The idea of collecting data in classrooms isn't exactly new, though this application of it certainly is. I've been involved in a project where we made videotapes and collected lots of other data in science classes.
About 10 years ago I worked in a research lab at an education grad school. We were using simulation software to study the way that middle-school kids learned physics. The idea was to try to get kids to build a "mental model" of how basic mechanics works by doing lots of simulations (and some real-world experiments too).
To study how this worked, we'd basically videotape everything: the kids interacting with the software and with each other, the teachers interacting with the class, and so on. Then the slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H grad students would transcribe the tapes and see if they could find instances of kids working out models for the physics. There were also tests at the beginning and end of the semester, in both the classes using software and some "control" classes.
I don't think any of the kids or parents objected to the data collection, though I wasn't too involved in that part of the project. There were some privacy guarantees on the release form that the kids' parents had to sign. This was all pretty standard stuff for education researchers who wanted to collect hard data instead of just theorizing.
As an aside, the outcome of the project was a bit unclear, at least to me. The students in the classrooms that had the software definitely learned more physics. However, I always wondered whether that had as much to do with the extra attention they got as with the software. But then, I'm not an education researcher or teacher.
Some Microsoft researchers showed off technologies they hope to include in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. Those included a rebuilt task bar that could sort onscreen files, and a program that acted like a magnifying glass for Web sites. A program called Fabric would allow a user to drag windows to the side of the computer screen, where they would turn into small icons.
There are a number potential problems with a directly
contacting design. First, the electrode must be able to with-
stand immersion in various, corrosive beverages....
> So big business came up with a solution. They just cross-license *everything*.
Excellent point. I worked at IBM until a few years ago, and we cross-licensed with a lot of other companies. Including, I think, Microsoft.
> I'm not sure that, say, RSA encryption would *ever* have been developed without a patent system to provide encouragement
I don't know. I suspect some computer scientist or mathematician would have developed it just for the fun, fame, intellectual challenge, tenure, and/or research grants. Maybe not as quickly, though.
MyEclipseIDE looks like it offers a plugin that supports several app servers
I've been using MyEclipseIDE for the last few weeks, and it's a great plugin. The best feature is the automagic JSP debugging with servers that support JSR-045 like Tomcat 5. I'm eagerly awaiting the new version that is supposed to ship tomorrow, because there are lots of new features like XDoclet support. I think they're adding some EJB tools too, but I'm just doing JSPs, Servlets, Struts, etc, so I haven't looked too closely. I had tried other J2EE plugins before: Lomboz, Sysdeo, etc, but this one is definitely easier to use. The others require you to play all sorts of tricks in order to do JSP debugging.
The MyEclipseIDE folks have an interesting business model. As I understand it, they're sort of "mining" the huge number of open-source plugins out there, taking the good bits, and integrating them into a suite with a clean UI. (And even writing tests and documentation.:-) I'm certainly willing to pay them $30/year for that. I just hope they manage to survive.
What I don't understand is why anyone would spend the time and money to file this patent in the first place. It's totally worthless. First, any sane judge or jury, even in our messed-up system, would probably throw it out as non-obvious. Second, and more importantly, the patent's claims (the only part that really counts) are incredibly limited. Claim 1, which all the others are based on, specifically requires a "a hand-held laser apparatus". If you build a machine to wave the laser around, you're fine. (Yes, some such devices are patented too, but the patents are so specific that it would be easy to design around them.)
Next thing you know, the RIAA is going to sue everyone who's ever bought a CD burner. People might be using them to duplicate music CD's, after all, and that's (gasp!) illegal.
You're right about the claim (#1) you quoted: If someone develops a system that doesn't use user profiles or doesn't transmit the message in translated form, then it won't infringe. But look at claim #13:
13. A system for providing real-time communication over a network between two or more devices to support multiple languages, the system comprising: at least one source device coupled to the network for transmitting a message composed according to a source language; a content translation module having instructions for translating the message into a destination language; and at least one destination device coupled to the network for receiving the message from the content translation module.
This seems to cover any IM system where the translation is done on the server and then re-transmitted to the recipient. It doesn't require that the system have profiles, preferences, etc.
Hopefully this claim will be thrown out as overly broad, but knowing the USPTO it won't be. I know from experience: my name is on a fairly broad patent covering "web-bug" images. Fortunately it's owned by IBM and they're not enforcing it. I got a nice bonus for filing it back in 1996 or so.:-)
This is one thing IBM got right with its Common Public License. When you contribute to a CPL'd project, you're granting a royalty-free license to any/all of your patents required by the contribution, but *only* to recipients using the contribution within the CPL'd project. Someone can't just take the contributed, patented code and use it on its own in some other project.
CPL also points out that there's no way for any contributor to guarantee that they're not unknowingly infringing on some third party's patent. IMHO, this sort of accidental patent infringement is the scariest part of patents and OSS.
The older IBM Public License had some onerous text that made the royalty-free patent license go away if you sued the contributor for infringing another patent, even one totally unrelated to the OSS project. I think this was intended to make "offensive" patent lawsuits unattractive, which was a nice goal. But the result was different -- some companies refused to use IPL'd projects because the license would have prevented them from suing IBM "defensively" if it intentionally infringed on some totally unrelated patent for hardware or whatever. I managed an open-source project at IBM for a while and we had a few potential users with this objection. After I left, the group managed to re-license the project under the X license. I'm glad IBM finally fixed this in the CPL.
what's the daily recommended intake for liquid nitrogen?
I'm nots ure, but a professor I knew at Northwestern sometimes gargled with liquid nitrogen to impress people during "chemistry day" type demos. Supposedly if you keep exhaling and moving the stuff around in your mouth, the air is enough of an insulator to keep from freezing your tongue off.
I had lots of fun working as a programmer in an organic chem lab there. When we needed a break from coding, we'd go invent weird chemistry demos or throw defective glassware against the wall. I don't think I'll ever try the liquid nitrogen gargling, though.
I tend to read a lot of women SF authors, not for any feminist, political reasons but because on average they seem to pay more attention to characters and societies. Here are some of my favorites:
Connie Willis is very good at creating characters you can care about, and she has a delightful, dry sense of humor. The Doomsday Book is one of the best books I've ever read. Passage (a recent Hugo nominee) and To Say Nothing of the Dog were also quite good.
Ursula K. LeGuin has been mentioned by others. The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed each won (and deserved) both the Hugo and Nebula. The former is sort of about gender relations and the latter is about a future utopian (or is it dystopian?) society.
C.J. Cherryh is good at what I call "sociological fiction". Her characters are good, but her strength is creating believable, consistent societies and exploring them. Downbelow Station and Cyteen were both excellent, as was the Foreigner series.
Sheri S. Tepper has written some good books, especially The Gate to Women's Country and Grass, which are hard to describe without spoiling. Some of her later books ladle on the feminism a bit too thickly, though.
C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore was very good, and a bit cyberpunk-ish.
And some guys who I haven't seen mentioned yet too...
Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy is also excellent. I'd lump it into the "sociological" category as well. It chronicles the colonization (and subsequent politicization) of Mars by following a cast of 20 or so main characters. Antarctica is also very good -- sort of a cross between the Mars trilogy and cyberpunk, though people are hacking culture rather than computers.
Dan Simmons. Hyperion and its sequels were extremely good.
Greg Bear's Queen of Angels is very good.
I could go on, but that's probably enough. I hope it helps.
Laura
Re:what about some good "space opera" type ??
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 1
I agree -- Alastair Reynolds' books are good. I just read Chasm City and am now going back and re-reading Revelation Space. If they're space opera they're a sort of "thinking person's" space opera, not quite as fluffy as, say, Lois McMaster Bujold's space operas/adventures.
I thought the first few books in this series were fairly good. Jordan is a good storyteller, though there were times when I started to wonder whether this story was really worth telling. There are also some strong female characters in the series, which is something I like.
But, as someone else mentioned, the later books in the series have gotten very tedious. I'm sorry, but endlessly resurrecting the bad guys after the hero kills them off (trust me, it's not much of a spoiler) gets old after a while. And in the most recent book, which I made the mistake of buying in hardback, nothing happens. Well, one significant thing does, but it's on the very last #$#$% page. The rest of it is total filler that doesn't even advance any of the infinitude of subplots, much less the main plot.
Aren't they printed on an almost clothlike paper or something?
It's printed on a paper made by Crane that's made with cotton rag, linen fibers, and some synthetic fibers. It's not woven like cloth, but it does have long fibers that hold up better than paper made from wood pulp.
[I did a bunch of research on paper last year while trying to find a nice inkjet paper for large, high-resolution photos. Crane makes one of those too, but it's a bit too textured for my taste.]
If your already diabetic no amount of watching your diet or exercising will replace the fact your body CAN'T make insulin...
This is true for Type 1 diabetes, which often strikes children (where it's known as "juvenile diabetes") but can affect adults too. People with Type 1 diabetes are dependent on insulin injections or pumps.
Type 2 diabetics (like me) suffer from either "peripheral insulin resistance" (the insulin receptors in cells become harder to activate) or a moderate insulin deficiency. Since the insulin receptors mediate glucose transport into the body's cells, less insulin or faulty receptors mean more glucose stays in the bloodstream. Type 2 diabetes is sometimes, but not always, affected by weight and diet. (My doctor says that if I lost 50 pounds the diabetes would probably go away. She's even suggested weight-loss surgery a few times, but probably as a way of scaring me and emphasizing her point.)
I just noticed at the Washington Post and MSNBC that two committee chairmen in Congress are pushing an anti-spam bill. Among the provisions:
All commercial email must have an "unsubscribe" option (that actually works).
If you opt out and are spammed by the same company again within 3 years, your ISP (but not you) can sue for $10/email, up to $500,000. Triple damages if it's "willful".
It would be illegal to send commercial email to addresses scanned from web sites. (But how would they know where a spammer got the address?)
Forged headers would be punishable by a fine up to $3,000,000. (It doesn't say if this applies to commercial email only, or all email.)
It would be illegal to send commercial email with sexual content unless you follow FTC guidelines. (This one is bit scary.)
There would be no requirement for ADV: in the subject line, unlike some competing bills.
Laura
Re:Early parts overclockable?
on
802.11g Slows Down
·
· Score: 2, Informative
So the real question is whether you still get a hit in a pure.11g network
The article says (my emphasis):
Li estimated that that in mixed 802.11b and 802.11g networks running standard TCP/IP Internet protocols, this will reduce actual throughput to 10Mbit/sec. --
while pure 802.11g networks will have actual data rates of around 20Mbit/sec.
If you're just using SSI for headers, footers, and so on, you'll get better performance by using a tool that can generate static pages from some sort of template that says where the various bits of content go.
The tool I use for this is Dreamweaver, from Macromedia. It gives you a WYSIWIG view of your web pages and lets you define templates, "library items", and so on. When you change a library item or template, it updates every affected page:
Pros:
WYSIWIG view. (I think it's a "pro", anyway. I used to write all my HTML by hand, but I have better things to do with my time.)
Keeps track of templates and other complex site structure
Newer versions know about JSP syntax, nested JavaScript, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, sorry if I just slashdotted you guys.
About 10 years ago I worked in a research lab at an education grad school. We were using simulation software to study the way that middle-school kids learned physics. The idea was to try to get kids to build a "mental model" of how basic mechanics works by doing lots of simulations (and some real-world experiments too).
To study how this worked, we'd basically videotape everything: the kids interacting with the software and with each other, the teachers interacting with the class, and so on. Then the slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H grad students would transcribe the tapes and see if they could find instances of kids working out models for the physics. There were also tests at the beginning and end of the semester, in both the classes using software and some "control" classes. I don't think any of the kids or parents objected to the data collection, though I wasn't too involved in that part of the project. There were some privacy guarantees on the release form that the kids' parents had to sign. This was all pretty standard stuff for education researchers who wanted to collect hard data instead of just theorizing.
As an aside, the outcome of the project was a bit unclear, at least to me. The students in the classrooms that had the software definitely learned more physics. However, I always wondered whether that had as much to do with the extra attention they got as with the software. But then, I'm not an education researcher or teacher.
Wow! Nobody's ever done that that before!
Laura
Excellent point. I worked at IBM until a few years ago, and we cross-licensed with a lot of other companies. Including, I think, Microsoft.
> I'm not sure that, say, RSA encryption would *ever* have been developed without a patent system to provide encouragement
I don't know. I suspect some computer scientist or mathematician would have developed it just for the fun, fame, intellectual challenge, tenure, and/or research grants. Maybe not as quickly, though.
Laura
I've been using MyEclipseIDE for the last few weeks, and it's a great plugin. The best feature is the automagic JSP debugging with servers that support JSR-045 like Tomcat 5. I'm eagerly awaiting the new version that is supposed to ship tomorrow, because there are lots of new features like XDoclet support. I think they're adding some EJB tools too, but I'm just doing JSPs, Servlets, Struts, etc, so I haven't looked too closely. I had tried other J2EE plugins before: Lomboz, Sysdeo, etc, but this one is definitely easier to use. The others require you to play all sorts of tricks in order to do JSP debugging.
The MyEclipseIDE folks have an interesting business model. As I understand it, they're sort of "mining" the huge number of open-source plugins out there, taking the good bits, and integrating them into a suite with a clean UI. (And even writing tests and documentation. :-) I'm certainly willing to pay them $30/year for that. I just hope they manage to survive.
Laura
What I don't understand is why anyone would spend the time and money to file this patent in the first place. It's totally worthless. First, any sane judge or jury, even in our messed-up system, would probably throw it out as non-obvious. Second, and more importantly, the patent's claims (the only part that really counts) are incredibly limited. Claim 1, which all the others are based on, specifically requires a "a hand-held laser apparatus". If you build a machine to wave the laser around, you're fine. (Yes, some such devices are patented too, but the patents are so specific that it would be easy to design around them.)
Hey, that's my attitude too!
-- Laura
13. A system for providing real-time communication over a network between two or more devices to support multiple languages, the system comprising: at least one source device coupled to the network for transmitting a message composed according to a source language; a content translation module having instructions for translating the message into a destination language; and at least one destination device coupled to the network for receiving the message from the content translation module.
This seems to cover any IM system where the translation is done on the server and then re-transmitted to the recipient. It doesn't require that the system have profiles, preferences, etc.
Hopefully this claim will be thrown out as overly broad, but knowing the USPTO it won't be. I know from experience: my name is on a fairly broad patent covering "web-bug" images. Fortunately it's owned by IBM and they're not enforcing it. I got a nice bonus for filing it back in 1996 or so. :-)
Laura
<pedantic>
Er, that was Lincoln, in the Emancipation Proclamation. JMS did a bit of borrowing in some of those speeches.
</pedantic>
CPL also points out that there's no way for any contributor to guarantee that they're not unknowingly infringing on some third party's patent. IMHO, this sort of accidental patent infringement is the scariest part of patents and OSS.
The older IBM Public License had some onerous text that made the royalty-free patent license go away if you sued the contributor for infringing another patent, even one totally unrelated to the OSS project. I think this was intended to make "offensive" patent lawsuits unattractive, which was a nice goal. But the result was different -- some companies refused to use IPL'd projects because the license would have prevented them from suing IBM "defensively" if it intentionally infringed on some totally unrelated patent for hardware or whatever. I managed an open-source project at IBM for a while and we had a few potential users with this objection. After I left, the group managed to re-license the project under the X license. I'm glad IBM finally fixed this in the CPL.
Laura
I'm nots ure, but a professor I knew at Northwestern sometimes gargled with liquid nitrogen to impress people during "chemistry day" type demos. Supposedly if you keep exhaling and moving the stuff around in your mouth, the air is enough of an insulator to keep from freezing your tongue off.
I had lots of fun working as a programmer in an organic chem lab there. When we needed a break from coding, we'd go invent weird chemistry demos or throw defective glassware against the wall. I don't think I'll ever try the liquid nitrogen gargling, though.
-- Laura
Hey! It even says that it Helps Hot Boning. Ooooh baby!
- Connie Willis is very good at creating characters you can care about, and she has a delightful, dry sense of humor. The Doomsday Book is one of the best books I've ever read. Passage (a recent Hugo nominee) and To Say Nothing of the Dog were also quite good.
- Ursula K. LeGuin has been mentioned by others. The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed each won (and deserved) both the Hugo and Nebula. The former is sort of about gender relations and the latter is about a future utopian (or is it dystopian?) society.
- C.J. Cherryh is good at what I call "sociological fiction". Her characters are good, but her strength is creating believable, consistent societies and exploring them. Downbelow Station and Cyteen were both excellent, as was the Foreigner series.
- Sheri S. Tepper has written some good books, especially The Gate to Women's Country and Grass, which are hard to describe without spoiling. Some of her later books ladle on the feminism a bit too thickly, though.
- C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore was very good, and a bit cyberpunk-ish.
And some guys who I haven't seen mentioned yet too...- Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy is also excellent. I'd lump it into the "sociological" category as well. It chronicles the colonization (and subsequent politicization) of Mars by following a cast of 20 or so main characters. Antarctica is also very good -- sort of a cross between the Mars trilogy and cyberpunk, though people are hacking culture rather than computers.
- Dan Simmons. Hyperion and its sequels were extremely good.
- Greg Bear's Queen of Angels is very good.
I could go on, but that's probably enough. I hope it helps.Laura
Laura
But, as someone else mentioned, the later books in the series have gotten very tedious. I'm sorry, but endlessly resurrecting the bad guys after the hero kills them off (trust me, it's not much of a spoiler) gets old after a while. And in the most recent book, which I made the mistake of buying in hardback, nothing happens. Well, one significant thing does, but it's on the very last #$#$% page. The rest of it is total filler that doesn't even advance any of the infinitude of subplots, much less the main plot.
Laura
Laura
It's printed on a paper made by Crane that's made with cotton rag, linen fibers, and some synthetic fibers. It's not woven like cloth, but it does have long fibers that hold up better than paper made from wood pulp.
[I did a bunch of research on paper last year while trying to find a nice inkjet paper for large, high-resolution photos. Crane makes one of those too, but it's a bit too textured for my taste.]
This is true for Type 1 diabetes, which often strikes children (where it's known as "juvenile diabetes") but can affect adults too. People with Type 1 diabetes are dependent on insulin injections or pumps.
Type 2 diabetics (like me) suffer from either "peripheral insulin resistance" (the insulin receptors in cells become harder to activate) or a moderate insulin deficiency. Since the insulin receptors mediate glucose transport into the body's cells, less insulin or faulty receptors mean more glucose stays in the bloodstream. Type 2 diabetes is sometimes, but not always, affected by weight and diet. (My doctor says that if I lost 50 pounds the diabetes would probably go away. She's even suggested weight-loss surgery a few times, but probably as a way of scaring me and emphasizing her point.)
Laura
(Yes, I know the author's native language probably isn't English. But I couldn't resist.)
Laura
- All commercial email must have an "unsubscribe" option (that actually works).
- If you opt out and are spammed by the same company again within 3 years, your ISP (but not you) can sue for $10/email, up to $500,000. Triple damages if it's "willful".
- It would be illegal to send commercial email to addresses scanned from web sites. (But how would they know where a spammer got the address?)
- Forged headers would be punishable by a fine up to $3,000,000. (It doesn't say if this applies to commercial email only, or all email.)
- It would be illegal to send commercial email with sexual content unless you follow FTC guidelines. (This one is bit scary.)
- There would be no requirement for ADV: in the subject line, unlike some competing bills.
LauraThe article says (my emphasis):
Yuck.The tool I use for this is Dreamweaver, from Macromedia. It gives you a WYSIWIG view of your web pages and lets you define templates, "library items", and so on. When you change a library item or template, it updates every affected page:
Pros:
- WYSIWIG view. (I think it's a "pro", anyway. I used to write all my HTML by hand, but I have better things to do with my time.)
- Keeps track of templates and other complex site structure
- Newer versions know about JSP syntax, nested JavaScript, etc.
Cons: