I'm no fan of postmodernism or deconstructionism, but answers.org is a fundamentalist tripe-site. There are more logical treatments of postmodernism, ones free of the biases found at answers.org. Is "Magic: the Gathering" an occult plot? Answers.org wants you to know! answers.org/issues/Magic_game.html
is a decent distro - I switched from RH 7.x in an attempt to get my family to switch over (didn't quite work). Good: networking, Debian, stable, mostly intuitive. Bad: older version of KDE. Looking forward to finding a few Ben and getting the upgrade.
The academic hiring process is really more scattershot than anyone lets on. Lots of places might turn down Sir Isaac, just as lots of publishing houses would probably reject his manuscript were it submitted today.
Brilliance, even genius, are appreciated in some quarters but most faculty hiring committees are not really looking for genius. Publications and research agenda are important - can the candidate produce enough journal articles yearly, and how do the interests of a candidate complement the research of the current faculty? How does the candidate's personality "fit" with his potential colleagues? 9-5 stability is important when teaching and administrative duties are required. The school a candidate graduated from can be important. The color of the tie or the scarf worn to an interview might have an effect.
The hiring system is usually a semi-rational committee with a complex subconcious mind.
I have a Royal Extreme2 that I bought a few months ago. I wasn't expecting a full-fledged PDA, but thought it might be useful for simple scheduling, phone # collecting, etc. The only good thing about it is the price - I only wasted $20. The interface is incredibly poorly designed. Royal also came out with a credit-card sized information manager a few years ago that sold for around $100. It was not a good product. Maybe they will get it right with the next product line, but I am not holding my breath.
The bacteria battery sounds like it is more efficient than this potato powered web server, but the technology sounds more complicated and failure prone. Spuds are dependable sources of power.
Shortly after 9/11, the U.S. government hired some Hollywood types to get together and build some worst-case scenarios to adjust the planning process. Now that the government wants to develop an Open Source scenario process with feedback from real events to distinguish between accurate and innacurate scenarios, people are outraged and are misinterpreting the intent and consequences of the project. Maybe the term "market" is too closely associated with profiteering and market manipulation. Maybe the current government is doing too many other big-brotherish things and people are worried. But that isn't what this futures market exercise is about.
Scenario building is a common process for governments, militaries, corporations, and individuals. I taught scenario building for several years in university social science classes using this Art Kleiner article. The subtitle of the article was "thinking the unthinkable" and it dealt with the Cold War, fossil fuel depletion, global famine, and other pressing problems.
The biggest problem with a scenario 'market' is that the feeback mechanism is likely to favor the mundane, most likely possibilities. This is good for every day progressions, but the really interesting points in history are at discontinuities - times where there were sudden changes that upset the existing order. 9/11 was a 'long shot' according to standard statistics, which are inherently backward looking. Good scenarios are less a way of predicting what will happen than what could happen. Good scenarios don't have to come true to be good scenarios - they just need to help us acknowledge and see past our (otherwise invisible) assumptions. While lots of people pay lip service to "thinking outside of the box," scenario building is one way to actually do some original thinking. Our society should be combining research of what is with imagination of what might happen. It would be reckless not to do so.
Can't anyone be assigned copyrights by registering a work with the government? Registering a copy doesn't mean that a person definitively owns the material, only that they staked a claim. Enforcement of claims is carried out by the courts, and any lawsuit offers the chance to contest the claim. Sounds like a lot of ballyhoo over routine paperwork that could be shot down later. And why did they wait until now ?? Usually copyrights are registered before releasing the work of art to the consuming public.
Their license is pretty restrictive - licensees have 90 days to evaluate the product and provide them with free feedback, then must delete the software. Maybe they'll eventually release a product that will be free or cost money, maybe they won't release anything. I can't wait to try it out!!
HEPA filters are great for removing very small particles (like pollen) but they don't do anything for larger crudites. Hair and other dust settles so quickly that a HEPA wont get it unless the wind speed in your room is over 40 mph. And most HEPAs are rather noisy. For cat hair, a simple fiberglass filter near the computer will work fine. And a vacuum cleaner.
The literature shows that women as a group tend to use landmarks as a navigation strategy, while men tend to use vectors (its off in that direction, about a mile or so). This may be due to evolutionary forces - over most of our development, men were more likely to make longer journeys hunting for food, and vectors are more useful there. Women have historically stayed closer to home base and landmarks make sense in that context. Maybe this means that men are better suited to net surfing, while women are better at organizing the hard disk.
A well designed wallpaper would be an easy way to spatialize the desktop and make it more useable. A geometric pattern with different shapes and colors, connected by lines (or separated by boxes) would facilitate organization and make it easier to find stuff. Celtic swirls! Arabesques! Mandalas! And someday, we will all have 32" monitors!!
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I'm no fan of postmodernism or deconstructionism, but answers.org is a fundamentalist tripe-site. There are more logical treatments of postmodernism, ones free of the biases found at answers.org. Is "Magic: the Gathering" an occult plot? Answers.org wants you to know! answers.org/issues/Magic_game.html
is a decent distro - I switched from RH 7.x in an attempt to get my family to switch over (didn't quite work). Good: networking, Debian, stable, mostly intuitive. Bad: older version of KDE. Looking forward to finding a few Ben and getting the upgrade.
The academic hiring process is really more scattershot than anyone lets on. Lots of places might turn down Sir Isaac, just as lots of publishing houses would probably reject his manuscript were it submitted today.
Brilliance, even genius, are appreciated in some quarters but most faculty hiring committees are not really looking for genius. Publications and research agenda are important - can the candidate produce enough journal articles yearly, and how do the interests of a candidate complement the research of the current faculty? How does the candidate's personality "fit" with his potential colleagues? 9-5 stability is important when teaching and administrative duties are required. The school a candidate graduated from can be important. The color of the tie or the scarf worn to an interview might have an effect.
The hiring system is usually a semi-rational committee with a complex subconcious mind.
I have a Royal Extreme2 that I bought a few months ago. I wasn't expecting a full-fledged PDA, but thought it might be useful for simple scheduling, phone # collecting, etc. The only good thing about it is the price - I only wasted $20. The interface is incredibly poorly designed. Royal also came out with a credit-card sized information manager a few years ago that sold for around $100. It was not a good product. Maybe they will get it right with the next product line, but I am not holding my breath.
The bacteria battery sounds like it is more efficient than this potato powered web server, but the technology sounds more complicated and failure prone. Spuds are dependable sources of power.
Shortly after 9/11, the U.S. government hired some Hollywood types to get together and build some worst-case scenarios to adjust the planning process. Now that the government wants to develop an Open Source scenario process with feedback from real events to distinguish between accurate and innacurate scenarios, people are outraged and are misinterpreting the intent and consequences of the project. Maybe the term "market" is too closely associated with profiteering and market manipulation. Maybe the current government is doing too many other big-brotherish things and people are worried. But that isn't what this futures market exercise is about.
Scenario building is a common process for governments, militaries, corporations, and individuals. I taught scenario building for several years in university social science classes using this Art Kleiner article. The subtitle of the article was "thinking the unthinkable" and it dealt with the Cold War, fossil fuel depletion, global famine, and other pressing problems.
The biggest problem with a scenario 'market' is that the feeback mechanism is likely to favor the mundane, most likely possibilities. This is good for every day progressions, but the really interesting points in history are at discontinuities - times where there were sudden changes that upset the existing order. 9/11 was a 'long shot' according to standard statistics, which are inherently backward looking. Good scenarios are less a way of predicting what will happen than what could happen. Good scenarios don't have to come true to be good scenarios - they just need to help us acknowledge and see past our (otherwise invisible) assumptions. While lots of people pay lip service to "thinking outside of the box," scenario building is one way to actually do some original thinking. Our society should be combining research of what is with imagination of what might happen. It would be reckless not to do so.
Can't anyone be assigned copyrights by registering a work with the government? Registering a copy doesn't mean that a person definitively owns the material, only that they staked a claim. Enforcement of claims is carried out by the courts, and any lawsuit offers the chance to contest the claim. Sounds like a lot of ballyhoo over routine paperwork that could be shot down later. And why did they wait until now ?? Usually copyrights are registered before releasing the work of art to the consuming public.
IANAL but I am jbyron
Their license is pretty restrictive - licensees have 90 days to evaluate the product and provide them with free feedback, then must delete the software. Maybe they'll eventually release a product that will be free or cost money, maybe they won't release anything. I can't wait to try it out!!
HEPA filters are great for removing very small particles (like pollen) but they don't do anything for larger crudites. Hair and other dust settles so quickly that a HEPA wont get it unless the wind speed in your room is over 40 mph. And most HEPAs are rather noisy. For cat hair, a simple fiberglass filter near the computer will work fine. And a vacuum cleaner.
The literature shows that women as a group tend to use landmarks as a navigation strategy, while men tend to use vectors (its off in that direction, about a mile or so). This may be due to evolutionary forces - over most of our development, men were more likely to make longer journeys hunting for food, and vectors are more useful there. Women have historically stayed closer to home base and landmarks make sense in that context. Maybe this means that men are better suited to net surfing, while women are better at organizing the hard disk.
A well designed wallpaper would be an easy way to spatialize the desktop and make it more useable. A geometric pattern with different shapes and colors, connected by lines (or separated by boxes) would facilitate organization and make it easier to find stuff. Celtic swirls! Arabesques! Mandalas! And someday, we will all have 32" monitors!!