Here's something interesting. From their news page, http://www.mediadefender.com/news.html, they are distributing PDF copies of articles from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Not links to those sites, but copies of the articles. Copies of files containing copyrighted content, even though they are not the owners of that content. There's even an article from ARS Technica. Interesting....
It may be a stretch to say this thing predicts errors. It seems more like it can tell when you are likely to be distracted or more prone to making a mistake.
How best to use that information? It may be possible to train people to recognize they are off focus, so they can get themselves back on focus. Or maybe it won't.
It may be more useful for knowing when someone's work needs to be cross-checked, because we all naturally get distracted sometimes, either by internal or external stimuli. Imagine an air traffic controller using this device. A warning to him that he may not be focusing might only add further distraction, but a signal to a back-up controller who can cross check the first guy's work could save lives.
I teach college physics, and I encourage my students to study together, talk through concepts and help each other learn. That said, they have to submit their own work for homework, and of course they will be the only one they can rely on for exams (which for me are closed book, no notes). I tell them the first day of class that it's not cheating if they talk to someone else about the concepts and ideas, but it's cheating if they just get the answers from someone else, or copy someone else's solution.
So posting on someone's Facebook wall, or any place else, the answer to a problem, or the solution, or even an outline of a solution, would be cheating. But discussing the concepts and ideas would not. It's not clear cut if using Facebook automatically constitutes cheating. But with a written record it would be much easier to decide than just hearing from someone that someone else copied someone else's homework.
What happens if someone does cheat this way? In my class they only hurt themselves. The homework problems are chosen to be worked, illustrative examples, or problems that lead to either direct insights or to questions which then lead to insights If you just copy from someone else you miss out on that, and you won't be able to do well on my exams.
It turns out my current sig is appropriate to this topic. The character limit didn't let me add the attribution. It's from Enrico Fermi.
You don't really need to 'hack' it. The Terminal "Activity" is in there with the rest of the activities (you'd probably call them applications). It's easier to get a shell on the XO than on the default configuration of Gnome or KDE. And there is no root password. Just 'su root' and you control the box. (While sshd is running, it's configured to not accept root logins.)
I need to look more at the educational activities, but I got caught up first in seeing how far I could go with the Unix. I was able to run BOINC on it (no graphics). The Einstein@Home application seems to fail regularly due to floating point problems, but I think it's because that app is tweaked to try to use different hardware features if it can (and doesn't know what to do with this thing). SETI@home is running (slow but steady) without such problems.
My favorite is xeyes (someone else added the text, not me).
I don't really agree with the statement in the article "Not quite what the foundation had in mind when they made the XO". I think the Give One/Get One program was intended, at least in part, to get it out into the hands of people who will "play" with it to see what it can do. And some of us will develop apps for it (I have ideas for two already).
While the beauty of gems is subjective, the one reason that diamonds are attractive is the high index of refraction of the material, which causes total internal reflection. Light from sources around the room can bounce around several times before it exits, giving the gem a "sparkle". The cut of the diamond can enhance this. The crystal structure determines which cuts are possible and which cuts give the best sparkle. But creating artificial gems with the same crystal structure will not give the same "sparkle" effect if the crystal does not have a high enough index of refraction to cause total internal reflection.
Because now all of online payments are tied into your personal credit card and personal info. With identity theft, malware/spyware, etc., people are very leery about putting in a credit card number at every other website....
Discover Card lets you generate one-time credit card numbers which can be used anywhere, but once used can then only be used for purchases at that vendor and nowhere else.
... One philosophical point opponents make is that the 'official' time on Earth should match the time of the sun and heavens."
Except that due to General Relativity these are not the same thing, nor the same as time kept on Earth. It's a quick little calculation to show that due to GR the clocks at the surface of the Earth tick slightly slower than clocks in deep space, so we should actually be having a leap second every 2 years or so to account for that. It's the same reason the clocks in GPS satellites run at a slightly different rate (which they mask by having the satellites report the time it would be if GR were not in effect).
Chemistry sets were toys even in the early 70's, with silly "experiments" to change the colors of solutions and such. I found that to do anything interesting I had to go out and find my own materials, such as saltpeter or powdered zinc. Or more sulphur than the teaspoon-full they put in a bottle that was clearly made for more. For some materials the empty bottles left over from the lame demos came in handy for storage.
So how about a "safe" chemistry set which just has empty bottles, and you have to get the contents yourself from somewhere else. They could even sell the materials for the "safe" demos separately (a chance for added markup?)
Why go to BBC headquarters and ask European reporters to this presentation just to announce a new model of an existing product? Perhaps instead Steve will be announcing that the iPhone will soon be on sale in Europe. Unlocked, of course. AT&T's deal is only for the US, right?
So how do you claim the moral high ground when you just took someone else's project and forked it so that they can't use it the way they originally intended?
Except that they can still use it as originally intended -- without the new stuff they didn't think of until someone else did.
Great. Instead of papers that are dry, stale, full of technical jargon and can only be understood by someone else who works in that particular sub-speciality, we will have video presentations which are dry, stale, full of technical jargon, and can only be understood by someone else who works in that particular sub-speciality.
> ANYONE studying for their physics exam by watching Speed deserves the mark they get.
The problem is not so direct. Physics students have a lot of pre-formed assumptions about how things work, which then influence how they learn the course material. Some of those assumptions are right, some are wrong, and the wrong ones can get in the way of learning. One part of what I do as a physics teacher is find and redirect these mis-understandings.
On the other hand, movie situations can also make for instructive problems, where the student figures out why the bus can't make that jump, and learns something from it.
You do realize that the Shuttle has landed many times before the Columbia disaster with whole tiles missing...
I don't think you realize the inherent danger in attempting to fix these either.
While they are now minimizing the supposed danger of the damage, they may also be passing up an opportunity. Several methods have been worked out to try to repair damaged tiles. They could try one of these, to see how well it works.
Also, while the damage now seems to not be life-threatening, leaving the broken tile the way it is would likely lead to more extensive repair and refitting when it's back on the ground.
This of course has to be weighed against the risk of the repair EVA, and the resources available (air, water, fuel, food) for extending the mission for this. The fact that the shuttle can now get take power from the ISS helps somewhat in this regard, but someone who knows far more than me about the details has to balance all the the pros vs the cons.
I can't even get applications to run under different versions of Linux without recompilation, given the differences betweeen glibc and gcc over recent years.
The high price of ink cartridges is only part of why I don't want to buy another HP printer. The last one I bought has some serious software problems.
At some point a month or so after I brought it home it suddenly stopped working with an error message saying "incompatible print cartridge". It was the same cartridge it came with! It turns out this was a known problem and you have to upgrade the firmware AND clean the cartridge contacts (covering all bases like that makes me suspect they never knew the real cause of the problem).
I could accept a one-time problem which could be fixed, but it still doesn't work. Every time I turn the Mac on it's forgoten that the printer was connected. Simply adding it again fails, and I have to reset the entire printing system. Installing the latest drivers does not correct the problem, even after going through the extended 25 step process they recommend to remove all sorts of "old" files from 13 different places.
And while browsing HP's web pages to diagnose the problem it asks if I would participate in a quality control survey. Okay, I agree to do it. Two pages later, it seems to have forgotten it ever asked, because the same annoying pop-up is back. Over and over again.
The ink is only part of the problem, because the software to drive the printer doesn't work.
Slashdot Mirror
How about letting water, pulled downward by gravity, turn a wheel or turbine?
I'm wondering how easy it would be to subvert the destructive part? Some possibilities:
1. remove disk from packaging, clean surface with alcohol before the layer hardens
2. remove disk from packaging, spray with thin layer of clearcoat to keep oxygen out. Or perhaps just thin plastic?
Of course ripping the disk is easier. But finding ways around it are more entertaining.
Here's something interesting. From their news page, http://www.mediadefender.com/news.html, they are distributing PDF copies of articles from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Not links to those sites, but copies of the articles. Copies of files containing copyrighted content, even though they are not the owners of that content. There's even an article from ARS Technica. Interesting....
And there is now a BOINC package in newer releases of Fedora.
BOINC works on any Linux, and Mac, and Windows, so the computing power of a cluster is potentially much more than a Fedora-only project.
I wonder if it's possible to sue anyone who practices this patent for fraud?
It may be a stretch to say this thing predicts errors. It seems more like it can tell when you are likely to be distracted or more prone to making a mistake.
How best to use that information? It may be possible to train people to recognize they are off focus, so they can get themselves back on focus. Or maybe it won't.
It may be more useful for knowing when someone's work needs to be cross-checked, because we all naturally get distracted sometimes, either by internal or external stimuli. Imagine an air traffic controller using this device. A warning to him that he may not be focusing might only add further distraction, but a signal to a back-up controller who can cross check the first guy's work could save lives.
I teach college physics, and I encourage my students to study together, talk through concepts and help each other learn. That said, they have to submit their own work for homework, and of course they will be the only one they can rely on for exams (which for me are closed book, no notes). I tell them the first day of class that it's not cheating if they talk to someone else about the concepts and ideas, but it's cheating if they just get the answers from someone else, or copy someone else's solution.
So posting on someone's Facebook wall, or any place else, the answer to a problem, or the solution, or even an outline of a solution, would be cheating. But discussing the concepts and ideas would not. It's not clear cut if using Facebook automatically constitutes cheating. But with a written record it would be much easier to decide than just hearing from someone that someone else copied someone else's homework.
What happens if someone does cheat this way? In my class they only hurt themselves. The homework problems are chosen to be worked, illustrative examples, or problems that lead to either direct insights or to questions which then lead to insights If you just copy from someone else you miss out on that, and you won't be able to do well on my exams.
It turns out my current sig is appropriate to this topic. The character limit didn't let me add the attribution. It's from Enrico Fermi.
You don't really need to 'hack' it. The Terminal "Activity" is in there with the rest of the activities (you'd probably call them applications). It's easier to get a shell on the XO than on the default configuration of Gnome or KDE. And there is no root password. Just 'su root' and you control the box. (While sshd is running, it's configured to not accept root logins.)
I need to look more at the educational activities, but I got caught up first in seeing how far I could go with the Unix. I was able to run BOINC on it (no graphics). The Einstein@Home application seems to fail regularly due to floating point problems, but I think it's because that app is tweaked to try to use different hardware features if it can (and doesn't know what to do with this thing). SETI@home is running (slow but steady) without such problems.
My favorite is xeyes (someone else added the text, not me).
I don't really agree with the statement in the article "Not quite what the foundation had in mind when they made the XO". I think the Give One/Get One program was intended, at least in part, to get it out into the hands of people who will "play" with it to see what it can do. And some of us will develop apps for it (I have ideas for two already).
More notes on my "playing" with the XO are here.
Actually, it seems to run a little too fast on the OLPC, compared to how I remember it. The planes fly around too fast, things happen a little faster.
While the beauty of gems is subjective, the one reason that diamonds are attractive is the high index of refraction of the material, which causes total internal reflection. Light from sources around the room can bounce around several times before it exits, giving the gem a "sparkle". The cut of the diamond can enhance this. The crystal structure determines which cuts are possible and which cuts give the best sparkle. But creating artificial gems with the same crystal structure will not give the same "sparkle" effect if the crystal does not have a high enough index of refraction to cause total internal reflection.
You can now also get the BOINC client in Debian (though it's split into two packages, one for the client core and one for the GUI "Manager").
Given the statistics of the available data that is the best you can do.
And unfortunately when you divide by (N-1) in computing the error bars you find they are rather widely spaced.
Chemistry sets were toys even in the early 70's, with silly "experiments" to change the colors of solutions and such. I found that to do anything interesting I had to go out and find my own materials, such as saltpeter or powdered zinc. Or more sulphur than the teaspoon-full they put in a bottle that was clearly made for more. For some materials the empty bottles left over from the lame demos came in handy for storage.
So how about a "safe" chemistry set which just has empty bottles, and you have to get the contents yourself from somewhere else. They could even sell the materials for the "safe" demos separately (a chance for added markup?)
Why go to BBC headquarters and ask European reporters to this presentation just to announce a new model of an existing product? Perhaps instead Steve will be announcing that the iPhone will soon be on sale in Europe. Unlocked, of course. AT&T's deal is only for the US, right?
Great. Instead of papers that are dry, stale, full of technical jargon and can only be understood by someone else who works in that particular sub-speciality, we will have video presentations which are dry, stale, full of technical jargon, and can only be understood by someone else who works in that particular sub-speciality.
> ANYONE studying for their physics exam by watching Speed deserves the mark they get.
The problem is not so direct. Physics students have a lot of pre-formed assumptions about how things work, which then influence how they learn the course material. Some of those assumptions are right, some are wrong, and the wrong ones can get in the way of learning. One part of what I do as a physics teacher is find and redirect these mis-understandings.
On the other hand, movie situations can also make for instructive problems, where the student figures out why the bus can't make that jump, and learns something from it.
While they are now minimizing the supposed danger of the damage, they may also be passing up an opportunity. Several methods have been worked out to try to repair damaged tiles. They could try one of these, to see how well it works.
Also, while the damage now seems to not be life-threatening, leaving the broken tile the way it is would likely lead to more extensive repair and refitting when it's back on the ground.
This of course has to be weighed against the risk of the repair EVA, and the resources available (air, water, fuel, food) for extending the mission for this. The fact that the shuttle can now get take power from the ISS helps somewhat in this regard, but someone who knows far more than me about the details has to balance all the the pros vs the cons.
I found that the RSS subscription link was broken, but it's not a security problem.
Looks like releasing it as "beta" was a good way to find lots of little bugs, eh?
University of Utah? Why would they need this, they have cold fusion working there.
I can't even get applications to run under different versions of Linux without recompilation, given the differences betweeen glibc and gcc over recent years.
Agreed. He should transfer to Portland State, which now has a good CS department.
The high price of ink cartridges is only part of why I don't want to buy another HP printer. The last one I bought has some serious software problems.
At some point a month or so after I brought it home it suddenly stopped working with an error message saying "incompatible print cartridge". It was the same cartridge it came with! It turns out this was a known problem and you have to upgrade the firmware AND clean the cartridge contacts (covering all bases like that makes me suspect they never knew the real cause of the problem).
I could accept a one-time problem which could be fixed, but it still doesn't work. Every time I turn the Mac on it's forgoten that the printer was connected. Simply adding it again fails, and I have to reset the entire printing system. Installing the latest drivers does not correct the problem, even after going through the extended 25 step process they recommend to remove all sorts of "old" files from 13 different places.
And while browsing HP's web pages to diagnose the problem it asks if I would participate in a quality control survey. Okay, I agree to do it. Two pages later, it seems to have forgotten it ever asked, because the same annoying pop-up is back. Over and over again.
The ink is only part of the problem, because the software to drive the printer doesn't work.