I have never once lost my keys or one of my tools.
You know why? I always put them in the same place or places. ie. I pick up my stuff and clean up when I'm done. It's a process. I can't believe anyone in such a danagerous place would be so careless.
I know my keys are always in the last pair of pants I wore. I never take my keys our of my pocket unless I'm using them. My tools are always in the appropriate toolbox unless I'm using them.
I know for a fact what my speed cap is accurate because I bump against it when downloading from known sites that can saturate my connection (Ubuntu updates, Debian, kernel.org, Giganews). I get capped right at my connection limit, typically 4.8 Mbps to 5 Mbps on my 5 Mbps connection.
When I do these speed tests they always come back less than my connection because the speed test sites themselves don't have enough bandwidth for everyone to run tests. The only way to test your bandwidth is to download from a whole bunch of sites until you find one that maxes out your connection. Then test it every once in a while (keeping in mind the remote site could lose bandwidth or become saturated itself at certain times).
I remember in the olden days when cable broadband first came out and it was uncapped I used to get 10 Mbps regularly when doing Debian updates. That was fast as hell and was limited by the ethernet connection from the modem because the other side of the modem was actually 30 Mbps, I long for those days (this was nearly 10 years ago). That was on the same cable connection I have now.
Yeah but this is like being in automotive engineering class and building a modern car with wooden wheels. The students need the experience of building a car but we already have vast knowledge on how to build a car. Since they are starting with a huge base of knowledge, at least make it functional otherwise the experience is lacking.
In other words, we already have the technology (modern tires in my example), why not use it and create something that is at least partly useful?
I'm not complaining about students getting experience. I'm complaining that we're talking about a huge opportunity not being fully taken advantage of. The hard part and expense is in the transport up to space, not the satellite. Although satellites are certainly not trivial, we have the experience and technology to make them useful relatively easily.
I mean, doing something more complex than a beacon would be useful experience in learning to create remote probes, robots, and all sorts of stuff. Even if they failed it would be good experience. Beacons are not that useful.
I briefly looked at some of the sats going up and I can't see what the point of them is. Just send them up and see if you can read the beacon? What's the point? We already know we can do that. Send back some data on system status and such? WTF?
As an amateur operator myself I would like to see something useful up there instead of more junk. Cameras, telescopes, sensors, repeaters, or something even more useful that the students come up with. I mean if you're going through all the expense at least put some creative effort into it.
when my own child was born. Back then I was working in artificial intelligence (for a commercial application, and I'm no MIT graduate) and I spend the first couple years taking meticulous notes, video, audio recordings and similar. I also worked with a few other children but not as deeply.
What I found is that the sample size was way too small. Almost every child has vastly different development patterns and to see the big picture you need a bigger sample than one kid. We're talking about a huge effort to collect that much data on many children but I think that is what will be required to even begin to understand how it works.
Seriously, I would buy a $1000 game console if it had games worth playing. I might even pay more than that considering a console lifespan is 5+ years (ie. generally longer than the $2000+ computer I am using).
Todays games are just barely even worth a $200 console let alone 3 times that price. As the summary mentions, the current crop of games are lacking that certain something that makes you want to play them because they traded it away for fancy graphics and sound.
Until we have much more processing power (eg. quantum computing or other highly parallel machines) then microkernels will always take the back seat.
Monolithic just works better performance-wise on current hardware (which is mostly a couple of limited performance Von Neumann processors).
For future generations of hardware that actually have decent performance we may see things like microkernels really shine since they are designed to more easily break things into small units and do lots of work in parallel.
Holy crap this is stupid. This basically makes surveillance on people easy (for the bad guys).
"There goes Geoffrey, that means his house is empty, time to go get that new HDTV I want"
or
"Oh, look at that little 12 year old walking to the market by herself. I'll just hide behind that bush and grab her when she comes back in a few minutes."
or anything number of things you can think of. This is beyond irresponsible.
Alright, I'm sick and tired of hearing about this issue and the overworked underpayed game developers. The only reason this is turning into a big deal is because a lot of these developers are fresh-out kids and have nothing to compare to so they eventually start thinking they are in a uniquely punishing position.
The fact is, the conditions are nearly the same across the entire American culture. Everyone is always in crunch mode. I can't think of any development position I have ever held that wasn't mostly in crunch mode and I have never worked in game development. If you're working for the man then you are going to have to work overtime without pay and all sorts of things like little to no vacation time (at least in America where it seems the worst).
The main thing with developers is they lack skill and/or experience and end up reworking code all the time or debugging like crazy because they can't figure out why something doesn't work. That is what really puts the pressure on them. It's especially difficult when you realize you made a mistake and have to redo days or weeks of work or you neglected to put enough debugging information to make problems easy to spot. That is painful crunch mode. As you get better and get more experience you make less of those mistakes (if you're smart) and although you're still in perpetual crunch mode it doesn't feel as stressful.
This is not unique to software development either. Almost everything is like this.
I have to agree with the GURPS Space thing. I haven't played GURPS in probably 15 years but I still love to read some of the books. Especially GURPS Space is very interesting reading because it compiles a whole bunch of research knowledge down into a single digestible book.
Don't get me wrong, I like some of the ideas and I play Battlefield 2 every once in a while but come on, give us a break already. I mostly play 80's arcade games because the current games suck.
I miss Quake3. I don't have time to make a monthly fee game worth playing. And fantasy worlds... ugh, come on, some variety please.
I think voter turnout has more to do with the fact that all the choices suck. I haven't voted in years for exactly that reason. I honestly did not care who got into office because they all sucked equally.
Damn me for living so close to a nuclear power station. I would love to have the power company pay for new windows. My house is a 70 year old farm house and it leaks like a fish net.
What did the mill run on? Judging by the NH location and being so old I assume it was powered by a nearby river or stream? If so then man, I'd hook up a water wheel with generator and pump power back to the power company. Good way to make a couple hundred bucks a month.
Actually your scale is off. According to the other post the average salary is between $300 and $600 a year. Lets split the difference and say $450/yr. Compared to average American salary which is conveniently right about $45,000/yr.
Now scale those figures.
The $300 box is equivalent to $30,000 in China for the average worker. And the $3k box is, wait for it, $300,000 to the Average Chinese person.
It's not as bad as it was though. I just started watching the series from the beginning and it's really insanely overdone in the miniseries. It almost makes me sea-sick trying to watch it. It seems to get less each season.
Awesome show in any case. Weird how I was just thinking the other day about what happended with the original Cylons and the whole Cylon War thing. I think a prequel might be entertaining as long as it doesn't distract from the main show (eg. by sucking off writing talent and such).
Are you sure you're talking about the original MS Natural? Because that is probably the biggest and heaviest keyboard I have ever owned. See here. Original MS Natural on top, newer Elite on bottom. It's hard to tell but the original is massive and takes up your whole desk.
The MS Natural Elite is the second incarnation and is substantially smaller, lighter, and has better tactile feedback. Excellent keyboard but like I said they tend to wear out after a few years of heavy usage. Don't get me wrong, they will still work, I just find sticky keys (even slightly) make my fingers hurt (especially when the shift starts to go, that kills my pinky).
I love the feel of those keyboards and the huge Ctrl Win Alt keys are great for games. I just wish the keypad wasn't there.
I have to agree with this one. The problem I have with the natural is that it's way too wide. It doesn't need that numeric keypad which forces your mouse way over to the right if you're right-handed (which in turn puts more stres on your mouse hand). I have considered cutting the pad off but there is that damn key matrix inside that you can't cut without breaking the whole thing.
The Naturals wear out after a while though. The keys start to get sticky (especially the wide keys like shift). I have been through three of them already. Putting new lithium grease helps for a while but eventually you have to toss them (this seems to happen about the same time the home row keys like A are about 50% rubbed off).
I'm currently using a Kinesis Maxim which is OK but not that great. The keypress feel on the Maxim feels awful to me, there is no feedback and the spring pressure is too high (MS Natural is 100 times better). Plus the keys are smaller than just about every other keyboard out there and it screws up your typing on those. You get used to it but I'm torn because I sort of like the small keys, but then again not really. The Maxim is also tall. It's way thicker than most keyboards which means your hands are too high unless your workstation is really adjustable. The adjustable split and tilt are nice but to be honest I think they are unnecessary.
Exactly. And if they are using DNA or retina, or whatever you're going to have the same problem. If someone needs your eye then maybe they'll cut it out.
This problem will exist no matter what you do. If they steal an access card then maybe they need the PIN also. Are you going to give them the PIN? How can they be sure? Maybe some torture just to make sure you gave them the correct PIN?
If fact is, if you work with something that makes you a target then you're going to be a target no matter what.
Well that's a different matter altogether. I have no idea how the particular devices work in that other article. RFID seems pretty stupid but a smartcard style chip would be secure.
What is the difference between having a chip implanted and having some system that can recognize you by DNA, heat signature, or whatever? Those systems are coming and they're exactly the same thing except without the invasive chip injection procedure. This chip thing is just a temporary measure until the other technology advances.
There won't be much you can do about it. Businesses love this for security because there is no passcode for someone to steal and employees don't need to remember passcodes. Credit card companies would really love it to help prevent fraud (in theory saving us all money, but we know how that goes). This has all sorts of uses, good and bad. It's coming though...
Although it might never become 100% mandatory, you'll probably eventually need to be registered with these systems in order to function. We're already seeing the phase-out of cash and other physical formats like checks for digital money (credit cards, debit cards, etc.).
What is the difference between having a chip implanted and having some system that can recognize you by DNA, heat signature, or whatever? Those systems are coming and they're exactly the same thing except without the invasive chip injection procedure. This chip thing is just a temporary measure until the other technology advances.
There won't be much you can do about it. Businesses love this for security because there is no passcode for someone to steal and employees don't need to remember passcodes. Credit card companies would really love it to help prevent fraud (in theory saving us all money, but we know how that goes). This has all sorts of uses, good and bad. It's coming though...
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I have never once lost my keys or one of my tools.
You know why? I always put them in the same place or places. ie. I pick up my stuff and clean up when I'm done. It's a process. I can't believe anyone in such a danagerous place would be so careless.
I know my keys are always in the last pair of pants I wore. I never take my keys our of my pocket unless I'm using them. My tools are always in the appropriate toolbox unless I'm using them.
Most of those "speed test" sites are meaningless.
I know for a fact what my speed cap is accurate because I bump against it when downloading from known sites that can saturate my connection (Ubuntu updates, Debian, kernel.org, Giganews). I get capped right at my connection limit, typically 4.8 Mbps to 5 Mbps on my 5 Mbps connection.
When I do these speed tests they always come back less than my connection because the speed test sites themselves don't have enough bandwidth for everyone to run tests. The only way to test your bandwidth is to download from a whole bunch of sites until you find one that maxes out your connection. Then test it every once in a while (keeping in mind the remote site could lose bandwidth or become saturated itself at certain times).
I remember in the olden days when cable broadband first came out and it was uncapped I used to get 10 Mbps regularly when doing Debian updates. That was fast as hell and was limited by the ethernet connection from the modem because the other side of the modem was actually 30 Mbps, I long for those days (this was nearly 10 years ago). That was on the same cable connection I have now.
Yeah but this is like being in automotive engineering class and building a modern car with wooden wheels. The students need the experience of building a car but we already have vast knowledge on how to build a car. Since they are starting with a huge base of knowledge, at least make it functional otherwise the experience is lacking.
In other words, we already have the technology (modern tires in my example), why not use it and create something that is at least partly useful?
I'm not complaining about students getting experience. I'm complaining that we're talking about a huge opportunity not being fully taken advantage of. The hard part and expense is in the transport up to space, not the satellite. Although satellites are certainly not trivial, we have the experience and technology to make them useful relatively easily.
I mean, doing something more complex than a beacon would be useful experience in learning to create remote probes, robots, and all sorts of stuff. Even if they failed it would be good experience. Beacons are not that useful.
I briefly looked at some of the sats going up and I can't see what the point of them is. Just send them up and see if you can read the beacon? What's the point? We already know we can do that. Send back some data on system status and such? WTF?
As an amateur operator myself I would like to see something useful up there instead of more junk. Cameras, telescopes, sensors, repeaters, or something even more useful that the students come up with. I mean if you're going through all the expense at least put some creative effort into it.
Seriously, these types of jobs are for single people not people with families. Don't do it.
If you have a family that should come first. No job is worth destroying that.
when my own child was born. Back then I was working in artificial intelligence (for a commercial application, and I'm no MIT graduate) and I spend the first couple years taking meticulous notes, video, audio recordings and similar. I also worked with a few other children but not as deeply.
What I found is that the sample size was way too small. Almost every child has vastly different development patterns and to see the big picture you need a bigger sample than one kid. We're talking about a huge effort to collect that much data on many children but I think that is what will be required to even begin to understand how it works.
Yes but absolute freedom is anarchy.
People should be free but only free enough that they don't encroach on the freedom of others. That's the tough part.
Seriously, I would buy a $1000 game console if it had games worth playing. I might even pay more than that considering a console lifespan is 5+ years (ie. generally longer than the $2000+ computer I am using).
Todays games are just barely even worth a $200 console let alone 3 times that price. As the summary mentions, the current crop of games are lacking that certain something that makes you want to play them because they traded it away for fancy graphics and sound.
Until we have much more processing power (eg. quantum computing or other highly parallel machines) then microkernels will always take the back seat.
Monolithic just works better performance-wise on current hardware (which is mostly a couple of limited performance Von Neumann processors).
For future generations of hardware that actually have decent performance we may see things like microkernels really shine since they are designed to more easily break things into small units and do lots of work in parallel.
Holy crap this is stupid. This basically makes surveillance on people easy (for the bad guys).
"There goes Geoffrey, that means his house is empty, time to go get that new HDTV I want"
or
"Oh, look at that little 12 year old walking to the market by herself. I'll just hide behind that bush and grab her when she comes back in a few minutes."
or anything number of things you can think of. This is beyond irresponsible.
Alright, I'm sick and tired of hearing about this issue and the overworked underpayed game developers. The only reason this is turning into a big deal is because a lot of these developers are fresh-out kids and have nothing to compare to so they eventually start thinking they are in a uniquely punishing position.
The fact is, the conditions are nearly the same across the entire American culture. Everyone is always in crunch mode. I can't think of any development position I have ever held that wasn't mostly in crunch mode and I have never worked in game development. If you're working for the man then you are going to have to work overtime without pay and all sorts of things like little to no vacation time (at least in America where it seems the worst).
The main thing with developers is they lack skill and/or experience and end up reworking code all the time or debugging like crazy because they can't figure out why something doesn't work. That is what really puts the pressure on them. It's especially difficult when you realize you made a mistake and have to redo days or weeks of work or you neglected to put enough debugging information to make problems easy to spot. That is painful crunch mode. As you get better and get more experience you make less of those mistakes (if you're smart) and although you're still in perpetual crunch mode it doesn't feel as stressful.
This is not unique to software development either. Almost everything is like this.
I have to agree with the GURPS Space thing. I haven't played GURPS in probably 15 years but I still love to read some of the books. Especially GURPS Space is very interesting reading because it compiles a whole bunch of research knowledge down into a single digestible book.
Amen brother. That and "realistic" FPS games.
Don't get me wrong, I like some of the ideas and I play Battlefield 2 every once in a while but come on, give us a break already. I mostly play 80's arcade games because the current games suck.
I miss Quake3. I don't have time to make a monthly fee game worth playing. And fantasy worlds... ugh, come on, some variety please.
I think voter turnout has more to do with the fact that all the choices suck. I haven't voted in years for exactly that reason. I honestly did not care who got into office because they all sucked equally.
Damn me for living so close to a nuclear power station. I would love to have the power company pay for new windows. My house is a 70 year old farm house and it leaks like a fish net.
What did the mill run on? Judging by the NH location and being so old I assume it was powered by a nearby river or stream? If so then man, I'd hook up a water wheel with generator and pump power back to the power company. Good way to make a couple hundred bucks a month.
Actually your scale is off. According to the other post the average salary is between $300 and $600 a year. Lets split the difference and say $450/yr. Compared to average American salary which is conveniently right about $45,000/yr.
Now scale those figures.
The $300 box is equivalent to $30,000 in China for the average worker. And the $3k box is, wait for it, $300,000 to the Average Chinese person.
Now I think we see an accurate picture.
It's not as bad as it was though. I just started watching the series from the beginning and it's really insanely overdone in the miniseries. It almost makes me sea-sick trying to watch it. It seems to get less each season.
Awesome show in any case. Weird how I was just thinking the other day about what happended with the original Cylons and the whole Cylon War thing. I think a prequel might be entertaining as long as it doesn't distract from the main show (eg. by sucking off writing talent and such).
Are you sure you're talking about the original MS Natural? Because that is probably the biggest and heaviest keyboard I have ever owned. See here. Original MS Natural on top, newer Elite on bottom. It's hard to tell but the original is massive and takes up your whole desk.
The MS Natural Elite is the second incarnation and is substantially smaller, lighter, and has better tactile feedback. Excellent keyboard but like I said they tend to wear out after a few years of heavy usage. Don't get me wrong, they will still work, I just find sticky keys (even slightly) make my fingers hurt (especially when the shift starts to go, that kills my pinky).
I love the feel of those keyboards and the huge Ctrl Win Alt keys are great for games. I just wish the keypad wasn't there.
I have to agree with this one. The problem I have with the natural is that it's way too wide. It doesn't need that numeric keypad which forces your mouse way over to the right if you're right-handed (which in turn puts more stres on your mouse hand). I have considered cutting the pad off but there is that damn key matrix inside that you can't cut without breaking the whole thing.
The Naturals wear out after a while though. The keys start to get sticky (especially the wide keys like shift). I have been through three of them already. Putting new lithium grease helps for a while but eventually you have to toss them (this seems to happen about the same time the home row keys like A are about 50% rubbed off).
I'm currently using a Kinesis Maxim which is OK but not that great. The keypress feel on the Maxim feels awful to me, there is no feedback and the spring pressure is too high (MS Natural is 100 times better). Plus the keys are smaller than just about every other keyboard out there and it screws up your typing on those. You get used to it but I'm torn because I sort of like the small keys, but then again not really. The Maxim is also tall. It's way thicker than most keyboards which means your hands are too high unless your workstation is really adjustable. The adjustable split and tilt are nice but to be honest I think they are unnecessary.
Exactly. And if they are using DNA or retina, or whatever you're going to have the same problem. If someone needs your eye then maybe they'll cut it out.
This problem will exist no matter what you do. If they steal an access card then maybe they need the PIN also. Are you going to give them the PIN? How can they be sure? Maybe some torture just to make sure you gave them the correct PIN?
If fact is, if you work with something that makes you a target then you're going to be a target no matter what.
Well that's a different matter altogether. I have no idea how the particular devices work in that other article. RFID seems pretty stupid but a smartcard style chip would be secure.
Oops, this comment got double posted. The real one is here.
What is the difference between having a chip implanted and having some system that can recognize you by DNA, heat signature, or whatever? Those systems are coming and they're exactly the same thing except without the invasive chip injection procedure. This chip thing is just a temporary measure until the other technology advances.
There won't be much you can do about it. Businesses love this for security because there is no passcode for someone to steal and employees don't need to remember passcodes. Credit card companies would really love it to help prevent fraud (in theory saving us all money, but we know how that goes). This has all sorts of uses, good and bad. It's coming though...
Although it might never become 100% mandatory, you'll probably eventually need to be registered with these systems in order to function. We're already seeing the phase-out of cash and other physical formats like checks for digital money (credit cards, debit cards, etc.).
What is the difference between having a chip implanted and having some system that can recognize you by DNA, heat signature, or whatever? Those systems are coming and they're exactly the same thing except without the invasive chip injection procedure. This chip thing is just a temporary measure until the other technology advances.
There won't be much you can do about it. Businesses love this for security because there is no passcode for someone to steal and employees don't need to remember passcodes. Credit card companies would really love it to help prevent fraud (in theory saving us all money, but we know how that goes). This has all sorts of uses, good and bad. It's coming though...
You know what should be illegal? Making a public site for refugees that only works on one OS and Browser. That's should be criminal.
Buy Microsoft and run IE or we won't help you. Holy crap, my taxes pay for this?!