A sit-down, huh? Let's recall Don Corleone's advice:
...He'll set up a meeting with someone that you absolutely trust -- guaranteeing your safety. And at that meeting, you'll be assassinated...Now listen -- whoever comes to you with this meeting -- he's the traitor. Don't forget that.
the guy who wrote the article and notified slashdot, wasn't able to keep his site up. What insight can he possibly have when he apparently lacked that kind of obvious foresight?
You're right, what an idiot:) I actually did modify the code beforehand to make it more efficient. It wasn't enough. Should have been a static page. How embarassing.
he's beating up on the weak. I have less respect for people who can't chose difficult targets.
Third, he ignores that Google is highly overvalued for a "search" company.
Yes. This is because I am entirely void of knowledge about the stock exchange. It is as foreign to me as the rituals of ancient Hindoostan.
Finally, he places way too much emphasis on getting Microsoft to play good doggie. Being able to force Microsoft to make their sites compatible with yours isn't that interesting.
Yes. The next Roland Piquepaille, that's me! Self-promotion is awesome. Despite what your parents may have told you, it does not lead to blindness or hairy palms.
Current braille displays use piezoelectric pins, not solenoids (pagers also use piezoelectric wafers to vibrate).
Piezoelectric pins are low-power, but also brittle. You can't get very good resolution because if you make them too tiny, they break. They also tend to have short lifetimes.
Solenoids are even bulkier, and draw more power, making them even less practical than piezo pins. Solenoids are good when you need a lot of punching power (which is why they're used for dot-matrix printer heads). They're overkill when you just want something a blind person can sense.
In 1999, two other Electrical Engineering students and I built something like this for our student design project. It used (guess what) shape memory alloys. It connected directly to the VGA output of a PC and averaged the color inputs to judge whether pixels should be raised or lowered.
It was only 8x8 pixels (just a prototype), but it was pretty awesome to move the mouse around and see those pins "do the wave".
The only drawback was the amount of heat it generated. Shape memory alloys change shape *because* of temperature difference (the change in temperature is not a side effect).
Even with a bunch of CPU fans cooling it, we were afraid our device would melt if we left it on for more than a few minutes.
It appears these folks have solved the heat/power problem with a design that requires power only when changing state. Nice work!
According to O'Reilly, the essays that appear in both the book and website were partially rewritten for the book. About 15% of the material in the book is new (again, that's O'Reilly's estimate).
The book is a good deal more than just a reprint of online material.
It's simply absurd to suggest that your typical educator or politician blindly believes that computers are the solution to America's education woes.
If this were true, why do so many misguided education technology initiatives exist?
In the reviewer's opinion, the budget part is pretty well a black-and-white issue. Either spend money on computers, or spend it elsewhere.
Furthermore, most folks pushing for increased school technology have their head in the clouds of hype and glitz. To the point of near-fanaticism. (Again, the reviewer's opinion. Based on real-world experience building distance learning systems).
You're right--my review was more Joes 'n Cobra than reasoned debate. It reflected my personal feelings more than the author's conclusions. I'll have to work on that:)
I'm not a big fan of diversity because so much the research I've done over the last decade or so indicates that by eliminating diversity you can dramatically reduce costs.
O'Connor... started several businesses that have achieved recent notoriety: Flexplay, which makes DVDs that become unusable after a certain period of time...
Strange, this seems more like creating nothing out of something.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, but not now...I'm spent.
Yes. The next Roland Piquepaille, that's me! Self-promotion is awesome. Despite what your parents may have told you, it does not lead to blindness or hairy palms.
"But this theory could be wrong."
Well, yeah. It could be wrong.
"A number of smart folks have speculated..." Which smart folks?
A valid point. It's more like "a couple" than "a number". And I did not link to all of them. I am a lazy person. Bad on me.
"We need to do something to make this site back on top again and it starts with appropriate articles, not loosely written blogger tripe."
Damn right. Are you listening, editors?! Do what the AC says and make this site back on top!
Current braille displays use piezoelectric pins, not solenoids (pagers also use piezoelectric wafers to vibrate).
Piezoelectric pins are low-power, but also brittle. You can't get very good resolution because if you make them too tiny, they break. They also tend to have short lifetimes.
Solenoids are even bulkier, and draw more power, making them even less practical than piezo pins. Solenoids are good when you need a lot of punching power (which is why they're used for dot-matrix printer heads). They're overkill when you just want something a blind person can sense.
In 1999, two other Electrical Engineering students and I built something like this for our student design project. It used (guess what) shape memory alloys. It connected directly to the VGA output of a PC and averaged the color inputs to judge whether pixels should be raised or lowered.
It was only 8x8 pixels (just a prototype), but it was pretty awesome to move the mouse around and see those pins "do the wave".
The only drawback was the amount of heat it generated. Shape memory alloys change shape *because* of temperature difference (the change in temperature is not a side effect).
Even with a bunch of CPU fans cooling it, we were afraid our device would melt if we left it on for more than a few minutes.
It appears these folks have solved the heat/power problem with a design that requires power only when changing state. Nice work!
According to O'Reilly, the essays that appear in both the book and website were partially rewritten for the book. About 15% of the material in the book is new (again, that's O'Reilly's estimate).
The book is a good deal more than just a reprint of online material.
If this were true, why do so many misguided education technology initiatives exist?
In the reviewer's opinion, the budget part is pretty well a black-and-white issue. Either spend money on computers, or spend it elsewhere.
Furthermore, most folks pushing for increased school technology have their head in the clouds of hype and glitz. To the point of near-fanaticism. (Again, the reviewer's opinion. Based on real-world experience building distance learning systems).
You're right--my review was more Joes 'n Cobra than reasoned debate. It reflected my personal feelings more than the author's conclusions. I'll have to work on that :)
Maybe we can use intravenous tubes to feed the monkeys while their minds are playing videogames. We could keep them locked in some type of pod.
The heat and electricity produced by many monkeys (maybe combined with some form of fusion) could be a valuable resource!
I'm not a big fan of diversity because so much the research I've done over the last decade or so indicates that by eliminating diversity you can dramatically reduce costs.
You, sir, need to attend diversity training!
O'Connor... started several businesses that have achieved recent notoriety: Flexplay, which makes DVDs that become unusable after a certain period of time...
Strange, this seems more like creating nothing out of something.
You have a point. By "limited," I meant "limited in duration".