1: Year-round schooling The need for students to be off for the summer to help on the farms is long over. A tremendous amount of time is lost each year as the teachers have to re-teach the students everything they learned the previous year in the first couple of weeks of the new term. A greater sense of continuity would, I feel, foster a more positive attitude towards learning, since the cessation of learning for several months wouldn't be rewarded with good weather and largely unrestricted free play time.
2: Increased teacher pay This one always hits a nerve for fiscal conservatives, but let's take a quick look at the relative disparity of pay involved in the teaching world. According to salary.com, for my area the mean salary range for a high school teacher is between $39.6k and $58.8k (the median salary of $50k reflects about 15 years' experience). A similarly experienced training specialist, on the other hand, can expect to make between $68.2k and $87.3k, with the median salary (similar years of experience) running around $76.9k. Given these disparities and the exceedingly low entry-level pay for teachers (especially in economically distressed areas!), it's no wonder that all the good teachers decide to go into the private sector.
There are plenty of other things that can be done, from a shift in subject emphasis, to more extensive early-education, to the abolition of "age-based" or "social" graduation, to various funding and administration schemes (there's one that's being used in Seattle to good effect, from what I hear; personally I feel that funding should be determined state-wide and administered locally... dependence on local property taxes simply means that schools in already economically distressed areas are never funded sufficiently). I would posit, though, that the two issues I've put forth are fundamental problems that need to be addressed in the public school system before anything else can even be realistically addressed.
While my project is still in its beginning stages, you may wish to take a look at Improbable Drive. The basic concept is that I'm going through the game development process following formal techniques for project management, and documenting things as they go along.
Everything's based on a CCL license, so you're (mostly - see site for details) free to take any part of the process and alter it to suit your personal needs.
The Project only started a couple weeks ago, so I'm still in the project specification stage. The first milestone (Initial Specification document) is already complete, and I'm well on my way to getting the next one done (a full high-level plan of what needs to be done, and where future milestones are going to sit.)
Is the whole thing overkill for such a small project involving a single coder? Of course! But, that's really half the point - the project is small enough that the basic principles I'm exploring can be understood by anyone coming into it.
For small, personal projects like what you're describing, you may not want to go to the lengths that I'm going to, but it might prove helpful to see what sorts of steps need to be addressed that are commonly forgotten about until it's too late (sound design, for one).
And, of course, it's not too late to add your own $0.02 (US) to the project's design, as I'm soliciting input via the forums on the site.
As someone who works (more or less) within the hearing aid industry, I can tell you right now that 3D scanners are the Next Big Thing (tm) in custom medical products.
The ability to take a mold for any sort of custom prostethic - be it an ear mold, arch support, or whatever - and then transmit that mold electronically rather than having to physically mail it is tremendous. I mean, shipping companies won't appreciate losing all that business, but any healthcare professional that has to deal with mailing dozens of custom molds a week will be overjoyed at the ability to send those scans around for free at any time of the day, and be able to trim another 2-3 days off the custom prothesis creation timeline.
I mean, aside from the obvious speed gains that could be had for 3D modeling for movies and games.
Could someone with a legal background please explain what the fallout is going to be against other device manufacturers, such as the VCR, Tivo, iPod, etc.?
On its face, it looks to me like this overturns Betamax, but I'm hoping that it's not as broad as all that.
You've just made my decision of whether to purchase this game a lot easier!
You see, when an alleged bastion of free speech - such as a news outlet - starts attacking others for exercising their free speech, it makes it simple for me to pick which side I should be on. Partly because I enjoy defending free speech, and partly because I really enjoy pissing off people who get riled up about something without paying attention to context or reason.
One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.
It's nice of them to break that down into terms the average person can understand. Now, if only they could break down the mass of the particles into Volkswagons (nano-Volkswagons?) and discuss how many Libraries of Congress worth of data went into this research, I'll have a better idea of what's really going on.
They do get bonus points for using the word "diameter" instead of "width" (you know, so it sounds more scientific), though since most hairs are somewhate ovoid in cross-section, they fail to say which axis they're using to determine this. I mean, this is important! How else will I be able to properly visualize 5 nm?! If I pick the wrong dimension, I could be up to 50% off in my visualization of what's going on, more so if the hair is from someone with curls!
I say "Oh, suuuure. They've released the complete Legend of Zelda series on DVD (or Jem and the Holograms, or Hee-Haw, or any other really, really crappy tv series), but STILL NO PINKY AND THE BRAIN!!!"
Really, it's quite simple. If the person voted for [opponent candidate], they're stupid and have a low IQ.
Alternate tests include: If the person likes playing [that other console], or if the person uses [the other text editor], or if the person really, truly likes [that other OS... you know the one].
I'll agree with Nintendo playing on the cuteness bit, but to be honest, games that are more or less exactly like this have been produced for years. It's certainly nice that at least ONE console gaming company puts a modicum of effort into reaching the other 50% of the world out there.
But if there are patents on videogames, would it not stimulate the production of original games?...
No. In reality, it will cause a mass amount of confusion for gamers and a stifling of the industry. To quote a bit from the Gamer's Manifesto article that was posted a couple days ago (omitting the link since another comment has this quote, too):
Patents. Did you know there's a patent held by some microscopic software company on spherical camera controls in realtime 3D, and they're starting to level lawsuits against EVERYONE? Did you ever wonder what happened to force feedback, controllers that push your hands around so you can feel the action in the game as well as see it (we're talking real force feedback, not controllers that vibrate like pagers)? Somebody has a patent, that's what. Did you know you can't have mini-games during a loading screen because of patent law?
The problem with this is that you get precisely ONE game with logical camera controls, and now, all of a sudden, every other game in existance needs to come up with a brand new style of camera controls. Once someone gets along to patenting "First-person" and "camera follows character from behind", you're out of logical sets of camera controls and everyone will have to either present some sort of random, nonsensical camera controls ("second-person"?), pay a license fee, or pony up the cash to challenge the patent in the hopes that it can be invalidated (which it might not be, even after all the money is spent).
The net result is that ONLY large corporations (such as EA, Microsoft, et. al.) will be able to sustain the cash loss^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H investment required to develop a game at all. And since there's an added investment required, the companies will tend to go with safer and safer investments - which translates to LESS original games, not more.
In fact, little publishers would be run out of business because they won't be able to stand up to the patent suits, and little publishers are where the wealth of original games tend to come from.
Many locations are putting their laws online (the state of Minnesota coming to mind immediately). Most of the time, legislators will never take the time to go through these older laws and weed out those that just don't make sense any more, because there are other, more important things that they feel they could be working on (which is probably true most of the time).
Since they're already publically available, you could certainly use a wiki to start to draft your own versions of existing laws / create a list of those laws you feel should be repealed, and hone it down until you have a comprehensive list... which could then be printed out (yes, even if it's hundreds of pages) and forwarded to your local elected officials. Properly annotated, it'd be simple enough for them to go through the summary and compose a bill to abolish/amend the giant wreck of laws that are there that should be scrapped, without having to spend the individual time to do it.
It'd be fun, educational, and a great way to contribute to your community without even having to be a lawyer!
In fact, if anyone gets around to setting one of those up for Minnesota or the Twin Cities, shoot me an email, because I'd love to throw a couple hours at weeding out stupid/conflicting/outdated laws, too.
Slashdot Mirror
1: Year-round schooling The need for students to be off for the summer to help on the farms is long over. A tremendous amount of time is lost each year as the teachers have to re-teach the students everything they learned the previous year in the first couple of weeks of the new term. A greater sense of continuity would, I feel, foster a more positive attitude towards learning, since the cessation of learning for several months wouldn't be rewarded with good weather and largely unrestricted free play time.
2: Increased teacher pay This one always hits a nerve for fiscal conservatives, but let's take a quick look at the relative disparity of pay involved in the teaching world. According to salary.com, for my area the mean salary range for a high school teacher is between $39.6k and $58.8k (the median salary of $50k reflects about 15 years' experience). A similarly experienced training specialist, on the other hand, can expect to make between $68.2k and $87.3k, with the median salary (similar years of experience) running around $76.9k. Given these disparities and the exceedingly low entry-level pay for teachers (especially in economically distressed areas!), it's no wonder that all the good teachers decide to go into the private sector.
There are plenty of other things that can be done, from a shift in subject emphasis, to more extensive early-education, to the abolition of "age-based" or "social" graduation, to various funding and administration schemes (there's one that's being used in Seattle to good effect, from what I hear; personally I feel that funding should be determined state-wide and administered locally... dependence on local property taxes simply means that schools in already economically distressed areas are never funded sufficiently). I would posit, though, that the two issues I've put forth are fundamental problems that need to be addressed in the public school system before anything else can even be realistically addressed.
While my project is still in its beginning stages, you may wish to take a look at Improbable Drive. The basic concept is that I'm going through the game development process following formal techniques for project management, and documenting things as they go along.
Everything's based on a CCL license, so you're (mostly - see site for details) free to take any part of the process and alter it to suit your personal needs.
The Project only started a couple weeks ago, so I'm still in the project specification stage. The first milestone (Initial Specification document) is already complete, and I'm well on my way to getting the next one done (a full high-level plan of what needs to be done, and where future milestones are going to sit.)
Is the whole thing overkill for such a small project involving a single coder? Of course! But, that's really half the point - the project is small enough that the basic principles I'm exploring can be understood by anyone coming into it.
For small, personal projects like what you're describing, you may not want to go to the lengths that I'm going to, but it might prove helpful to see what sorts of steps need to be addressed that are commonly forgotten about until it's too late (sound design, for one).
And, of course, it's not too late to add your own $0.02 (US) to the project's design, as I'm soliciting input via the forums on the site.
Columba - Java Email Client
This site is temporarily unavailable.
Please notify the System Administrator
...oh, wait.
As someone who works (more or less) within the hearing aid industry, I can tell you right now that 3D scanners are the Next Big Thing (tm) in custom medical products.
The ability to take a mold for any sort of custom prostethic - be it an ear mold, arch support, or whatever - and then transmit that mold electronically rather than having to physically mail it is tremendous. I mean, shipping companies won't appreciate losing all that business, but any healthcare professional that has to deal with mailing dozens of custom molds a week will be overjoyed at the ability to send those scans around for free at any time of the day, and be able to trim another 2-3 days off the custom prothesis creation timeline.
I mean, aside from the obvious speed gains that could be had for 3D modeling for movies and games.
Could someone with a legal background please explain what the fallout is going to be against other device manufacturers, such as the VCR, Tivo, iPod, etc.?
On its face, it looks to me like this overturns Betamax, but I'm hoping that it's not as broad as all that.
You've just made my decision of whether to purchase this game a lot easier!
You see, when an alleged bastion of free speech - such as a news outlet - starts attacking others for exercising their free speech, it makes it simple for me to pick which side I should be on. Partly because I enjoy defending free speech, and partly because I really enjoy pissing off people who get riled up about something without paying attention to context or reason.
One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.
It's nice of them to break that down into terms the average person can understand. Now, if only they could break down the mass of the particles into Volkswagons (nano-Volkswagons?) and discuss how many Libraries of Congress worth of data went into this research, I'll have a better idea of what's really going on.
They do get bonus points for using the word "diameter" instead of "width" (you know, so it sounds more scientific), though since most hairs are somewhate ovoid in cross-section, they fail to say which axis they're using to determine this. I mean, this is important! How else will I be able to properly visualize 5 nm?! If I pick the wrong dimension, I could be up to 50% off in my visualization of what's going on, more so if the hair is from someone with curls!
PS: I love science reporting. Honest.
I say "Oh, suuuure. They've released the complete Legend of Zelda series on DVD (or Jem and the Holograms, or Hee-Haw, or any other really, really crappy tv series), but STILL NO PINKY AND THE BRAIN!!!"
This, my friends, is the nature of injustice.
Really, it's quite simple. If the person voted for [opponent candidate], they're stupid and have a low IQ.
Alternate tests include: If the person likes playing [that other console], or if the person uses [the other text editor], or if the person really, truly likes [that other OS... you know the one].
It's foolproof!
Even then, you're not necessarily safe.
Just one example of a hardware keystroke logger
You spelled phish wrong...
You're right. It's spelled 'ghoti'.
Now they'll be able to track where our INTERNETS are! From now on, I'm wrapping my internets in tinfoil.
Anyone got millions of miles of tinfoil I could borrow? Getting the first one wrapped is going to take a while.
...add one of these bad boys and shake vigorously.
Mmm... phreaky...
Ah yes. Originality. Just like this!
:P
Or maybe this!
Or in a weird way, this!
Or Will Wright's this!
Or maybe even millions of these!
I'll agree with Nintendo playing on the cuteness bit, but to be honest, games that are more or less exactly like this have been produced for years. It's certainly nice that at least ONE console gaming company puts a modicum of effort into reaching the other 50% of the world out there.
Apple picked up the prefix at auction on the cheap, along with the now much-maligned 'e' prefix and several other vowels.
Later, at a press conference, Steve Jobs announced the new, updated G5 eMy eioMac. Old MacDonald could not be reached for comment.
Call me back when there's a GUI interface instead of strictly CLI.
Let P be a spherical patient.
In America, that shouldn't be too hard to find.
But if there are patents on videogames, would it not stimulate the production of original games?...
No. In reality, it will cause a mass amount of confusion for gamers and a stifling of the industry. To quote a bit from the Gamer's Manifesto article that was posted a couple days ago (omitting the link since another comment has this quote, too):
Patents. Did you know there's a patent held by some microscopic software company on spherical camera controls in realtime 3D, and they're starting to level lawsuits against EVERYONE? Did you ever wonder what happened to force feedback, controllers that push your hands around so you can feel the action in the game as well as see it (we're talking real force feedback, not controllers that vibrate like pagers)? Somebody has a patent, that's what. Did you know you can't have mini-games during a loading screen because of patent law?
The problem with this is that you get precisely ONE game with logical camera controls, and now, all of a sudden, every other game in existance needs to come up with a brand new style of camera controls. Once someone gets along to patenting "First-person" and "camera follows character from behind", you're out of logical sets of camera controls and everyone will have to either present some sort of random, nonsensical camera controls ("second-person"?), pay a license fee, or pony up the cash to challenge the patent in the hopes that it can be invalidated (which it might not be, even after all the money is spent).
The net result is that ONLY large corporations (such as EA, Microsoft, et. al.) will be able to sustain the cash loss^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H investment required to develop a game at all. And since there's an added investment required, the companies will tend to go with safer and safer investments - which translates to LESS original games, not more.
In fact, little publishers would be run out of business because they won't be able to stand up to the patent suits, and little publishers are where the wealth of original games tend to come from.
#12: Don't read /.!
Oh, wait.
...American companies benefit by having more trade? but they're *paying* for that additional trade in their taxes...
;)
You're assuming that US corporations pay taxes in the first place.
Many locations are putting their laws online (the state of Minnesota coming to mind immediately). Most of the time, legislators will never take the time to go through these older laws and weed out those that just don't make sense any more, because there are other, more important things that they feel they could be working on (which is probably true most of the time).
Since they're already publically available, you could certainly use a wiki to start to draft your own versions of existing laws / create a list of those laws you feel should be repealed, and hone it down until you have a comprehensive list... which could then be printed out (yes, even if it's hundreds of pages) and forwarded to your local elected officials. Properly annotated, it'd be simple enough for them to go through the summary and compose a bill to abolish/amend the giant wreck of laws that are there that should be scrapped, without having to spend the individual time to do it.
It'd be fun, educational, and a great way to contribute to your community without even having to be a lawyer!
In fact, if anyone gets around to setting one of those up for Minnesota or the Twin Cities, shoot me an email, because I'd love to throw a couple hours at weeding out stupid/conflicting/outdated laws, too.
Why the secret? Who is this company and what's the name of the product?...
Of course, coming from an AC, that's priceless.
Ummm, this is France - they have hot lesbian scenes in darned toothpaste commercials.
That seals it. I'm moving to France. Either that or buying a lot of French toothpaste.
On the other hand though...
Tell someone there are a million stars in the sky and they'll believe you...
Tell them paint is wet and...
Thus delineating the difference between INT and WIS.
Now they'll have to come up with some sort of complicated plot device to explain why the Doctor looks different next season! ...oh, wait.