That, or ban GPS, music, and passengers.
It's unreasonable to single out cell phones - they're no more distracting than those other things.
Sure about that? Passengers in the car generally have their eyes on the same road as you and will know to stop talking and might even warn you about the big rig moving into your lane while you're still in it. The wife at the other end of the phone line can't.
Of course, I'm thinking how pathetically easy it is to put together this sort of presentation, and I was struck not by the content (as I should), but by how much the teacher valued the flash over the substance of the report.
I had the same problem in pen & paper days. Some of my teachers were more worried about the presentation and neatness of handwriting than they were about what I actually wrote. One of my teachers even bragged about how his teacher used to beat the crap out of him if the letters on his page weren't exactly the 'right' height. I think you're probably seeing a modern version of the same phenomenon. It's usually a sign of an incompetent teacher. When they don't know their stuff, they just can you for something irrelevant to seem like they're doing something. Fortunately, I found those teachers to be in the minority.
Anyone ever use AutoCAD without a pointing device? Was doable, but a bit tedious for on-screen selection and suchlike.
What I loved about AutoCAD (haven't used it since R14) was that you could use the keyboard for selecting any command. I had one hand on the keyboard and the other hand seldom left the tablet. Our university got rid of the tablets and we were stuck with mice, which I didn't like at first but kinda got used to it. The stickiness of the mechanical mice in those days was a major pain compared to the dead accurate placement on a tablet.
With AutoCAD R13 they'd moved into the Windows era and you could put icons on the screen and click them, so even though I lost the convenience of the digitiser, I gained the convenience of not having to look down at it to select commands. But 90% of the things you do in a day's drafting are all accessible by hitting a handful of key combinations at the AutoCAD command line anyway. God it was fast! Does it still have the command line?
I saw some CAD applications that abolished CLI in the rush to adopt Windoze when it first became popular, but I always found a huge reduction in the quality of the user experience when that happened. I'd see users using the buttons and dialogs on the screen, but tabbing around them on the keyboard (because it's faster for repetitive stuff, naturally) instead of using the mouse. Kinda makes you wonder why bother doing away with the CLI.
From TFA:
Here we go, after months of doubt over claims of a magnetic machine promising "infinite clean energy," Steorn will be putting their wares on display for public scrutiny in London. A physics defying perpetual machine, if you will. Starting tomorrow, rumor has it that the Kinetica museum will host the Orbo device for a ten day long public demonstration of the technology. We're expecting a formal announcement at 6pm 11pm London (1pm 6pm New York). iPhone shmiPhone, this is going to be good.
Update 1: Still nothing from Steorn yet, but Irish RTE News has also "confirmed" the impending announcement. Moreover, a "very simplified version" of the technology will be viewable by streaming media over the Intertubes. So get ready kids, they say you'll be able to watch janky video of a prototype "lifting a weight" from four different angles starting at 6pm London Eastern Time. Otherwise, you can view the device live at Kinetica from Thursday 5 July to Friday 13 July.
Update 2: First picture of the mystical device! [Thanks, Jordy]
Update 3: CEO Sean McCarthy tells SilconRepublic how it works. Namely, the time variance in magnetic fields allows the Orbo platform to "consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed." He goes on to say "It's too good to be true but it is true. It will have such an impact on everything we do. The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real." Whoa. Link to demonstration site now added below.
Update 4: Well, 6pm London time has come and gone. However, Steorn's site now says that the video will go live at 6pm "Eastern Time." Apparently, their demo is aimed at the US. A fossil-fuel Independence Day? Riiiiight.
Update 5: Jeebus, what a non-event. Even though they wield supreme control over the laws of physics, Steorn had to cancel tonight's event "due to technical difficulties." We'd laugh if it wasn't so pathetically tragic. The live stream is now rescheduled ambiguously to the 5th July. Now move along folks, there's nothing to see here.
We don't have heat recovery technolgy that scales down small enough to be as effective as the ones running our power plants
I wonder if it could scale down as far as a locomotive. I'd be interested in seeing a diesel/steam train in action and compare that to the diesel/electric combinations we have today.
No, they [atheists] believe it. Agnostics (I am one) think it's the most likely explanation
No they do not. I think the only difference between atheists and agnostics is that agnostics are a bit more open to the possibility of a higher existence, whereas atheists (I am one) just don't accept it.
Atheism is not a faith, it is an absence of faith.
It's a valid POV. A lot of the arguments against H1-Bs seem to be centered around the notion that Americans should have first priority in certain jobs even if there are more qualified people from elsewhere that could do the same work for less money. I'm always amazed at how the people who shout loudest about protecting US jobs are the same people who purport to support the free market.
I don't think your sentiment is correct. I only know two people working here in the US on H-1B visas
2 is not a representative sample.
I'm on a H1-B and I'm using it as a path to citizenship. All my H1-B coworkers from the UK are doing the same, many have already gotten as far as a green card. That's about a dozen people. Not a representative sample either, but there it is. Mind you, at the rate they're processing applications, I might have to marry and American girl to make that happen quicker for me.
One of the most disappointing things about our society, to me anyway, is that even though we have organizations and entities that are capable of preserving themselves and executing very long-term projects, we seldom think of more than a few years out.
Interesting point. There are exceptions though. Commercial airline manufacturers make investments that take many years to recoup. Then there are the builders of cathedrals.
I'm sick of people who suggest "the City Car" (or other super small, single or dual seater) as a perfect car for most everyone.
And I'm sick of people who claim that a new development in fuel-efficiency means that the commies are coming to force you out of your Hummer and into a golf cart. Who the fuck said that it was "one size fits all car for most anyone?" Nobody. It's all in your head.
I drive a van (Aerostar) seats seven. I live in a small town having grown up in Los Angeles. I use maybe 25 gallons of gas a month, most months. I haul computers around in it. I can parallel park.
Bully for you. Fortunately, we're not all like you. There are plenty of people out there who don't need to haul computers around a small town near LA.
I'm going to explain this nice and slowly, because it's clear that you're a simpleton.
There's a market out there for small cars. There are people out there who want small cars. These are the people who will buy the small cars. You will not be forced to buy a small car by machine gun-wielding hippes. You can go on driving your soccer-mom-mobile to your heart's content.
Capiche?
please stop projecting your tiny little self in your tiny little world onto the rest of us who live outside the city and actually practice conservation
And please stop projecting your own specific needs onto the rest of the human race.
Which is why every sensible driver should engage in the SUV arms race. As a nice side effect, we'll run out of oil much faster, and we'll actually have to start thinking about alternative energy sources.
Actually, SUVs are more likely to be involved in fatal rollover accidents, so the safety gains of greater size are more than cancelled out by the top-heavy effect. I say let them go on falling for the SUV safety myth and let natural selection do the rest.
Batteries didn't advance much when the EV1 came out. Its strength was the switching technology that allowed efficient DC-AC conversion from the batteries to drive AC motors which are more efficient than their DC counterparts. Some people talk about fast battery-powered cars with decent range as if they haven't been invented yet. They have.
Motors in the wheels are okay when you're moving at low speeds and/or over extremely regular pavement. So they're fine for city-only cars that will never go over 35 mph.
I'm open to correction, but I thought GM's late lamented EV1 had motors in the wheels.
No mass-market innovation will EVER come out of the government.
Motorways/Freeways anyone? Also, shamelessly ripped from the web:
By Jim Lovell
June 29, 1999
As long as there has been a space program, there have been detractors. "What are we doing up in space when we've got real problems right here on Earth?"
I welcome that question since it gives me a chance to list the multitude of innovations we use every day that were first developed for space exploration. And that list keeps getting longer and longer.
Just recently, I used a new ear thermometer to check the temperature of a squirming grandchild. The handy device is based on metal coatings technology developed for space helmets.
Smoke detectors, hand-held vacuum cleaners, water filters and ergonomic furniture are just some of the many household items first developed for use in space. The highly efficient foam insulation used in new homes was first used to insulate fuel tanks on liquid-fueled rockets.
Portable X-ray machines, programmable pacemakers and many surgical tools were all pioneered as part of the space program. Concentrated baby foods, as well as the freeze-dried instant mixes we feed our kids, were first consumed in space. Many of the biofeedback techniques used to reduce stress were first developed for use by astronauts.
Satellites have revolutionized telecommunications and the Global Positioning System (GPS) can help navigators on land, in the air or on the seas locate their position to within 10 feet anywhere in the world.
Sending maybe a dozen nanobots for redundancy would work just fine. When they arrive at a new system the use the carbon there to reproduce. They can terreform the planet.
Welcome to/. This is where a story about someone sitting in a car outside an internet cafe and stealing the wireless connection gets the headline "Poor innocent Linux user arrested for browsing the web." Or a story about a student posting Nazi slogans from a college computer gets the headline "Student suspended for blogging." Misleading propaganda headlines are becoming so common around here that it's becoming one big exercise in reading between the lines.
This is Grand Prix racing, not a bunch of hicks with tractors from NASCAR. You know, super expensive cars, handsome drivers with fancy European names like "Dario", silken ascots worn under tight-fitting racing uniforms, sponsorships by barely profitable Internet firms
Indycars is 'Grand Prix' racing? I could be wrong but I thought that label only applied to Formula 1.
A few months ago I noticed an R2D2 mailbox standing on the corner. I immediately assumed that it was just a leftover from when the last prequel was released way back in 2005. Then on the news I heard something about these being _new_ mailboxes promoting Star Wars. I was baffled, why spend money on this sort of thing now?
Public art costs money. IMHO it's worth it, even if there's always a few people who don't understand the point of it.
Slashdot Mirror
All this talk about water on extra-solar planets. Now if they found a trapdoor, that would be something!
What I loved about AutoCAD (haven't used it since R14) was that you could use the keyboard for selecting any command. I had one hand on the keyboard and the other hand seldom left the tablet. Our university got rid of the tablets and we were stuck with mice, which I didn't like at first but kinda got used to it. The stickiness of the mechanical mice in those days was a major pain compared to the dead accurate placement on a tablet.
With AutoCAD R13 they'd moved into the Windows era and you could put icons on the screen and click them, so even though I lost the convenience of the digitiser, I gained the convenience of not having to look down at it to select commands. But 90% of the things you do in a day's drafting are all accessible by hitting a handful of key combinations at the AutoCAD command line anyway. God it was fast! Does it still have the command line?
I saw some CAD applications that abolished CLI in the rush to adopt Windoze when it first became popular, but I always found a huge reduction in the quality of the user experience when that happened. I'd see users using the buttons and dialogs on the screen, but tabbing around them on the keyboard (because it's faster for repetitive stuff, naturally) instead of using the mouse. Kinda makes you wonder why bother doing away with the CLI.
From TFA: Here we go, after months of doubt over claims of a magnetic machine promising "infinite clean energy," Steorn will be putting their wares on display for public scrutiny in London. A physics defying perpetual machine, if you will. Starting tomorrow, rumor has it that the Kinetica museum will host the Orbo device for a ten day long public demonstration of the technology. We're expecting a formal announcement at 6pm 11pm London (1pm 6pm New York). iPhone shmiPhone, this is going to be good. Update 1: Still nothing from Steorn yet, but Irish RTE News has also "confirmed" the impending announcement. Moreover, a "very simplified version" of the technology will be viewable by streaming media over the Intertubes. So get ready kids, they say you'll be able to watch janky video of a prototype "lifting a weight" from four different angles starting at 6pm London Eastern Time. Otherwise, you can view the device live at Kinetica from Thursday 5 July to Friday 13 July. Update 2: First picture of the mystical device! [Thanks, Jordy] Update 3: CEO Sean McCarthy tells SilconRepublic how it works. Namely, the time variance in magnetic fields allows the Orbo platform to "consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed." He goes on to say "It's too good to be true but it is true. It will have such an impact on everything we do. The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real." Whoa. Link to demonstration site now added below. Update 4: Well, 6pm London time has come and gone. However, Steorn's site now says that the video will go live at 6pm "Eastern Time." Apparently, their demo is aimed at the US. A fossil-fuel Independence Day? Riiiiight. Update 5: Jeebus, what a non-event. Even though they wield supreme control over the laws of physics, Steorn had to cancel tonight's event "due to technical difficulties." We'd laugh if it wasn't so pathetically tragic. The live stream is now rescheduled ambiguously to the 5th July. Now move along folks, there's nothing to see here.
Atheism is not a faith, it is an absence of faith.
It's a valid POV. A lot of the arguments against H1-Bs seem to be centered around the notion that Americans should have first priority in certain jobs even if there are more qualified people from elsewhere that could do the same work for less money. I'm always amazed at how the people who shout loudest about protecting US jobs are the same people who purport to support the free market.
Next!
I'm on a H1-B and I'm using it as a path to citizenship. All my H1-B coworkers from the UK are doing the same, many have already gotten as far as a green card. That's about a dozen people. Not a representative sample either, but there it is. Mind you, at the rate they're processing applications, I might have to marry and American girl to make that happen quicker for me.
I'm going to explain this nice and slowly, because it's clear that you're a simpleton.
There's a market out there for small cars. There are people out there who want small cars. These are the people who will buy the small cars. You will not be forced to buy a small car by machine gun-wielding hippes. You can go on driving your soccer-mom-mobile to your heart's content.
Capiche?
And please stop projecting your own specific needs onto the rest of the human race.Welcome to /. This is where a story about someone sitting in a car outside an internet cafe and stealing the wireless connection gets the headline "Poor innocent Linux user arrested for browsing the web." Or a story about a student posting Nazi slogans from a college computer gets the headline "Student suspended for blogging." Misleading propaganda headlines are becoming so common around here that it's becoming one big exercise in reading between the lines.
I hope they're careful with any nuclear material they might be moving around up there. I'd miss the moon if it were blasted away from Earth's orbit.