I've long suspected that you could teach really young kids math concepts far beyond what is traditionally exposed. I'm not saying *everybody* has the aptitude, but I have no doubt that there are some who could grasp the concepts of math right through vector calc, differential equations, boundary value problems, and certainly into the logical reasoning stuff needed to do proofs. Why not? I feel cheated, since I know that at a very early age, I was exposed to a book that explained integration, and I was fascinated by the symbols and wanted to understand it. But no one was there to explain it to me. It was almost 20 years before I saw the concept again, and the only advantage I had was a bare concept that it might be mathematically interesting to compute the area under a curve. My grade school teachers responded well to the fact that I could read (I could read by age six, approximately as well as I could in high school, with the differences being in comprehension of human behavior and linear increases in vocabulary -- but my language mechanics were already complete.) But they did not respond well *at all* to my weaknesses in arithmetic. I was actually punished for this, even though my mathematical concepts and my curiosity were beyond those of the typical schoolkid. My arithmetic is *still* poor -- but I managed to get through all the undergrad calculus.
Anyway I really do think you could teach young kids some far more advanced mathematical ideas, especially set theory and logic ideas, than they are normally exposed to.
I agree, but I also happen to work in an environment with much larger installations that look as together as the stuff featured in the article. Things that are well-organized can be dealt with by any tech who knows the system, not just the guy who touched it last.
To be fair, we also have skunk works facilities where changes are too frequent to even consider that level of organization. But the economic risks of a failure on some of our production systems are orders of magnitude higher than the costs of keeping things organized, and beyond that, the costs of stuff like fault-tolerant hardware, cooling and power technology, security, fire suppression, and seismic resistance are also easily justified against our risks.
We've done lazy and cheap approaches in the past, learned lessons, and as we've matured (still counting the decades), we've established best practices and follow them. If a production system must be rewired or moved or what have you, we do it in a standard way. Nobody actually tries to make things perfect for a photo op like in the article, but it's certainly on the same level of organization; maybe more so -- the detail in the pictures isn't sufficient to see what kind of labeling system is used.
"I can't imagine replacing broken cables that are tiered into 24562345 tie wrapped globs, especially during an outage."
One of the benefits of a well-organized wiring system is that broken cables are vanishingly rare. Think in terms of wiring between patchbays. Stuff that's carefully planned, and never rearranged after the initial setup (because dynamic stuff is the whole point of patchbays.)
>You're either good technically or a good artist. Not both. That's the way it's always been.
One technology that I've actually seen bridging that gap, is Rails.
I thought Rails was just hype until I saw creative types, people who would normally hire programmers or whoever, taking ideas from start to finish on their own.
For all the things that were supposed to do exactly that (going as far back as COBOL), the first one I've seen actually *doing* it, was Rails. It's both exciting and a little scary to see people taking their ideas from concept to revenue stream (or whatever), without much fuss at all. (Yeah, I know, Rails is "opinionated", but its opinion is that you should be doing web-based apps targeted at modern browsers. It happens to have had quite good timing for a language with such opinons.)
"The thing that shocks me though are the large multi-operator post audio consoles, with a half dozen 56 bundle MADI inputs, video sync, and feeds to ADR rooms. Intimidating."
YES!
I know guys who can deal with that stuff, but none ever seemed to have any passion (about anything). To my mind, they tend to be the kind of person who forgets about their work *completely* when they are not on the clock. I'm way different from that. If I don't have work that motivates me 24/7, I'm not happy, because there is no possible way I could consider such a trade to be "art."
I'm ranting, sorry... A/V production brings back a long, long list of bad memories:-)
>An upgrade of the OS would downgrade the space in memory for applications.
I have an even crappier laptop than the one you describe. 16MB RAM. First-generation P-I, 75MHZ. 2Gig hard drive. I use it for exactly two things: sending faxes, and interfacing to a custom device which requires an old-school LPT port.
I tweaked a really small linux install for it. It was barely usable with Win31, less so with Win95, but with Linux it's actually nice to use, especially in console mode. Here's an area that users who don't have a background in console-based systems can't get their brain around: a good shell is many times more powerful than a weak GUI.
But we aren't talking about users who actually *want* power in the application domain where such systems excel. They want other things for reasons they may or may not be able to articulate.
I myself have a WinXP machine that I use for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I routinely reach the limits of current-generation processor, and I have actual needs for really expensive low-latency RAM. I also have a Powerbook that I use for photography and because I program in Objective-C/Cocoa and I use XCode for that.
But my main machine, where I do all my work, all my browsing, all my audio/video consumption that's not done in the music studio, what little gaming I do, and pretty much everything else I'm forgetting, is a Linux box. I don't *mean* to be fanatical about it, but every time I try to use any other system (not just Windows, I've had Solaris and HP workstations too, and I've tried to use the Powerbook for general purposes), I am driven under a *lash*, *beaten* back to using Linux. It's so bad, I cannot even understand most of the arguments that are supposedly raised against Linux in favor Windows.
Anyway, didn't mean to rant. I really just meant to say "me too" on the crappy, ancient laptop. Without it, I'm not sure I would even be able to acquire a machine with proper parallel and serial ports, or even a usable modem.
>When the answer to a user's question "I installed Linux and I can't get the network card working" changes from >"You twit, you have done something wrong" to "Yes, there seems to be a problem, how can I help" - that's the day > Linux can take over from Windows 98, or any Windows OS.
Of course you can cite where this is common in a legitimate support venue, and you wouldn't just be making up facts to support your conclusion, would you?
>Who needs 48U of rackspace and that much cable in their HOME?
I have half that much rack gear and probably a quarter mile of audio cable, just in my modest home recording studio. Except for my piano, I'm sure that patchbay cabling has been my largest single expense.
Your average network TV station has wiring that puts any telecomm to shame. I've seen patchbays just in control rooms that have far more going on than anything in the photos on the CEDIA website. That stuff *has* to be organized. Just the labelling systems are amazing, let alone the craftsmanship involved in wiring them.
I only know one murderer. She wanted to be committed to a mental institution but her family was too well-off for the state to do that (and her family was not so well-off to be able to afford an inpatient situation in a mental hospital.) So, one night she went to a pawn shop, bought a handgun over the counter, took it to her boyfriend's house, when he answered the door, she shot him in the chest, and then went into the house, called the police and waited for them.
I never talke to her after that, but my understanding was she got 12 years. That was in 1993 or 1994. So anyway, I doubt she ever played a video game more violent than Ms. Pac Man. Interestingly, we mutually know a very famous *attempted* murderer: John Hinckley!
Now, I know a *lot* of gamers. Just not a lot of murderers. I've known a few suicides, but all of them were punk rock musicians, none of them would have been particularly into games of any sort. Come to think of it, of all the gamers I've known, I can't think of any one of them ever committing a crime more serious than smoking pot.
>First, I said nothing about "treason." I said, "please."
Your general point of view suggests your membership in a larger group, who *do*.
"Second, if did observe that it was treasonous to, say, send a check to some account that funds training for the people that equip suicide bombers planning to attack a naval base, would you do it, just because someone observed that fact out loud? "
There you go -- you're trying to cloud the issue by suggesting that Chavez is some sort of Evil Person.
Go watch Pat Robertson some more.
I filled up at Citgo again today. ($2.26).
I'd like to visit Venezuela. So far, nobody has argued the problem with their government. Everyone who has brought up the subject has tried to insult me, but nobody has made a valid argument against them.
What's evil about Venezuela that makes them distinctly evil compared to, say, Sweden?
>Asking you to think about it is hardly "screaming."
Right wing loudmouths do a lot of screaming. I've become deaf to it.
"Now: your turn to explain why the Chavez world view is rational, good for freedom of expression and free trade, and the right thing for the people whose lives he's attempting to influence."
NO! I buy my gas from Citgo *BECAUSE* I have been told NOT TO by people who I do not respect because they insinuate that my moderate political views are tantamount to treason. That's the short and long of it.
"They may know that it is illegal, I am not sure that they are taught that it should not be done. It appears that they are taught how to have illegal things done while still maintaining plausable deniability."
What law do you claim has been broken, specifically? And what evidence do you have?
I would suggest that if you investigate the HP scandal, you will find no crime.
"Young adults walking out of business school know that to hit somebody up with a wiretap is illegal and should not be done."
There is no evidence, or even a suggestion thus far, of any wiretapping. In fact, it is not at all clear that any actual crime has been committed by anyone involved in the HP story.
"The right-wing believed Clinton would do the same thing in the late 1990's. Of course, it didn't happen. And it's about as likely to happen this time."
Suspending elections is one thing. Remaining President beyond the expiration of the term is a completely different thing.
If you suspended elections somehow, the President and Vice President term expires and the Speaker of the House takes office, appoints a VP, and life goes on without a "Constitutional crisis".
When I first heard that Citgo gas was operated by Venezuela (because Right-wing pundits started squawking about it), I began buying all my gas from 7-11 (a Citgo station). If I had never been told by a right-wing loudmouth that I was a traitor and that supporting Chavez was evil, it would never have occurred to me.
Keep screaming at people. Drive them under the *lash* to do *exactly* the thing you hate.
"I'm still glad I took the chemistry classes though, there are a lot more girls in Chem than in CompE, they bathe more, and I had all the answers. Too bad I didn't figure out how to talk to girls until 3 years later."
Actually it doesn't matter that the chicks are not in *your* classes. You just have to know where to look to find concentrations of those in psych and sociology and exercise science. The real action happens after hours anyway.
>...people like you, who are quick to downplay Republican crimes like the one we're discussing in that way.
Wait, what crime? You may not personally approve of an FCC exec quashing some report that puts their policy in an unfavorable light, but they did have the right to do it. It was their report to shred. I don't like it either, but I'm not prepared to take it to the Attorney General and demand prosecution for a crime.
Slashdot Mirror
>he password lock on the Blackberry unit allows 10 possible logins before it performs a wipe of the handheld >data.
You can wipe anyone's Blackberry? Please tell me this "feature" can be turned off!
I've long suspected that you could teach really young kids math concepts far beyond what is traditionally exposed. I'm not saying *everybody* has the aptitude, but I have no doubt that there are some who could grasp the concepts of math right through vector calc, differential equations, boundary value problems, and certainly into the logical reasoning stuff needed to do proofs. Why not? I feel cheated, since I know that at a very early age, I was exposed to a book that explained integration, and I was fascinated by the symbols and wanted to understand it. But no one was there to explain it to me. It was almost 20 years before I saw the concept again, and the only advantage I had was a bare concept that it might be mathematically interesting to compute the area under a curve. My grade school teachers responded well to the fact that I could read (I could read by age six, approximately as well as I could in high school, with the differences being in comprehension of human behavior and linear increases in vocabulary -- but my language mechanics were already complete.) But they did not respond well *at all* to my weaknesses in arithmetic. I was actually punished for this, even though my mathematical concepts and my curiosity were beyond those of the typical schoolkid. My arithmetic is *still* poor -- but I managed to get through all the undergrad calculus.
Anyway I really do think you could teach young kids some far more advanced mathematical ideas, especially set theory and logic ideas, than they are normally exposed to.
>Well, sure, but it still happens.
I agree, but I also happen to work in an environment with much larger installations
that look as together as the stuff featured in the article. Things that are well-organized
can be dealt with by any tech who knows the system, not just the guy who touched it last.
To be fair, we also have skunk works facilities where changes are too frequent to even consider
that level of organization. But the economic risks of a failure on some of our production systems
are orders of magnitude higher than the costs of keeping things organized, and beyond that, the costs
of stuff like fault-tolerant hardware, cooling and power technology, security, fire suppression, and
seismic resistance are also easily justified against our risks.
We've done lazy and cheap approaches in the past, learned lessons, and as we've matured (still counting the decades), we've established best practices and follow them. If a production system must be rewired or moved or what have you, we do it in a standard way. Nobody actually tries to make things perfect for a photo op like in the article, but it's certainly on the same level of organization; maybe more so -- the detail in the pictures isn't sufficient to see what kind of labeling system is used.
"I can't imagine replacing broken cables that are tiered into 24562345 tie wrapped globs, especially during an outage."
One of the benefits of a well-organized wiring system is that broken cables are vanishingly rare.
Think in terms of wiring between patchbays. Stuff that's carefully planned, and never rearranged after the initial setup (because dynamic stuff is the whole point of patchbays.)
>You're either good technically or a good artist. Not both. That's the way it's always been.
One technology that I've actually seen bridging that gap, is Rails.
I thought Rails was just hype until I saw creative types, people who would normally hire programmers or whoever, taking ideas from start to finish on their own.
For all the things that were supposed to do exactly that (going as far back as COBOL), the first one I've seen actually *doing* it, was Rails. It's both exciting and a little scary to see people taking their ideas from concept to revenue stream (or whatever), without much fuss at all. (Yeah, I know, Rails is "opinionated", but its opinion is that you should be doing web-based apps targeted at modern browsers. It happens to have had quite good timing for a language with such opinons.)
"The thing that shocks me though are the large multi-operator post audio consoles, with a half dozen 56 bundle MADI inputs, video sync, and feeds to ADR rooms. Intimidating."
YES!
I know guys who can deal with that stuff, but none ever seemed to have any passion (about anything). To my mind, they tend to be the kind of person who forgets about their work *completely* when they are not on the clock. I'm way different from that. If I don't have work that motivates me 24/7, I'm not happy, because there is no possible way I could consider such a trade to be "art."
I'm ranting, sorry... A/V production brings back a long, long list of bad memories
>An upgrade of the OS would downgrade the space in memory for applications.
I have an even crappier laptop than the one you describe. 16MB RAM. First-generation P-I, 75MHZ. 2Gig hard drive. I use it for exactly two things: sending faxes, and interfacing to a custom device which requires an old-school LPT port.
I tweaked a really small linux install for it. It was barely usable with Win31, less so with Win95, but with Linux it's actually nice to use, especially in console mode. Here's an area that users who don't have a background in console-based systems can't get their brain around: a good shell is many times more powerful than a weak GUI.
But we aren't talking about users who actually *want* power in the application domain where such systems excel. They want other things for reasons they may or may not be able to articulate.
I myself have a WinXP machine that I use for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I routinely reach the limits of current-generation processor, and I have actual needs for really expensive low-latency RAM. I also have a Powerbook that I use for photography and because I program in Objective-C/Cocoa and I use XCode for that.
But my main machine, where I do all my work, all my browsing, all my audio/video consumption that's not done in the music studio, what little gaming I do, and pretty much everything else I'm forgetting, is a Linux box. I don't *mean* to be fanatical about it, but every time I try to use any other system (not just Windows, I've had Solaris and HP workstations too, and I've tried to use the Powerbook for general purposes), I am driven under a *lash*, *beaten* back to using Linux. It's so bad, I cannot even understand most of the arguments that are supposedly raised against Linux in favor Windows.
Anyway, didn't mean to rant. I really just meant to say "me too" on the crappy, ancient laptop. Without it, I'm not sure I would even be able to acquire a machine with proper parallel and serial ports, or even a usable modem.
>When the answer to a user's question "I installed Linux and I can't get the network card working" changes from
>"You twit, you have done something wrong" to "Yes, there seems to be a problem, how can I help" - that's the day
> Linux can take over from Windows 98, or any Windows OS.
Of course you can cite where this is common in a legitimate support venue, and you wouldn't just be making up facts to support your conclusion, would you?
>Who needs 48U of rackspace and that much cable in their HOME?
I have half that much rack gear and probably a quarter mile of audio cable, just in my modest
home recording studio. Except for my piano, I'm sure that patchbay cabling has been my largest single expense.
Your average network TV station has wiring that puts any telecomm to shame. I've seen patchbays just in control rooms that have far more going on than anything in the photos on the CEDIA website. That stuff *has* to be organized. Just the labelling systems are amazing, let alone the craftsmanship involved in wiring them.
I only know one murderer. She wanted to be committed to a mental institution but her family was too well-off
for the state to do that (and her family was not so well-off to be able to afford an inpatient situation in a mental hospital.) So, one night she went to a pawn shop, bought a handgun over the counter, took it to her boyfriend's house, when he answered the door, she shot him in the chest, and then went into the house, called the police and waited for them.
I never talke to her after that, but my understanding was she got 12 years. That was in 1993 or 1994. So anyway, I doubt she ever played a video game more violent than Ms. Pac Man. Interestingly, we mutually know a very famous *attempted* murderer: John Hinckley!
Now, I know a *lot* of gamers. Just not a lot of murderers. I've known a few suicides, but all of them were punk rock musicians, none of them would have been particularly into games of any sort. Come to think of it, of all the gamers I've known, I can't think of any one of them ever committing a crime more serious than smoking pot.
>First, I said nothing about "treason." I said, "please."
Your general point of view suggests your membership in a larger group, who *do*.
"Second, if did observe that it was treasonous to, say, send a check to some account that funds training for the people that equip suicide bombers planning to attack a naval base, would you do it, just because someone observed that fact out loud? "
There you go -- you're trying to cloud the issue by suggesting that Chavez is some sort of Evil Person.
Go watch Pat Robertson some more.
I filled up at Citgo again today. ($2.26).
I'd like to visit Venezuela. So far, nobody has argued the problem with their government. Everyone who has brought up the subject has tried to insult me, but nobody has made a valid argument against them.
What's evil about Venezuela that makes them distinctly evil compared to, say, Sweden?
>Asking you to think about it is hardly "screaming."
Right wing loudmouths do a lot of screaming. I've become deaf to it.
"Now: your turn to explain why the Chavez world view is rational, good for freedom of expression and free trade, and the right thing for the people whose lives he's attempting to influence."
NO! I buy my gas from Citgo *BECAUSE* I have been told NOT TO by people who I do not respect because they insinuate that my moderate political views are tantamount to treason. That's the short and long of it.
"They may know that it is illegal, I am not sure that they are taught that it should not be done. It appears that they are taught how to have illegal things done while still maintaining plausable deniability."
What law do you claim has been broken, specifically? And what evidence do you have?
I would suggest that if you investigate the HP scandal, you will find no crime.
"Young adults walking out of business school know that to hit somebody up with a wiretap is illegal and should not be done."
There is no evidence, or even a suggestion thus far, of any wiretapping. In fact, it is not at all clear that any actual crime has been committed by anyone involved in the HP story.
"The right-wing believed Clinton would do the same thing in the late 1990's. Of course, it didn't happen. And it's about as likely to happen this time."
Suspending elections is one thing. Remaining President beyond the expiration of the term is a completely different thing.
If you suspended elections somehow, the President and Vice President term expires and the Speaker of the House takes office, appoints a VP, and life goes on without a "Constitutional crisis".
The "Rest of the World" enables the US, either by marching arm-in-arm to war with them, or through apathy.
Nobody raises any real opposition to the US, so the criticism rings hollow.
>Is the Republican controlled Congress going to investigate?
Strong indications are that the next Congress will not be Republican controlled.
>FYI, we can't get 95 or 98 octane gas from the pumps here in the US.
;-)
There's a station by my house that sells racing fuel at the pump
When I first heard that Citgo gas was operated by Venezuela (because Right-wing pundits started squawking about it), I began buying all my gas from 7-11 (a Citgo station). If I had never been told by a right-wing loudmouth that I was a traitor and that supporting Chavez was evil, it would never have occurred to me.
Keep screaming at people. Drive them under the *lash* to do *exactly* the thing you hate.
But demand for oil is nearly constant. Do you have any data to support your argument about demand reduction?
"I'm still glad I took the chemistry classes though, there are a lot more girls in Chem than in CompE, they bathe more, and I had all the answers. Too bad I didn't figure out how to talk to girls until 3 years later."
Actually it doesn't matter that the chicks are not in *your* classes. You just have to know where to look to find concentrations of those in psych and sociology and exercise science. The real action happens after hours anyway.
>...people like you, who are quick to downplay Republican crimes like the one we're discussing in that way.
Wait, what crime? You may not personally approve of an FCC exec quashing some report that puts their policy in an unfavorable light, but they did have the right to do it. It was their report to shred. I don't like it either, but I'm not prepared to take it to the Attorney General and demand prosecution for a crime.
I think it is irresponsible for Hyneman to use saws and metal grinders with just his frameless polycarbonate specs.
People who think in terms of "OSHA compliance" being forced on you tend not to have former co-workers who are blind of missing hands.