I thought of this too, but it brings up some important things to consider first: 1. Will the treatment inhibit heat transfer? Does it even stand up under heat? The article was pretty vague on that point, but if the answer to the first one is yes, or the second one is no, then that would limit its functionality greatly when expanding it to uses outside those mentioned in the article, namely phones. 2. Cost. How much does it cost to do this? and, more importantly, would there be a way to do it yourself, or to bring something in somewhere and get it done for you? If the is prohibitive, then it also lowers the usefulness, but if its cheap, easy to use, and you don't have to have a contract with them to get it done... this could end up being a pretty nice addition to ANY portable electronics.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I also believe that many of your statements are very dependent on the school in question. At my school, CS grads are basically guaranteed a job immediately upon graduation with any number of big name companies, because the school I attend is very well known for providing a well rounded, in-depth, and difficult curriculum. I do believe, however, that my school is not the norm. Most colleges that I see around today don't teach CS, they teach coding, and as (I hope) most of us know, there is a very large difference. The real problem is that finding code monkeys is simple, but finding someone with a (good) education in project design/program development is much much harder... IMHO, real CS majors will always be in demand, but programs that simply pump out coders are doomed to fail.
Having played this through to the end, I have to say that I can give it a full recommendation. If you need a reason to buy the Wii, this game provides an excellent one. It was fun to watch, fun to play, and the controls just made it better, IMO. Of course, I also love Wii sports to a fault, and my lack of money means that, since I have no funds to purchase any more games, Sports is all I play for the time being, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt, please, hehehe.
This is a little bit frightening to me, not because they're prosecuting him and all, because I've come to expect that, but because of where it could lead. We all know that security is never permanent. If there is a way to stop someone from doing something, there is a way around it. What happens when the government realizes this? Some of the cases that get pushed through, like this one (IMHO, anyways) are ridiculous, but what happens when the government realizes that it's just the tip of the iceberg? It sounds kinda funny now, but after seeing the ways in which the government has evolved over the last few years, I would believe anything of them. What happens when they start bringing cases against people who make a proof of concept? Once we know something can be done, the rest is relatively easy, right? So proving that something can be done is like telling the terrorists how to do it, right? Of course, once you think of an idea of how to do something, you've taken your first step on the road to making a proof of concept, am I right? I look at those last few sentences and it makes me shudder, how absurd the logic is, but it's all too familiar to me. It's very like certain justifications to get a hold on certain domestic phone records, or even records from your local library.
I've always been of the opinion that America is the best place to live (for me, at least), but if thought processes like this continue to spread and grow, I don't know that America will continue to be a good place to live for very much longer. I like my freedom, and I am not willing to give up personal freedoms in order to lead a life filled with a false sense of security, under a tyrannical government that is unwilling to admit that it can and does make mistakes.
I agree with what your saying here, but I feel the need to point out something else that is covered in the article, something that he is very very right about. The way a lot of politicians stay in power now is by pork-barreling. This is what I feel he means by the demands of the people. People on the internet see some project or another thats benefiting some other place, and wonder why they don't get that kind of thing. The internet makes it much easier to both revel these projects, and to open a forum asking for new projects. Any politician that has an interest in staying in power is, of course, going to be on top of all this, because thats how the system works. (I'm not saying that all politicians are corrupt, because I don't know that thats the case. However, I am saying that I believe the system as a whole is corrupt.) This is the type of demands and idiocy that I see him referring to in his speech, not an angry constituency.
Yes, but I would argue that much of the propaganda to this this point in time was directed in two different directions.
1.) Propaganda aimed towards the enemy. The purpose of this type of propaganda was to convince the enemy, especially the civilian population, that they were either oppressed or that the actions taken by the side opposing them were either not evil (or a necessary evil for the populations own betterment.)
2.) Propaganda aimed towards increasing war support. Propaganda in this area comes in the form of "Rosie the Riveter" and "Uncle Sam Wants You" type messages. These messages are not aimed at justifying the war, or even garnering popular support, but in taking popular support that already exists and whipping it up into a national patriotic fervor.
However, the propaganda of today, and that of Vietnam (to a lesser extent), seems to take a slightly different track.
The propaganda centered around the war in Iraq differs from that in previous wars in, again, two ways.
1.) The majority of the propaganda that we see, on the so called "home front" is not aimed at increasing an already present popular support, but at justifying and creating popular support. We are being told just about the same things that the civilian population of Iraq is: That we had to go in, that we are making Iraq a better place, that this is a war to bring good to the rest of the world. The administrations in charge of the war effort realize that they have less than half of their total populations supporting the war at all, and so the propaganda that they use on us is directed in the same way that propaganda towards the enemy used to be.
2.) The use of fear and popular prejudice to increase short term political power, while undermining the very document that gives us the freedoms we are so proud of in the first place. Things like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its creation of the colored threat meter have no purpose but to increase national fear and play off the popular prejudice around Islamic peoples. This increase in national fear makes it very easy to justify things like monitoring domestic wiretapping in the name of national safety. This national fear, when added to other actions such as prosecuting journalists that reveal information that is damaging to the images of the current ruling party, serves only to increase the sort term political power of the ruling party. (Of course, that raises the question of what happens when that party falls out of power. Does the new party abandon its new found control of society, or does it seek to increase its power even more?)
Right now, the system is broken. The checks and balances put into the system to halt such abuses of power have been trumped by two things. The first, and actually more minor item, is the use of "patriotism" and hyperbole to classify actions by opposing parties as "undemocratic" and "terrorist" in purpose. This is a two edged sword, since either party can, and will, end up using it. Its benefit to the party in power is extremely short term, and its use shows a lack of long term planning, intelligence, or strategy. The second item is far more pressing, but possibly far more fleeting as well. There are three branches of the government. I assume most of you know this. Now, in order for the checks and balances to work properly, there must be opposition to the ruling in at least one of these three branches, and preferably not the executive branch, since it should, under the circumstances it was designed, have the least real power. However, the system breaks when there is no opposition in any of the three branches of the government to the ruling party. As of this moment, the ruling party controls all three branches. Not only do they control the three, but there are no dissenters from the party itself in any position of power. This lack of checks and balances is what is making the whole series of events, from the tapping of phones, to the invasion of privacy in the library and bookstore,
Imagine something truely usefull, like a display that a surgeon place over the patients body with possible realtime x-ray infromation and/or other stats, letting them whats really going on instead of working almost blind. Think really non-invasive surgury. This has some wonderfull potential, and not just for general use.
will it run on the next generation of Xbox? It's going to be coming out sometime in the near future, and when it does, what will it matter if you can run this OS on the original xbox? This has plenty of potential, but will it be able to keep up?
Lets buy a whole bunch of these zombified pcs, and launch a DDoS attack against the isps of known spammers! It may force some action, and I think it would be worth the cost.
No, really, you could screw the tiles. Just jump. How can they keep up with you if they don't have any data? From the looks of it, you'd only have to jump about 3 feet and you would be off the tiles. There's at least one book (sorry, I forgot the name) where some type of moving floor like this is used to imprison people in a VR environment (it could have been a Star Trek novel). The floor was defeated when one of the characters threw his boot. The program couldn't stop it from leaving the confines of the floor, so it hit the wall, while a projection of the boot continued into the VR. The character then jumped out of the VR in the same way the boot left it: in the air. So, if you want to screw the tiles, jump!
again, sorry, wrong game. but while he is a marine, he also has entered into a fight in truly hellish conditions, where said marines are not likly to be properly equiped.
ummm, well, the reason that he doesn't have a helmet may have to do with the fact that he's not a marine. I think that goes for the flashlight (in the helmet) as well.
the actual molecules that they believe may be forming. One of the biggest questions in biology is where the building blocks of life came from. I'm talking complex amino acids, strings of nucleotides, and such. This could very well answer that question, and finally settle the debate between the evolutionists and creationists. (Not that the creationists were ever near right, but one of their main arguments against evolution was the origination of the complex molecules needed to support life.)
Another chance to spend a large amount of money on an item that I know I'll use far less than it (may be) worth. Let the unnecessary spending on over-priced systems begin!
I would just like to point out that, up until as late as the late 50's, it was believed that radiation was actually good for you. People actually bought Radon Water, because it was "natural" and "good for you." If your interested, the August edition on Popular Science is running a short article on the subject that is really pretty informative (and scary). (sorry, but they don't have it online yet)
I knew this stuff was bad the day I first heard rumors that they used the product to clean the engines of their trucks. Oh, and many police precincts carry a couple gallons to wash blood off of pavement.
Until the size, weight, and power consumption of screens that display video and photos are both reduced, and show an increase in quality, I don't believe that a device such as this will win out over the Ipod. It will be either too bulky, or it's screen will be too small for any real use, or the batteries won't last an acceptable amount of time, or a million other problems. Sometimes it's better just to do one thing, and do it well, than to try to do many things, and do all poorly.
While you got the gist of the story correct, you are off on the names/details. Algernon is from the city, and he has invented the concept of "Bunburying". He has created an imaginary friend that lives in the country named Bunbury, who is often incapacitated. Algernon then has an excuse to go to the country (where he ends up with Jacks young ward). Jack is from the country, and creates the persona of Ernest so that he can end up meeting a girl he has fallen in love with. Ernest, if you didn't guess it, is the same as Bunbury. Long story short, both Algernon and Jack end up taking on the differing persona of Ernest, and the two women that they have fallen in love with end up in a tangle of confusion, because of the mix-up of having two Ernests. The play is a social commentary on many things, not the least of which is the foolishness of a name (which some here would do well to recognize), and was definitely put in the movie for a reason, in my opinion, if not for more than one.
I like the idea, but I don't think it would work. Say the people doing the reviewing were, like most slashdotters, extremely pro-Linux, and someone submitted an article that was genuinely researched, and was a good article, on the inherent stability and strength of the Windows OS line and built in security. This article, that would almost certainly be worthy of publishing, would most likely not get published because of the reviewer's bias against the topic. (And remember, HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION!!!! NOT REAL ARTICAL!!!! DON'T KILL ME, PLEASE!!!!)
Open access to sci. lit. was bound to happen. What began during the Renaissance and continued into the scientific revolution and beyond was the opening of communication and transactions between scientists. Open access is just a continuation of that. And I think that eventually, publishing sci. lit. will be done for the funds that could be procured after people see the work that you do. So, basically, we will have totally open lit. (as in free) that will be published to garner funding for further study, new projects, maybe even professional standing, and dare I say it, the public good, in the nearly free land of the Internet.
While the article does look funny, I personaly don't drink any caffeine. ever. I've found that I function better, think faster, and am actually less tired with out caffine than with it. Plus, caffine is bad for you. and it's also the most abused drug on earth.
One of the most significant factors keeping me from buying a high-power laptop has been the relative lack of storage space. I think this will take care of that factor, and then the only thing holding the desktop back from the edge of obslecence will be the lack of a thin, possibly folding screen of good quality (in image and make). Of course, that will all depend on the cost of manufacture and the time it takes to be accepted into the mainstream, but, hey, does anyone else see a DVD killer here?
I had read somewhere that an 'ion drive " might be the basis for interstellar travel (not necessarily a manned mission), because it's so effiecient. I don't know the truth of that, though. On a second note, the ATV is awe-inspiring, but I wonder how Lockheeds new hybrid space-plane idea wll work in with that. (POP-Sci just ran an article in the last issue that subscribers got, feburary, I think)
I don't think it heralds in any type of light passed processing age. There is still the unresolved problem of creating a sensor that is sesitive to pick up a small amount of light, let alone making such a sensor small amd efficient. Untill that occurs, then this is just another advance that we probably can't use for what we think we can.
The desktop iteration of the Opteron is the Athlon FX-51. Maximum PC has run multiple benchmarks on the two systems to compare them, and the athloh whoops up on the G5. As a matter of fact, the G5 lost in all but one or two tests to the two frontrunners, the Athlon FX and the P4 Extreme Edition. This was obviously in 32-bit mode. I don't hate macs, but in this race (the desktop race), it certainly comes out under the other two major chip manufacturers.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought of this too, but it brings up some important things to consider first: 1. Will the treatment inhibit heat transfer? Does it even stand up under heat? The article was pretty vague on that point, but if the answer to the first one is yes, or the second one is no, then that would limit its functionality greatly when expanding it to uses outside those mentioned in the article, namely phones. 2. Cost. How much does it cost to do this? and, more importantly, would there be a way to do it yourself, or to bring something in somewhere and get it done for you? If the is prohibitive, then it also lowers the usefulness, but if its cheap, easy to use, and you don't have to have a contract with them to get it done... this could end up being a pretty nice addition to ANY portable electronics.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I also believe that many of your statements are very dependent on the school in question. At my school, CS grads are basically guaranteed a job immediately upon graduation with any number of big name companies, because the school I attend is very well known for providing a well rounded, in-depth, and difficult curriculum. I do believe, however, that my school is not the norm. Most colleges that I see around today don't teach CS, they teach coding, and as (I hope) most of us know, there is a very large difference. The real problem is that finding code monkeys is simple, but finding someone with a (good) education in project design/program development is much much harder... IMHO, real CS majors will always be in demand, but programs that simply pump out coders are doomed to fail.
Having played this through to the end, I have to say that I can give it a full recommendation. If you need a reason to buy the Wii, this game provides an excellent one. It was fun to watch, fun to play, and the controls just made it better, IMO. Of course, I also love Wii sports to a fault, and my lack of money means that, since I have no funds to purchase any more games, Sports is all I play for the time being, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt, please, hehehe.
This is a little bit frightening to me, not because they're prosecuting him and all, because I've come to expect that, but because of where it could lead. We all know that security is never permanent. If there is a way to stop someone from doing something, there is a way around it. What happens when the government realizes this? Some of the cases that get pushed through, like this one (IMHO, anyways) are ridiculous, but what happens when the government realizes that it's just the tip of the iceberg? It sounds kinda funny now, but after seeing the ways in which the government has evolved over the last few years, I would believe anything of them. What happens when they start bringing cases against people who make a proof of concept? Once we know something can be done, the rest is relatively easy, right? So proving that something can be done is like telling the terrorists how to do it, right? Of course, once you think of an idea of how to do something, you've taken your first step on the road to making a proof of concept, am I right? I look at those last few sentences and it makes me shudder, how absurd the logic is, but it's all too familiar to me. It's very like certain justifications to get a hold on certain domestic phone records, or even records from your local library. I've always been of the opinion that America is the best place to live (for me, at least), but if thought processes like this continue to spread and grow, I don't know that America will continue to be a good place to live for very much longer. I like my freedom, and I am not willing to give up personal freedoms in order to lead a life filled with a false sense of security, under a tyrannical government that is unwilling to admit that it can and does make mistakes.
I agree with what your saying here, but I feel the need to point out something else that is covered in the article, something that he is very very right about. The way a lot of politicians stay in power now is by pork-barreling. This is what I feel he means by the demands of the people. People on the internet see some project or another thats benefiting some other place, and wonder why they don't get that kind of thing. The internet makes it much easier to both revel these projects, and to open a forum asking for new projects. Any politician that has an interest in staying in power is, of course, going to be on top of all this, because thats how the system works. (I'm not saying that all politicians are corrupt, because I don't know that thats the case. However, I am saying that I believe the system as a whole is corrupt.) This is the type of demands and idiocy that I see him referring to in his speech, not an angry constituency.
Yes, but I would argue that much of the propaganda to this this point in time was directed in two different directions.
1.) Propaganda aimed towards the enemy. The purpose of this type of propaganda was to convince the enemy, especially the civilian population, that they were either oppressed or that the actions taken by the side opposing them were either not evil (or a necessary evil for the populations own betterment.)
2.) Propaganda aimed towards increasing war support. Propaganda in this area comes in the form of "Rosie the Riveter" and "Uncle Sam Wants You" type messages. These messages are not aimed at justifying the war, or even garnering popular support, but in taking popular support that already exists and whipping it up into a national patriotic fervor.
However, the propaganda of today, and that of Vietnam (to a lesser extent), seems to take a slightly different track.
The propaganda centered around the war in Iraq differs from that in previous wars in, again, two ways.
1.) The majority of the propaganda that we see, on the so called "home front" is not aimed at increasing an already present popular support, but at justifying and creating popular support. We are being told just about the same things that the civilian population of Iraq is: That we had to go in, that we are making Iraq a better place, that this is a war to bring good to the rest of the world. The administrations in charge of the war effort realize that they have less than half of their total populations supporting the war at all, and so the propaganda that they use on us is directed in the same way that propaganda towards the enemy used to be.
2.) The use of fear and popular prejudice to increase short term political power, while undermining the very document that gives us the freedoms we are so proud of in the first place. Things like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its creation of the colored threat meter have no purpose but to increase national fear and play off the popular prejudice around Islamic peoples. This increase in national fear makes it very easy to justify things like monitoring domestic wiretapping in the name of national safety. This national fear, when added to other actions such as prosecuting journalists that reveal information that is damaging to the images of the current ruling party, serves only to increase the sort term political power of the ruling party. (Of course, that raises the question of what happens when that party falls out of power. Does the new party abandon its new found control of society, or does it seek to increase its power even more?)
Right now, the system is broken. The checks and balances put into the system to halt such abuses of power have been trumped by two things. The first, and actually more minor item, is the use of "patriotism" and hyperbole to classify actions by opposing parties as "undemocratic" and "terrorist" in purpose. This is a two edged sword, since either party can, and will, end up using it. Its benefit to the party in power is extremely short term, and its use shows a lack of long term planning, intelligence, or strategy. The second item is far more pressing, but possibly far more fleeting as well. There are three branches of the government. I assume most of you know this. Now, in order for the checks and balances to work properly, there must be opposition to the ruling in at least one of these three branches, and preferably not the executive branch, since it should, under the circumstances it was designed, have the least real power. However, the system breaks when there is no opposition in any of the three branches of the government to the ruling party. As of this moment, the ruling party controls all three branches. Not only do they control the three, but there are no dissenters from the party itself in any position of power. This lack of checks and balances is what is making the whole series of events, from the tapping of phones, to the invasion of privacy in the library and bookstore,
Imagine something truely usefull, like a display that a surgeon place over the patients body with possible realtime x-ray infromation and/or other stats, letting them whats really going on instead of working almost blind. Think really non-invasive surgury. This has some wonderfull potential, and not just for general use.
will it run on the next generation of Xbox? It's going to be coming out sometime in the near future, and when it does, what will it matter if you can run this OS on the original xbox? This has plenty of potential, but will it be able to keep up?
Lets buy a whole bunch of these zombified pcs, and launch a DDoS attack against the isps of known spammers! It may force some action, and I think it would be worth the cost.
No, really, you could screw the tiles. Just jump. How can they keep up with you if they don't have any data? From the looks of it, you'd only have to jump about 3 feet and you would be off the tiles. There's at least one book (sorry, I forgot the name) where some type of moving floor like this is used to imprison people in a VR environment (it could have been a Star Trek novel). The floor was defeated when one of the characters threw his boot. The program couldn't stop it from leaving the confines of the floor, so it hit the wall, while a projection of the boot continued into the VR. The character then jumped out of the VR in the same way the boot left it: in the air. So, if you want to screw the tiles, jump!
again, sorry, wrong game. but while he is a marine, he also has entered into a fight in truly hellish conditions, where said marines are not likly to be properly equiped.
ummm, well, the reason that he doesn't have a helmet may have to do with the fact that he's not a marine. I think that goes for the flashlight (in the helmet) as well.
the actual molecules that they believe may be forming. One of the biggest questions in biology is where the building blocks of life came from. I'm talking complex amino acids, strings of nucleotides, and such. This could very well answer that question, and finally settle the debate between the evolutionists and creationists. (Not that the creationists were ever near right, but one of their main arguments against evolution was the origination of the complex molecules needed to support life.)
Another chance to spend a large amount of money on an item that I know I'll use far less than it (may be) worth. Let the unnecessary spending on over-priced systems begin!
I would just like to point out that, up until as late as the late 50's, it was believed that radiation was actually good for you. People actually bought Radon Water, because it was "natural" and "good for you." If your interested, the August edition on Popular Science is running a short article on the subject that is really pretty informative (and scary). (sorry, but they don't have it online yet)
I knew this stuff was bad the day I first heard rumors that they used the product to clean the engines of their trucks. Oh, and many police precincts carry a couple gallons to wash blood off of pavement.
Until the size, weight, and power consumption of screens that display video and photos are both reduced, and show an increase in quality, I don't believe that a device such as this will win out over the Ipod. It will be either too bulky, or it's screen will be too small for any real use, or the batteries won't last an acceptable amount of time, or a million other problems. Sometimes it's better just to do one thing, and do it well, than to try to do many things, and do all poorly.
While you got the gist of the story correct, you are off on the names/details. Algernon is from the city, and he has invented the concept of "Bunburying". He has created an imaginary friend that lives in the country named Bunbury, who is often incapacitated. Algernon then has an excuse to go to the country (where he ends up with Jacks young ward). Jack is from the country, and creates the persona of Ernest so that he can end up meeting a girl he has fallen in love with. Ernest, if you didn't guess it, is the same as Bunbury. Long story short, both Algernon and Jack end up taking on the differing persona of Ernest, and the two women that they have fallen in love with end up in a tangle of confusion, because of the mix-up of having two Ernests. The play is a social commentary on many things, not the least of which is the foolishness of a name (which some here would do well to recognize), and was definitely put in the movie for a reason, in my opinion, if not for more than one.
I like the idea, but I don't think it would work. Say the people doing the reviewing were, like most slashdotters, extremely pro-Linux, and someone submitted an article that was genuinely researched, and was a good article, on the inherent stability and strength of the Windows OS line and built in security. This article, that would almost certainly be worthy of publishing, would most likely not get published because of the reviewer's bias against the topic.
(And remember, HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION!!!! NOT REAL ARTICAL!!!! DON'T KILL ME, PLEASE!!!!)
Open access to sci. lit. was bound to happen. What began during the Renaissance and continued into the scientific revolution and beyond was the opening of communication and transactions between scientists. Open access is just a continuation of that. And I think that eventually, publishing sci. lit. will be done for the funds that could be procured after people see the work that you do. So, basically, we will have totally open lit. (as in free) that will be published to garner funding for further study, new projects, maybe even professional standing, and dare I say it, the public good, in the nearly free land of the Internet.
While the article does look funny, I personaly don't drink any caffeine. ever. I've found that I function better, think faster, and am actually less tired with out caffine than with it. Plus, caffine is bad for you. and it's also the most abused drug on earth.
One of the most significant factors keeping me from buying a high-power laptop has been the relative lack of storage space. I think this will take care of that factor, and then the only thing holding the desktop back from the edge of obslecence will be the lack of a thin, possibly folding screen of good quality (in image and make). Of course, that will all depend on the cost of manufacture and the time it takes to be accepted into the mainstream, but, hey, does anyone else see a DVD killer here?
I had read somewhere that an 'ion drive " might be the basis for interstellar travel (not necessarily a manned mission), because it's so effiecient. I don't know the truth of that, though. On a second note, the ATV is awe-inspiring, but I wonder how Lockheeds new hybrid space-plane idea wll work in with that. (POP-Sci just ran an article in the last issue that subscribers got, feburary, I think)
I don't think it heralds in any type of light passed processing age. There is still the unresolved problem of creating a sensor that is sesitive to pick up a small amount of light, let alone making such a sensor small amd efficient. Untill that occurs, then this is just another advance that we probably can't use for what we think we can.
The desktop iteration of the Opteron is the Athlon FX-51. Maximum PC has run multiple benchmarks on the two systems to compare them, and the athloh whoops up on the G5. As a matter of fact, the G5 lost in all but one or two tests to the two frontrunners, the Athlon FX and the P4 Extreme Edition. This was obviously in 32-bit mode. I don't hate macs, but in this race (the desktop race), it certainly comes out under the other two major chip manufacturers.