, not by a terrorist group, not by an insane but brilliant individual. There are arguments that this is purely out of realist principles, the case being made that once a widespreading biological weapon is employed(and Anthrax, with it's limited infectious capacity, doens't quite count), there's no effective way of preventing your own forces from being infected. But liberal norms apply as well: a basic sanctity of innocents and revilement of weapons without discrimination of their victims has kept biologicals out of warfare in the past, and hopefully will continue to do so.
Sooo.... Lobbing a disease ridden corpse over a castle wall with a catapult is NOT biological warfare? Biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, all have been employed throughout history in various forms. Just because we haven't dropped any out of an airplane doesn't mean people don't use them.
Have you ever read 'The Time Machine',by H.G. Wells? In this 19th century short story, a scientist travels to the future, and finds that the human species have split into two species: one evolved from the upper class, the other from the working class. For a long time, this view seemed like an overly pessimistic extrapolation of the situation during the industrial revolution, but if the rich get the means to engineer their children, this might well happen. On the other hand, how can you refuse parents the right to prevent passing on myopia, asthma and other hereditary ailments to their offspring, if the technology is there?
Aaahhhh, here's an interesting point for you though, do you know which race was which? As I recall the ones who lolled about in paradise, as dumb as dirt and frightened out of their minds of the 'other' race were the 'superior' race. While the true rulers were the 'workers' who lived under ground. The 'superior' folk were just parasites, and not even inconvenient parasites, they were just there. If we get much farther along I'm joining the working class, they tend to have the common sense.
My question is simple: why not allow the customer to choose from a list of colors.. a LONG list. Not everybody that doesn't want beige wants some prissy pastel color.
I want BLACK. Charcoal gray. Matte finish dark blue. What about my needs?
Beige is easy to paint over, I go for beige + spray paint/model paint. I just wish the cases were cooler looking, I'm getting tired of just Square. Someone throw in some nice curves or something.
A=Other ants can carry 10-20 times their own body weigth. B=Leaf cutting ants can only carry 12-14 times their own weight.
C= There is no known species of ant which can carry more than 50 times its body weight. I would mark you redundant...but redundancy is within your own statements. By statements A and B, we already know that C is true....so you didn't need to include it.
Sorry...i just felt like picking at your little niggles.
Heh, I pasted those 2 directly from a web page, I didn't even notice that they said exactly the same thing, thanks for the boot to the head.>:)
There are already several free voice comm add ons for Quake2, I imagine they will come out for Quake3 almost immediately after the release. One can be found here: www.frag.com/qvoice
There are others out as well, but I can't find all of the URLs right now.
Kintanon
MY bad guys, the link is gone now... I can't find another place that has QVoice... I know there are add ons for voice comm out there, I just can't find them again.Sorry.
Wrong book, 1984 had the 2 way TVs where the excersise people bitched you out for not touching your toes.
Fahrenheit 451 had the Wall Screens, in fact Monetgue had 3 walls of one room done and his wife would sit stoned out in the room talking to the TV people...
There are already several free voice comm add ons for Quake2, I imagine they will come out for Quake3 almost immediately after the release. One can be found here: www.frag.com/qvoice
There are others out as well, but I can't find all of the URLs right now.
John, what are your thoughts and feelings were about Bungie Software's new game Halo? The demos I saw on: Apple's site looked incredible and supposedly were realtime vidcaps of the actual game.
Those WERE actual game shots. 2 of my friends (The people behind www.dailyimac.com) were at the demo showing and got to see it on the huge screen as the people were playing it. They said it was AMAZING. According to them they were running on G3 350s and didn't skip at all. I'd say when Halo does come out it will be serious competition for Q3, and when Bungie gets it out for Win32 I'm grabbing a copy to go right beside Q3:A and UT.
As we all know by now JC has chosen to remove the Grappling hook from the default Q3:Arena installation. This move has prompted a lot of flameing and praise from the community.
I'd like to know this, did you play with the Grapple yourself before making your decision or did you take advice/opinions from other people who played with and without it then make a decision based off of that?
Secondly, Do you feel that ID is moving farther away from making the games and more towards making and licensing the engines? Is this the image you've had for the company or is it just a trend that kind of happened? Are you happy with this direction?
Assuming Q3:A isn't the last game you make will the next game be another FPS? Or do you see ID branching into other game types? Are there already plans for another game?
What has your relationship with MODmakers for Q3:A been like? Most of us have already heard about the freeze on MOD making for the tests, which is understandable since it IS a Test. Has this hurt your relationship with some of the more reputable MOD makers?
That's all I can think of right now, I may post again later if I can come up with something else...
Err... That was an opinion column. You're allowed to say what you feel in opinion columns. You don't have to be right, you just have to believe in what you're saying...
I'd suggest you first consider the difference between opinion and journalism, and then have a think about how someone might write an opinion about journalistic practices. Whatever you may think, Cringely is a well respected journalist.
He just happens to commit opinion as well. That's not a sin... Hell, I even stick opinions in my writing when I'm not reporting on something specific.
The fact that he was writing an opinion piece doesn't make his writing style any better. He writes as if he were acid tripping... I don't care if he wants to write a bunch of opinions, but we are allowed to vehemently disagree and criticise those opinions if we please. Also, just because it's an opinion doesn't mean he shouldn't be providing some kind of fact or information to show why he believes what he believes.
I can't answer for Bruce, but I have to ask you: Why are you drawing "a LOT of power"? Why are you asking how well solar cells handle nighttime loads? Seriously, you can cut out an amazing amount of your electric usage by using compact fluorescents everywhere you can and doing something about your refrigerator. (After I re-lamped some years ago my average electric consumption went from about 8 KWH/day to 6, and 4 of that seems to be the fridge. If I was going to be able to take advantage of the investment I would get something like a SunFrost.)
I draw a lot of power because I have 10 computers running 24/7 and 2 people are always awake in the house so other things are in use 24/7 as well.
I was asking about how well the cells + BATTERIES worked to handle heavy nighttime loads. As in, do the batteries collapse after 2 hours, does it take them 2 days to get recharged, etc... We already use compact flourescents, we're getting a low power fridge as well. Now, if you hace anything informative to say I'd be glad to hear it.
It's my sig, I'll put whatever the hell I want in it. So there! Nya nya nya!! I spammed you with my.sig! I forced you to read it! *sticks out his tongue and thumbs his nose at the AC*
However, Slashdot is not a peer review body. I've had scientific papers reviewed, and this is nothing like it...
Where's Dan Farmer? Where's Wietse Venema? Or any other academically published security expert with serious real world expertise. What we have here is a gathering of enthusiasts which may (and I mean, may) just contain a handful of experts. That's not enough...
Cringely is an experienced journalist who knows the value of good, consistent sources. Slashdot, for all its good points, is not consistent. And it most definitely isn't journalism...
I guess if by 'experienced journalist' you mean writes like a drugged up third grader, you're right. Other than that you must be delusional. The man ranted for almost a page in random directions with no cohesive argument about anything. He wasn't even reporting much, just mentioning something then spewing his opinion at it with no backup. He sounds like my grandfather when he was drunk.... The man can barely string togethere a coherent sentence, much less a coherent thought. If that is your idea of journalism then I applaud you for your unthinking acceptance of corporate brainwashing.
Granted, having to grade ~100 essays is not the most pleasant way to spend a weekend. My wife hates doing it, much the same way I hate having to spend the same time working on my code. But she does it because *that's her job*! A teacher that uses some software to grade the essays because they are too busy to do the work themselves is (in my opinion) not a good teacher. Period.
Your wife is very very generous then. Let's take a look at the starting salary of an average teacher, 27000 in maryland, now, they work 6 hours per day, 5 days a week, 10 months a year. 1200 hours total. $22.5 an hour, looks good, right? Now add in the time before and after school that they spend working on lesson plans, giving extra help to students, now we're up to 8 hours a day and down to 16.875 an hour, now go ahead and add in another 5 hours per week for grading papers and other assignments, that's now 9 hours a day, at 15$ an hour, now factor in the 2 months they don't get paid for and you have a teacher doing a WHOLE LOT of very stressful work that takes a lot of time and concentration and getting paid very very little for it. How many teachers are going to be able to deal with that for very long??
If you put a half a second of thought into the policy, you would realize why its in place. You don't let students use a calculator to add when you are teaching them what adding is and how to add. Its stupid, most students, and this is definetely true, will just use the calculator and never actually learn the concepts behind the idea. Sure, after you've mastered teh concept (e.g. at least a month or two of use), then you can use a calculator to simplify the work. Using a calculator to "add" the day you learn to add is stupid. While my example of adding seems simple, some of the kids in my calc class have problems with sin/cos of common angles (pi/6,pi/3,pi/2) etc. They also don't really understand the multiplicative inverses or the arc functions. Thus, when we were doing integration through trig subsitution, these people had quite a difficult time. If they weren't so lazy as to use a calculator throughout their trig class, they wouldn't have tihs problem.
I actually have the reverse problem, I have a difficult time with any math which I can not work out on paper. At my school Trig and Calc were taught as 'Calculator' classes, we were more or less taught how to do it on a calculator. I can't learn that way, I never grasped the concepts because I couldn't write it out and see them working. I managed to pass Trig because the teacher was great and went outside the lesson plan for us, and I almost passed calc due to outside study. I was taking them both the same year, so that didn't help either... But I wish someone had shown me how to work stuff like sin/cos out on paper...
In Texas, the TAAS (standardized tests) have become the sole focus of factory education, and this perfectly mimics the phenonmena described above. The tests are essentially given and graded by machine, and so the teaching has followed suit. We teach K-12 students to answer the questions on the TAAS, and not much else. This over-emphasis on the TAAS creates and reinforces the self-referential goal of automated education endless looping on itself. I think this has lead directly to the situation described in this article.
The holy grail of american education the SAT is done the same way. I made quite a bit of money in high school teaching idiots how to trick the SAT to get 100-200 more points just be knowing how to guess. It didn't make the many smarter or more knowledgable, just better test takers.
I read as much as I could find on this and I still don't understand how the professors program evaluates the papers. I could understand the prog evaluating the technical merits of the paper based on sentence structure, word placement, and basic grammar. But what about content? I only passed my high school lit/english classes because the content of my papers was excellent, the structure was mediocre, and the grammar almost terrible. I'm a competent writer, but I tend to write in a more poetic vein than a technical one. I write as I think and as I speak, not as one should write. This program would probably laugh while reading my essay on the nature of collective reality, even though the idea was sound. Perhaps there is a mechanism involved that I've never heard of? Someone please enlighten me...
A condecending statement, to be sure, but it seems accurate to me. Let's face it, this was an easy way for Jane's to get some quick, free information. As to anyone getting paid for freely submitted opinions, I'll believe that when I see it. I have a great deal of respect for Jane's. I own several of their fine publications. Just thought someone should play devil's advocate here. This seems like yet another "us vs. them" argument.
ok, I was under the impression that everyone here believed in the free (as in unobstructed) spread of ideas, information, and knowledge. Hence shouldn't we APPROVE of Jane's requesting such information from us? You almost sound offended that we are being used as a resource by reputable 'old' media. Everyone who posted under that thred did so of their own free will because they WANTED Jane's to have a better article. No one was tricked into it. For some reason you make it sound as if Quick, Free information for Jane's is bad...?
I have a follow up question for this, I was looking at using a solar solution for my soon to be purchased home, but the startup cost seems to be well out of my range, also I tend to draw a LOT of power (Hence the reason for wanting to stop destroying the atmosphere) so I was wondering how well solar cells and batteries handle high yield nightime loads. Who did your solar setup? How much did it cost? How well does it perform?
The same thing happens on Slashdot. You have a lot of kids brushing up their essay skills by submitting some "thoughtful" prose. I am amazed by the amount of drivel that makes it into this forum. It's the same thing for the newsgroups too, so I guess it's par for the course.
Then please, enlighten us with your masterful and infinite knowledge of all subjects which endows you with the ability to judge the value of EVERY POST EVER WRITTEN BY ANYONE ON ANY SUBJECT ON SLASHDOT. If you find that something is drivel then SAY SO, contradict the incorrect posts, show us the facts, the information, that is why Slashdot exists. If you are allowing the proliferation of misinformation through inaction then you are as bad as those who disseminate the misinformation.
As someone's.sig has repeatedly informed us, 'Shut up or get contructive',esr.
"He decided to use the Nintendo GameBoy as a standard for how much computing power a machine should have (in other words, very, very little)"
So why does their demo require Minimum of 100Mhz.
Hmm, I have a 200mhz, 64meg RAM machine here at work, I'm running Outlook, AIM, IE 5, Winzip, this guys graphicy thing, the resource meter, Mcafee Virus Shield, Getright, and I'm streaming a radio station from england, I still have plenty of processor left over... I dunno why you guys are complaining, this thing takes up almost nothing.
Linux is my O/S, and the O/S I'm pushing to become dominant in homes and businesses.
However, for military hardware (e.g. battleships), I suggest that a microkernel imbedded O/S, such as QNX or VxWorks, would be the proper solution.
The beauty of a microkernel O/S is that it is made up of small modules, each of which can be independently verified to work perfectly.
Now, Linux offers similarly high levels of security, and reliability, through Open Source, and the intense review of thousands of developers. The military, on the other hand, will most certainly want to keep their source to themselves (wisely or not), and will want to do their own reviews.
The other advantage of a microkernel imbedded O/S, for military applications, is that it's better suited to real-time guaranteed-response systems, whereas a more monolithic O/S such as Linux may offer better peak performance, as is generally required by a PC user.
I'm the resident Geek for a manufacturing plant and here if we have down time we lose money out the yang. We use QNX on our ciritical production systems such as packing equipment and mailing systems. It is extremely stable and very easy to work with once you learn it. It's enough like Unix/Linux to make the transition pretty painless. I would definately second this recommendation for military usage, though since that part of our system isn't connected to the 'outside' I can't say anything for its security.
Kintanon
Re:Hmmm... is this a first?
on
The Cat Cam
·
· Score: 2
Have we ever slashdotted a cat before?
Yeah, I hope that wasn't a live feed... We might have slashdotted the cats brain. The scientists are probably wondering why its head is smoking.
Kintanon For the humor impaired, you just missed it.
Slashdot Mirror
There are whole classes of weapons that have never been used for ethical(and realist) reasons, from hydrogen bombs to uranium in the water supply, but chief among them are the biologicals. Never has a modern biological weapon, such as smallpox, been used against a military or civilian target. Not by a nation, not by a terrorist group, not by an insane but brilliant individual. There are arguments that this is purely out of realist principles, the case being made that once a widespreading biological weapon is employed(and Anthrax, with it's limited infectious capacity, doens't quite count), there's no effective way of preventing your own forces from being infected. But liberal norms apply as well: a basic sanctity of innocents and revilement of weapons without discrimination of their victims has kept biologicals out of warfare in the past, and hopefully will continue to do so.
Sooo.... Lobbing a disease ridden corpse over a castle wall with a catapult is NOT biological warfare? Biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, all have been employed throughout history in various forms. Just because we haven't dropped any out of an airplane doesn't mean people don't use them.
Kintanon
Have you ever read 'The Time Machine',by H.G. Wells?
In this 19th century short story, a scientist travels to the future, and finds that the human species have split into two species: one evolved from the upper class, the other from the working class.
For a long time, this view seemed like an overly pessimistic extrapolation of the situation during the industrial revolution, but if the rich get the means to engineer their children, this might well happen.
On the other hand, how can you refuse parents the right to prevent passing on myopia, asthma and other hereditary ailments to their offspring, if the technology is there?
Aaahhhh, here's an interesting point for you though, do you know which race was which?
As I recall the ones who lolled about in paradise, as dumb as dirt and frightened out of their minds of the 'other' race were the 'superior' race. While the true rulers were the 'workers' who lived under ground. The 'superior' folk were just parasites, and not even inconvenient parasites, they were just there. If we get much farther along I'm joining the working class, they tend to have the common sense.
Kintanon
My question is simple: why not allow the customer to choose from a list of colors.. a LONG list. Not everybody that doesn't want beige wants some prissy pastel color.
I want BLACK. Charcoal gray. Matte finish dark blue. What about my needs?
Beige is easy to paint over, I go for beige + spray paint/model paint. I just wish the cases were cooler looking, I'm getting tired of just Square. Someone throw in some nice curves or something.
Kintanon
A=Other ants can carry 10-20 times their own body weigth.
B=Leaf cutting ants can only carry 12-14 times their own weight.
C= There is no known species of ant which can carry more than 50 times its body weight. I would mark you redundant...but redundancy is within your own statements. By statements A and B, we already know that C is true....so you didn't need to include it.
Sorry...i just felt like picking at your little niggles.
Heh, I pasted those 2 directly from a web page, I didn't even notice that they said exactly the same thing, thanks for the boot to the head.>:)
Kintanon
Someone moderate this up, this is the one I was looking for when I found the broken link!!
Most excellent program.
Kintanon
There are already several free voice comm add ons for Quake2, I imagine they will come out for Quake3 almost immediately after the release.
One can be found here: www.frag.com/qvoice
There are others out as well, but I can't find all of the URLs right now.
Kintanon
MY bad guys, the link is gone now... I can't find another place that has QVoice... I know there are add ons for voice comm out there, I just can't find them again.Sorry.
Kintanon
Wrong book, 1984 had the 2 way TVs where the excersise people bitched you out for not touching your toes.
Fahrenheit 451 had the Wall Screens, in fact Monetgue had 3 walls of one room done and his wife would sit stoned out in the room talking to the TV people...
Kintanon
There are already several free voice comm add ons for Quake2, I imagine they will come out for Quake3 almost immediately after the release.
One can be found here: www.frag.com/qvoice
There are others out as well, but I can't find all of the URLs right now.
Kintanon
John, what are your thoughts and feelings were about Bungie Software's new game Halo? The demos I saw on: Apple's site looked incredible and supposedly were realtime vidcaps of the actual game.
Those WERE actual game shots. 2 of my friends (The people behind www.dailyimac.com) were at the demo showing and got to see it on the huge screen as the people were playing it. They said it was AMAZING. According to them they were running on G3 350s and didn't skip at all. I'd say when Halo does come out it will be serious competition for Q3, and when Bungie gets it out for Win32 I'm grabbing a copy to go right beside Q3:A and UT.
Kintanon
As we all know by now JC has chosen to remove the Grappling hook from the default Q3:Arena installation. This move has prompted a lot of flameing and praise from the community.
I'd like to know this, did you play with the Grapple yourself before making your decision or did you take advice/opinions from other people who played with and without it then make a decision based off of that?
Secondly, Do you feel that ID is moving farther away from making the games and more towards making and licensing the engines? Is this the image you've had for the company or is it just a trend that kind of happened? Are you happy with this direction?
Assuming Q3:A isn't the last game you make will the next game be another FPS? Or do you see ID branching into other game types? Are there already plans for another game?
What has your relationship with MODmakers for Q3:A been like? Most of us have already heard about the freeze on MOD making for the tests, which is understandable since it IS a Test. Has this hurt your relationship with some of the more reputable MOD makers?
That's all I can think of right now, I may post again later if I can come up with something else...
Kintanon
Err... That was an opinion column. You're allowed to say what you feel in opinion columns. You don't have to be right, you just have to believe in what you're saying...
I'd suggest you first consider the difference between opinion and journalism, and then have a think about how someone might write an opinion about journalistic practices. Whatever you may think, Cringely is a well respected journalist.
He just happens to commit opinion as well. That's not a sin... Hell, I even stick opinions in my writing when I'm not reporting on something specific.
The fact that he was writing an opinion piece doesn't make his writing style any better. He writes as if he were acid tripping... I don't care if he wants to write a bunch of opinions, but we are allowed to vehemently disagree and criticise those opinions if we please. Also, just because it's an opinion doesn't mean he shouldn't be providing some kind of fact or information to show why he believes what he believes.
Kintanon
I can't answer for Bruce, but I have to ask you:
Why are you drawing "a LOT of power"?
Why are you asking how well solar cells handle nighttime loads?
Seriously, you can cut out an amazing amount of your electric usage by using compact fluorescents everywhere you can and doing something about your refrigerator. (After I re-lamped some years ago my average electric consumption went from about 8 KWH/day to 6, and 4 of that seems to be the fridge. If I was going to be able to take advantage of the investment I would get something like a SunFrost.)
I draw a lot of power because I have 10 computers running 24/7 and 2 people are always awake in the house so other things are in use 24/7 as well.
I was asking about how well the cells + BATTERIES worked to handle heavy nighttime loads. As in, do the batteries collapse after 2 hours, does it take them 2 days to get recharged, etc...
We already use compact flourescents, we're getting a low power fridge as well. Now, if you hace anything informative to say I'd be glad to hear it.
Kintanon
It's my sig, I'll put whatever the hell I want in it. So there! Nya nya nya!! I spammed you with my .sig! I forced you to read it! *sticks out his tongue and thumbs his nose at the AC*
Kintanon
Leaf cutting ants can only carry 12-14 times their own weight.
Other ants can carry 10-20 times their own body weigth.
There is no known species of ant which can carry more than 50 times its body weight.
This page has more info on ants and the various things they can accomplish.
http://home.att.net/~B-P.TRUSCIO/STRANGER.htm
Kintanon
However, Slashdot is not a peer review body. I've had scientific papers reviewed, and this is nothing like it...
Where's Dan Farmer? Where's Wietse Venema? Or any other academically published security expert with serious real world expertise. What we have here is a gathering of enthusiasts which may (and I mean, may) just contain a handful of experts. That's not enough...
Cringely is an experienced journalist who knows the value of good, consistent sources. Slashdot, for all its good points, is not consistent. And it most definitely isn't journalism...
I guess if by 'experienced journalist' you mean writes like a drugged up third grader, you're right. Other than that you must be delusional. The man ranted for almost a page in random directions with no cohesive argument about anything. He wasn't even reporting much, just mentioning something then spewing his opinion at it with no backup. He sounds like my grandfather when he was drunk.... The man can barely string togethere a coherent sentence, much less a coherent thought. If that is your idea of journalism then I applaud you for your unthinking acceptance of corporate brainwashing.
Kintanon
Granted, having to grade ~100 essays is not the most pleasant way to spend a weekend. My wife hates doing it, much the same way I hate having to spend the same time working on my code. But she does it because *that's her job*! A teacher that uses some software to grade the essays because they are too busy to do the work themselves is (in my opinion) not a good teacher. Period.
Your wife is very very generous then. Let's take a look at the starting salary of an average teacher, 27000 in maryland, now, they work 6 hours per day, 5 days a week, 10 months a year. 1200 hours total. $22.5 an hour, looks good, right? Now add in the time before and after school that they spend working on lesson plans, giving extra help to students, now we're up to 8 hours a day and down to 16.875 an hour, now go ahead and add in another 5 hours per week for grading papers and other assignments, that's now 9 hours a day, at 15$ an hour, now factor in the 2 months they don't get paid for and you have a teacher doing a WHOLE LOT of very stressful work that takes a lot of time and concentration and getting paid very very little for it. How many teachers are going to be able to deal with that for very long??
Kintanon
If you put a half a second of thought into the policy, you would realize why its in place. You don't let students use a calculator to add when you are teaching them what adding is and how to add. Its stupid, most students, and this is definetely true, will just use the calculator and never actually learn the concepts behind the idea. Sure, after you've mastered teh concept (e.g. at least a month or two of use), then you can use a calculator to simplify the work. Using a calculator to "add" the day you learn to add is stupid. While my example of adding seems simple, some of the kids in my calc class have problems with sin/cos of common angles (pi/6,pi/3,pi/2) etc. They also don't really understand the multiplicative inverses or the arc functions. Thus, when we were doing integration through trig subsitution, these people had quite a difficult time. If they weren't so lazy as to use a calculator throughout their trig class, they wouldn't have tihs problem.
I actually have the reverse problem, I have a difficult time with any math which I can not work out on paper. At my school Trig and Calc were taught as 'Calculator' classes, we were more or less taught how to do it on a calculator. I can't learn that way, I never grasped the concepts because I couldn't write it out and see them working. I managed to pass Trig because the teacher was great and went outside the lesson plan for us, and I almost passed calc due to outside study. I was taking them both the same year, so that didn't help either... But I wish someone had shown me how to work stuff like sin/cos out on paper...
Kintanon
In Texas, the TAAS (standardized tests) have become the sole focus of factory education, and this perfectly mimics the phenonmena described above. The tests are essentially given and graded by machine, and so the teaching has followed suit. We teach K-12 students to answer the questions on the TAAS, and not much else. This over-emphasis on the TAAS creates and reinforces the self-referential goal of automated education endless looping on itself. I think this has lead directly to the situation described in this article.
The holy grail of american education the SAT is done the same way. I made quite a bit of money in high school teaching idiots how to trick the SAT to get 100-200 more points just be knowing how to guess. It didn't make the many smarter or more knowledgable, just better test takers.
Kintanon
I read as much as I could find on this and I still don't understand how the professors program evaluates the papers. I could understand the prog evaluating the technical merits of the paper based on sentence structure, word placement, and basic grammar. But what about content? I only passed my high school lit/english classes because the content of my papers was excellent, the structure was mediocre, and the grammar almost terrible. I'm a competent writer, but I tend to write in a more poetic vein than a technical one. I write as I think and as I speak, not as one should write. This program would probably laugh while reading my essay on the nature of collective reality, even though the idea was sound. Perhaps there is a mechanism involved that I've never heard of? Someone please enlighten me...
Kintanon
A condecending statement, to be sure, but it seems accurate to me. Let's face it, this was an easy way for Jane's to get some quick, free information. As to anyone getting paid for freely submitted opinions, I'll believe that when I see it. I have a great deal of respect for Jane's. I own several of their fine publications. Just thought someone should play devil's advocate here. This seems like yet another "us vs. them" argument.
ok, I was under the impression that everyone here believed in the free (as in unobstructed) spread of ideas, information, and knowledge. Hence shouldn't we APPROVE of Jane's requesting such information from us? You almost sound offended that we are being used as a resource by reputable 'old' media. Everyone who posted under that thred did so of their own free will because they WANTED Jane's to have a better article. No one was tricked into it. For some reason you make it sound as if Quick, Free information for Jane's is bad...?
Kintanon
I have a follow up question for this, I was looking at using a solar solution for my soon to be purchased home, but the startup cost seems to be well out of my range, also I tend to draw a LOT of power (Hence the reason for wanting to stop destroying the atmosphere) so I was wondering how well solar cells and batteries handle high yield nightime loads. Who did your solar setup? How much did it cost? How well does it perform?
Thanks!
Kintanon
The same thing happens on Slashdot. You have a lot of kids brushing up their essay skills by submitting some "thoughtful" prose. I am amazed by the amount of drivel that makes it into this forum. It's the same thing for the newsgroups too, so I guess it's par for the course.
.sig has repeatedly informed us, 'Shut up or get contructive' ,esr.
Then please, enlighten us with your masterful and infinite knowledge of all subjects which endows you with the ability to judge the value of EVERY POST EVER WRITTEN BY ANYONE ON ANY SUBJECT ON SLASHDOT. If you find that something is drivel then SAY SO, contradict the incorrect posts, show us the facts, the information, that is why Slashdot exists. If you are allowing the proliferation of misinformation through inaction then you are as bad as those who disseminate the misinformation.
As someone's
Kintanon
"He decided to use the Nintendo GameBoy as a standard for how much computing power a machine should have (in other words, very, very little)"
So why does their demo require Minimum of 100Mhz.
Hmm, I have a 200mhz, 64meg RAM machine here at work, I'm running Outlook, AIM, IE 5, Winzip, this guys graphicy thing, the resource meter, Mcafee Virus Shield, Getright, and I'm streaming a radio station from england, I still have plenty of processor left over... I dunno why you guys are complaining, this thing takes up almost nothing.
Kintanon
Linux is my O/S, and the O/S I'm pushing to become dominant in homes and businesses.
However, for military hardware (e.g. battleships), I suggest that a microkernel imbedded O/S, such as QNX or VxWorks, would be the proper solution.
The beauty of a microkernel O/S is that it is made up of small modules, each of which can be independently verified to work perfectly.
Now, Linux offers similarly high levels of security, and reliability, through Open Source, and the intense review of thousands of developers. The military, on the other hand, will most certainly want to keep their source to themselves (wisely or not), and will want to do their own reviews.
The other advantage of a microkernel imbedded O/S, for military applications, is that it's better suited to real-time guaranteed-response systems, whereas a more monolithic O/S such as Linux may offer better peak performance, as is generally required by a PC user.
I'm the resident Geek for a manufacturing plant and here if we have down time we lose money out the yang. We use QNX on our ciritical production systems such as packing equipment and mailing systems. It is extremely stable and very easy to work with once you learn it. It's enough like Unix/Linux to make the transition pretty painless. I would definately second this recommendation for military usage, though since that part of our system isn't connected to the 'outside' I can't say anything for its security.
Kintanon
Have we ever slashdotted a cat before?
Yeah, I hope that wasn't a live feed... We might have slashdotted the cats brain. The scientists are probably wondering why its head is smoking.
Kintanon
For the humor impaired, you just missed it.