Obviously this principal does not read slashdot. Computers have been available for 20 years and so far not one study has proven that they increase learning compared to the same amount of time with a teacher and books.
And this is especially bad for young children like kindergarteners because they need to be asking questions and getting answers, not sat in front of a computer and told LEARN.
If this was my kid's principal I would be trying to get her fired.
I got mod points twice this week. Think it has to do with your comments being rated up. Whenever my comments hit +5 the mod points come within a few days. That makes sense, those that others think are writing good comments are probably the best people to pick as moderators, then they go out and rate up comments which make those people moderators, etc.
Given that this test was done at a tech convention in India, I personally suspect that most of the 36.7% of humans who flunked the test work in call centers. I've certainly had a few on the line that were indistinguishable from a chatbot running on a Speak & Spell, and were certainly quite as useless as a very useless thing indeed.
I agree. ALL aircraft have on-board inertial navigation systems as well. And when all else fails, a map and a compass works just fine too. I smell BS.
Agreed, plus this seems like a pretty dumb thing to do if they were ever planning a war, to show us all their new toys since now we know what they're capable of and can figure out a strategy. It's like they're showing us their cards, wouldn't a powerful GPS jammer be something they'd want to keep hidden? Pull out the GPS jammer when the GPS-guided tomahawk missiles are on their way, not when a reconnaissance plane is doing a annual drill.
I think it went like this:
Pilot: Command we're experiencing problems with GPS, some sort of interference
Command: Can you identify the source?
Pilot: Seems to be originating from NK
Command: Is it effecting your ability to fly?
Pilot: Negative
Command: Continue operations as scheduled and chart locations of interference so we can pinpoint jammer locations.
Pilot: Roger
Command: (We were only doing a yearly drill but NK gave us the exact location of their GPS jammers! NK you are very stupid)
South Korea (and its allies, like the US and Japan) and North Korea are technically still at war with each other and people do occasionally get killed.
A few hundred? That seems significant to me, and you have to remember those are the few hundred that managed to find that forum post, imagine how many people this might have happened to that blamed their kids/husband/wife/etc or didn't even notice or didn't even find the forum?
Apples says that there are 200,000,000 registered iTunes accounts (with credit card information). A few hundred seems insignificant to me as a percentage.
I have sympathy for the people who are having the problem with their accounts, but even a few thousand or tens of thousands would be insignificant.
How many before it becomes "significant"? 1%? So that's 2 million people out of 200 million, 2 million people being scammed out of ~$50 each, which is $100 milllion dollars.... wow, but hey the other 99% are fine, right? Maybe 0.1%, reducing it only to 200,000, making it *only* a $10 million dollar scam, but the other 99.9% is fine, 0.1% really is insignificant.... right?
A few hundred? That seems significant to me, and you have to remember those are the few hundred that managed to find that forum post, imagine how many people this might have happened to that blamed their kids/husband/wife/etc or didn't even notice or didn't even find the forum?
If you read the article every user had their info changed to the same address, Towson, MD 21286-7840. Obviously this is the work of the same group of hackers since they're changing info to the same address, and they're smart enough not to use credit cards, only iTunes gift cards, since credit cards would definitely get the police involved.
Not only does it not harm the economy, it helps us all save money because we're paying for less energy, and we're paying less per unit of energy because demand is lower.
Maybe in California, but some parts of the country have seen almostyearlyrate increases, so cutting your energy usage by 30% doesn't help much when they raise rates 30%.
Righthaven says it might have to file for bankruptcy "Despite its backing by the billionaire Warren Stephens family, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC warned today it may have to file for bankruptcy because of a series of setbacks in its litigation campaign.
The warning came in an emergency request by Righthaven to a federal judge in Las Vegas that he stay his order that Righthaven pay $34,045 in legal fees to attorneys who successfully defended Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn against a Righthaven lawsuit."
No, they invented a device that's very much like the Wii-mote, a year and a half before the Wii came out. Try clicking on the link to the patent in TFS for a nice picture.
Also the summary is horribly vague: "SUMMARY
An item of electronic equipment is described that includes a machine and executable program code. The executable program code is stored on a non volatile memory. The executable program code is to be executed by the machine. The executable program code is to perform a method. The method is in relation to a location on a display, or proximate to the display, that is pointed to by a handheld device. The method includes executing at least one of the following methods:
(i) displaying a cursor on said display at said location, said location on said display;
(ii) highlighting a menu option on said display at said location, said location on said display;
(iii) triggering action taken by said electronic equipment in response to said handheld device's sending of a signal to indicate said action is desired."
OTOH, a low-power CPU (i3 2100T with the included 600 RPM fan, a PSU with a quiet FAN and an 80+ gold rating, and probably no graphics card, will make no audible noise, less than the hard disk. silentpcreview.com has lists and reviews of components.
Dolphin is a Wii emulator, so it may need a real graphics card, especially if he's considering 1080p (wii doesn't do 1080p but the emulator does).
Of course in that same review they threw in a $70 Radeon HD 5570 which many times offered 2-3x the framerates of the fanless 5450, but the 5570 has a fan and noise is the primary concern to the poster, not price or framerates.
That is correct:"The America Invents Act switches the U.S. patent system from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file nation.
You can invent and use and sell something all you want, but if you did not file a patent on it then someone else can file a patent and sue you for selling your own invention. Prior art no longer exists unless there was a patent for that prior art.
I'd like to see the old "first to show the damned thing working" system come back. Ideas are one thing, but there's nothing like a working sample. No ambiguity if you can/can't show it, no pie-in-the-sky "inventions" that lay in wait in patent trolls' filing cabinets.
The people who have no resources to actually create their idea may be subject to someone else capitalizing on it, but I can see a robust VC or incubator lab market growing out of the need to show the device in action. Contracts would be between the idea person and the VC or lab and won't dirty up the patent system.
That's great, but right now they changed the system to first-to-patent. Anyone else think this is a nightmare for inventors and the patent office? Now you could invent something, be using it and selling it for 10 years, and then Big Corporation file a $10,000+ patent and steal your invention and sue YOU for selling YOUR invention!
This is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Inventing the Next Big Thing was the last avenue the middle-class inventor had, now we don't even have that.
And this is a nightmare for the patent office too because now everyone that hadn't received a patent will be filing ASAP. This law will significantly increase the number of patents they receive since you can no longer prove "I've been using this for XX years!" and keep your patent, now it only counts if you paid $$$$$ to file.
But it will increase the filing process since they don't have to do any work, they don't have to figure out "Gee, does the wheel already exist? I swear this round thing looks familiar..." they can just do a quick search of their database and go "Nope don't find it here's your patent".
Again the US congress has failed to listen to the American people and instead did what Big Corporation told them to do.
Don't these aircraft have something more advanced than an iphone app
that was my first thought. 2011 and we can't find planes when they crash unless someone onboard has an iPhone? Plane worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and we have to use a $250 iPhone to find it, doesn't that seem wrong?
The lawsuit was for laptops that broke because of heat damage. I have one of the busted laptops in my house. The thing powers on for 10 minutes before overheating and losing video.
You already DONT have a working laptop in that case, and given that most laptops crap out after 3 years ANYWAYS, getting a completely free replacement outside of the warranty period is a great deal.
Yes, the real winners are the lawyers, but what do you really expect with a class action suit? nVidia still had to pay for a large number of laptops, THEY certainly werent the winners no matter how you look at it.
Car analogy time: You own a new Porsche 911. One year later the engine craps out. You join a class action lawsuit because it's happening to a lot of people. After waiting two more years judge decides to give everyone brand new Chevy Aveos (fair comparison, since they are giving them $250 laptops). Sure, Porsche's paying, so they didn't "win", but you still got screwed out of 10+ yrs of driving a beautiful Porsche, instead you're stuck with a cheap compact car.
You would have been better off suing on your own, at least you could get the value of the car minus depreciation or a comparable car (Boxster, perhaps?), and trust me most of those laptops that broke had much faster processors than that $250 laptop since remember, this was a high-end GPU that broke, they don't pair good GPUs with slow CPUs.
$250 is still too much for a 7" tablet, especially one which should be subsidized by a service but I expect they'll sell a lot anyway. What I want to know is how long it will take before someone mods them to run vanilla Android.
Agreed. That's not much larger than a iPod Touch, and this thing is so locked down that it's really just a portable Amazon.com viewer rather than a tablet I can surf, check email and install apps on.
Who spends six figures on artwork with no proof? "I painted this while I was asleep!" yeah right sure buddy. I'd want videos and doctors testimony and test results before trusting this guy and shelling out 100gs for sleep artwork. Where is the evidence? And don't tell me he can't afford it because he's making money, he could afford a nice website and videos and plenty of medical tests with $100,000. Even if he doesn't care if i was him I'd still want to know wtf was going on, one morning he might wake up in a pool of blood and have no clue what happened. Anyone that has been so drunk that they've lost time will tell you it's not fun to have people tell you that you did all these crazy things and not remember any of it.
like the saying goes if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.
Why no wifi option? Running cords is very 1990s, why does my phone have wifi but the Raspberry Pi PC doesn't? Yes I know I can buy a usb wifi dongle but they really need a version with wifi built-in.
Also the version with no ethernet port is worthless. It's 2011, any computer without network access is worthless.
I read the FAQ and I understand their reasoning for not including wifi ("we’re trying to build the cheapest possible computer that provides a certain basic level of functionality") but you're really hurting the people you're trying to help by forcing them to pay more for a wifi dongle elsewhere or do without and be cut-off from the world and why would you want to cut-off the people you're trying to help from the rest the of world?
Seems like the price is really $40+ because the $25 version is worthless and you have to buy a wifi usb dongle to get going which pushes the $35 version above $40.
I'd like one just for the low power usage of only 1w and being only $25 it makes sense to replace other devices, just need a usb wifi dongle and external hard drive. If there was a way to add a little more RAM it could be really useful and replace a lot of PCs which would save a lot of power but 256mb just doesn't go very far now days.
Here's to hoping for a ~$40 version with wifi and 1gb RAM or maybe someone else will see this project and decide to do it the right way.
"During the talk Eben explains that the $25 price point was decided upon because it is the cost of a textbook so it made sense. Students buy textbooks, so a PC priced the same is a natural fit and hopefully an easy purchase for them, their parents, or their school." [emphasis added]
Note you do have to mail in your old laptop to receive one of these and there are no other laptops to choose from, you either get a $250 laptop or if you had a tablet you receive a $450 Asus Eee PC.
This isn't 'The Chinese' (as in the Government) its some Chinese guys at a university in Beijing with a crazy idea they posted on Arxiv. Arxiv is not the place that the Chinese government will be posting their world domination plans.
+5, Insightful.
None of the linked to articles said "the chinese", every source was some professor at a chinese university. What if the Chinese had some article saying "US legalizing pot" because a law professor at some university said he was sure pot would be legalized next election? That's what this article is like.
No, "the chinese" do not want to capture an asteroid.
Slashdot Mirror
be another case where spending more money does not produce a better educational outcome.
computers do not increase test scores.
Obviously this principal does not read slashdot. Computers have been available for 20 years and so far not one study has proven that they increase learning compared to the same amount of time with a teacher and books.
And this is especially bad for young children like kindergarteners because they need to be asking questions and getting answers, not sat in front of a computer and told LEARN.
If this was my kid's principal I would be trying to get her fired.
I got mod points twice this week. Think it has to do with your comments being rated up. Whenever my comments hit +5 the mod points come within a few days. That makes sense, those that others think are writing good comments are probably the best people to pick as moderators, then they go out and rate up comments which make those people moderators, etc.
Given that this test was done at a tech convention in India, I personally suspect that most of the 36.7% of humans who flunked the test work in call centers. I've certainly had a few on the line that were indistinguishable from a chatbot running on a Speak & Spell, and were certainly quite as useless as a very useless thing indeed.
Oh come on that's +5, Funny!
I agree. ALL aircraft have on-board inertial navigation systems as well. And when all else fails, a map and a compass works just fine too. I smell BS.
Agreed, plus this seems like a pretty dumb thing to do if they were ever planning a war, to show us all their new toys since now we know what they're capable of and can figure out a strategy. It's like they're showing us their cards, wouldn't a powerful GPS jammer be something they'd want to keep hidden? Pull out the GPS jammer when the GPS-guided tomahawk missiles are on their way, not when a reconnaissance plane is doing a annual drill.
I think it went like this:
Pilot: Command we're experiencing problems with GPS, some sort of interference
Command: Can you identify the source?
Pilot: Seems to be originating from NK
Command: Is it effecting your ability to fly?
Pilot: Negative
Command: Continue operations as scheduled and chart locations of interference so we can pinpoint jammer locations.
Pilot: Roger
Command: (We were only doing a yearly drill but NK gave us the exact location of their GPS jammers! NK you are very stupid)
South Korea (and its allies, like the US and Japan) and North Korea are technically still at war with each other and people do occasionally get killed.
Occasionally? 48 people were killed in 2010 alone, but I guess for a war 48 people in a year isn't "bad"
How is this a slippery slope?
It's a slippery slope because I can use it to find out my wife is still at the mall and I can slippery slope my way to my favorite websites.
I, for one, welcome our new wife monitoring systems.
A few hundred? That seems significant to me, and you have to remember those are the few hundred that managed to find that forum post, imagine how many people this might have happened to that blamed their kids/husband/wife/etc or didn't even notice or didn't even find the forum?
Apples says that there are 200,000,000 registered iTunes accounts (with credit card information). A few hundred seems insignificant to me as a percentage.
I have sympathy for the people who are having the problem with their accounts, but even a few thousand or tens of thousands would be insignificant.
How many before it becomes "significant"? 1%? So that's 2 million people out of 200 million, 2 million people being scammed out of ~$50 each, which is $100 milllion dollars.... wow, but hey the other 99% are fine, right? Maybe 0.1%, reducing it only to 200,000, making it *only* a $10 million dollar scam, but the other 99.9% is fine, 0.1% really is insignificant.... right?
A few hundred? That seems significant to me, and you have to remember those are the few hundred that managed to find that forum post, imagine how many people this might have happened to that blamed their kids/husband/wife/etc or didn't even notice or didn't even find the forum?
If you read the article every user had their info changed to the same address, Towson, MD 21286-7840. Obviously this is the work of the same group of hackers since they're changing info to the same address, and they're smart enough not to use credit cards, only iTunes gift cards, since credit cards would definitely get the police involved.
Apple should do more than just issue refunds, by ignoring this it only encourages them to become more bold, and they might want to ask app seller Hongbin Suo why his name keeps showing up in the unauthorized purchases
Not only does it not harm the economy, it helps us all save money because we're paying for less energy, and we're paying less per unit of energy because demand is lower.
Maybe in California, but some parts of the country have seen almost yearly rate increases, so cutting your energy usage by 30% doesn't help much when they raise rates 30%.
Righthaven says it might have to file for bankruptcy
"Despite its backing by the billionaire Warren Stephens family, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC warned today it may have to file for bankruptcy because of a series of setbacks in its litigation campaign.
The warning came in an emergency request by Righthaven to a federal judge in Las Vegas that he stay his order that Righthaven pay $34,045 in legal fees to attorneys who successfully defended Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn against a Righthaven lawsuit."
No, they invented a device that's very much like the Wii-mote, a year and a half before the Wii came out. Try clicking on the link to the patent in TFS for a nice picture.
They filed July 2005. Wii came out November 2006. Yes, almost a year and a half, but many people knew the next console would use IR to determine screen position. Also light guns have been using IR to determine screen position for many years.
Also the summary is horribly vague:
"SUMMARY
An item of electronic equipment is described that includes a machine and executable program code. The executable program code is stored on a non volatile memory. The executable program code is to be executed by the machine. The executable program code is to perform a method. The method is in relation to a location on a display, or proximate to the display, that is pointed to by a handheld device. The method includes executing at least one of the following methods:
(i) displaying a cursor on said display at said location, said location on said display;
(ii) highlighting a menu option on said display at said location, said location on said display;
(iii) triggering action taken by said electronic equipment in response to said handheld device's sending of a signal to indicate said action is desired."
OTOH, a low-power CPU (i3 2100T with the included 600 RPM fan, a PSU with a quiet FAN and an 80+ gold rating, and probably no graphics card, will make no audible noise, less than the hard disk. silentpcreview.com has lists and reviews of components.
Dolphin is a Wii emulator, so it may need a real graphics card, especially if he's considering 1080p (wii doesn't do 1080p but the emulator does).
I'd recommend the $40 fanless Radeon HD 5450. As you can see from this review the 5450 provided double the framerates compared to a i3 2100 without a video card, in many cases going from unplayable 20-something fps to very playable 50+ fps.
Of course in that same review they threw in a $70 Radeon HD 5570 which many times offered 2-3x the framerates of the fanless 5450, but the 5570 has a fan and noise is the primary concern to the poster, not price or framerates.
So this means the concept of prior art is moot?
That is correct: "The America Invents Act switches the U.S. patent system from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file nation.
You can invent and use and sell something all you want, but if you did not file a patent on it then someone else can file a patent and sue you for selling your own invention. Prior art no longer exists unless there was a patent for that prior art.
I'd like to see the old "first to show the damned thing working" system come back. Ideas are one thing, but there's nothing like a working sample. No ambiguity if you can/can't show it, no pie-in-the-sky "inventions" that lay in wait in patent trolls' filing cabinets.
The people who have no resources to actually create their idea may be subject to someone else capitalizing on it, but I can see a robust VC or incubator lab market growing out of the need to show the device in action. Contracts would be between the idea person and the VC or lab and won't dirty up the patent system.
That's great, but right now they changed the system to first-to-patent. Anyone else think this is a nightmare for inventors and the patent office? Now you could invent something, be using it and selling it for 10 years, and then Big Corporation file a $10,000+ patent and steal your invention and sue YOU for selling YOUR invention!
This is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Inventing the Next Big Thing was the last avenue the middle-class inventor had, now we don't even have that.
And this is a nightmare for the patent office too because now everyone that hadn't received a patent will be filing ASAP. This law will significantly increase the number of patents they receive since you can no longer prove "I've been using this for XX years!" and keep your patent, now it only counts if you paid $$$$$ to file.
But it will increase the filing process since they don't have to do any work, they don't have to figure out "Gee, does the wheel already exist? I swear this round thing looks familiar..." they can just do a quick search of their database and go "Nope don't find it here's your patent".
Again the US congress has failed to listen to the American people and instead did what Big Corporation told them to do.
I'm getting tired of some technology.... :|
Get Out!
Don't these aircraft have something more advanced than an iphone app
that was my first thought. 2011 and we can't find planes when they crash unless someone onboard has an iPhone? Plane worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and we have to use a $250 iPhone to find it, doesn't that seem wrong?
The lawsuit was for laptops that broke because of heat damage. I have one of the busted laptops in my house. The thing powers on for 10 minutes before overheating and losing video.
You already DONT have a working laptop in that case, and given that most laptops crap out after 3 years ANYWAYS, getting a completely free replacement outside of the warranty period is a great deal.
Yes, the real winners are the lawyers, but what do you really expect with a class action suit? nVidia still had to pay for a large number of laptops, THEY certainly werent the winners no matter how you look at it.
Car analogy time: You own a new Porsche 911. One year later the engine craps out. You join a class action lawsuit because it's happening to a lot of people. After waiting two more years judge decides to give everyone brand new Chevy Aveos (fair comparison, since they are giving them $250 laptops). Sure, Porsche's paying, so they didn't "win", but you still got screwed out of 10+ yrs of driving a beautiful Porsche, instead you're stuck with a cheap compact car.
You would have been better off suing on your own, at least you could get the value of the car minus depreciation or a comparable car (Boxster, perhaps?), and trust me most of those laptops that broke had much faster processors than that $250 laptop since remember, this was a high-end GPU that broke, they don't pair good GPUs with slow CPUs.
$250 is still too much for a 7" tablet, especially one which should be subsidized by a service but I expect they'll sell a lot anyway. What I want to know is how long it will take before someone mods them to run vanilla Android.
Agreed. That's not much larger than a iPod Touch, and this thing is so locked down that it's really just a portable Amazon.com viewer rather than a tablet I can surf, check email and install apps on.
My optical drive broke down about 3 years ago. I've never had to replace it. So I agree, for some, it might not be needed at all.
Then you're not a gamer. Not every game is available on Steam.
Who spends six figures on artwork with no proof? "I painted this while I was asleep!" yeah right sure buddy. I'd want videos and doctors testimony and test results before trusting this guy and shelling out 100gs for sleep artwork. Where is the evidence? And don't tell me he can't afford it because he's making money, he could afford a nice website and videos and plenty of medical tests with $100,000. Even if he doesn't care if i was him I'd still want to know wtf was going on, one morning he might wake up in a pool of blood and have no clue what happened. Anyone that has been so drunk that they've lost time will tell you it's not fun to have people tell you that you did all these crazy things and not remember any of it.
like the saying goes if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.
Why no wifi option? Running cords is very 1990s, why does my phone have wifi but the Raspberry Pi PC doesn't? Yes I know I can buy a usb wifi dongle but they really need a version with wifi built-in.
Also the version with no ethernet port is worthless. It's 2011, any computer without network access is worthless.
I read the FAQ and I understand their reasoning for not including wifi ("we’re trying to build the cheapest possible computer that provides a certain basic level of functionality") but you're really hurting the people you're trying to help by forcing them to pay more for a wifi dongle elsewhere or do without and be cut-off from the world and why would you want to cut-off the people you're trying to help from the rest the of world?
Seems like the price is really $40+ because the $25 version is worthless and you have to buy a wifi usb dongle to get going which pushes the $35 version above $40.
I'd like one just for the low power usage of only 1w and being only $25 it makes sense to replace other devices, just need a usb wifi dongle and external hard drive. If there was a way to add a little more RAM it could be really useful and replace a lot of PCs which would save a lot of power but 256mb just doesn't go very far now days.
Here's to hoping for a ~$40 version with wifi and 1gb RAM or maybe someone else will see this project and decide to do it the right way.
"During the talk Eben explains that the $25 price point was decided upon because it is the cost of a textbook so it made sense. Students buy textbooks, so a PC priced the same is a natural fit and hopefully an easy purchase for them, their parents, or their school." [emphasis added]
What textbooks are only $25?
Sorry they actually changed the settlement to a $250 Compaq Presario CQ56-115DX with a single core 2.3ghz AMD V140.
If you're replacing a $1300 HP TX1000 Tablet with AMD 64X2 2.0GHz you may choose a $450 ASUS Eee PC Tablet with Atom N570 and 1gb ram.
Note you do have to mail in your old laptop to receive one of these and there are no other laptops to choose from, you either get a $250 laptop or if you had a tablet you receive a $450 Asus Eee PC.
Nvidia won, customers lost. I hate Nvidia
You mean the Corporate states of america where nVida just got the crap kicked out of them in a class action lawsuit about a year ago? To the tune of having to give all affected brand new laptops?
You mean laptops worth $1,000 less than the laptops they were replacing?
"Milberg LLP, negotiated that they could only receive an entry-level Compaq CQ50, often worth over a thousand dollars less than the computer they would be replacing. "
If I total your Porsche and have to buy you a Kia I don't think I "got the crap kick out" of me, in fact I'd say I won.
This isn't 'The Chinese' (as in the Government) its some Chinese guys at a university in Beijing with a crazy idea they posted on Arxiv. Arxiv is not the place that the Chinese government will be posting their world domination plans.
+5, Insightful.
None of the linked to articles said "the chinese", every source was some professor at a chinese university. What if the Chinese had some article saying "US legalizing pot" because a law professor at some university said he was sure pot would be legalized next election? That's what this article is like.
No, "the chinese" do not want to capture an asteroid.