Last time we discussed it (I was a student representative on the committee until I graduated), I was told the details of the decision was privileged, but the general form of the evaluation was as follows. It was a weighted analysis with different importance assigned to each consideration. The criteria I remember were features, cost of ownership (including license, hardware, and administration personel), familiarity, expandability, and compatibility with our overall strategic plan. There were several other options evaluated, but those three were the only ones I remember and only one of the forgotten ones scored comparably (actually beating webct, if I remember correctly). Obviously, Moodle earns high marks for expandability and cost, although the latter was affected significantly by the expectation that it would require more administration/development labor.
Well, I personally think you should be able to competantly draw in 11 dimensions on the back of a napkin if you're going to study physics, but your comment was good enough to earn you a resounding "Zing!" for the day.
I was actually thinking he should draw them as 11-dimensional strings. We currently don't have much evidence supporting Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who model of the universe.
Always hard to say. My school just went through a really long discussion and evaluation period on the three (Blackboard, WebCT, and Moodle) and determined that a TCO analysis slightly favored Moodle (open source), but the ultimate decision was to go with Blackboard based on the fact half the faculty who wanted course management software were already familiar with it due to their trial licenses. If things stagnate while they figure out how best to accomplish their merger and promote their products, then things look good for Moodle. From the discussion we had, I think had Blackboard been in a position of change like this, we very well may have gone with Moodle. It honestly came down to, "Well, Blackboard costs a little bit more, but the nursing faculty already know how to use it." Institutions in a similar position could now might say, "Our experience with Blackboard has been good, but who knows what their next move will be."
You're missing every bit as much as I am. The article is just begging to ignite the bickering on Slashdot.
I could talk all I wanted about how much I love GAIM compared to any of the IM clients I've used, but that's just not important in regards to this article. The only thing I can think of from the article that GAIM doesn't do, is the annoying screen shake thing (*shudders*). With the sort of people for whom that makes or breaks the IM experience, functionality is nothing compared style (I personally prefer the looks of GAIM, but that's me). The same people don't buy iPods because of the great interface, they buy them because they're shiny and they like the shadow figure dancing around on the commercials. They don't use Windows because of compatibility issues in Linux, they use it because they're "not a Mac person" and either think Linux is too complicated for them or can't think beyond two options for an OS. GAIM is not limiting Linux adoption.
Crap, I must've gotten a defective camera then, because my $250 digital camera takes much better pictures than my sisters $150 film camera, and it has way more versatility. Sure, it's still nothing compared to an SLR, but it's a little more portable and a lot less expensive. If a camera fails under normal operating conditions before it's warranty is up, the vendor is at fault, as they admit in their warranty statements.
Aside from noting that an adware company ending their bundling of spyware with their product is roughly analogous to a suicide bomber deciding not to include shrapnel in his bomb when he takes out school bus, the article is mistitled. 180 Solutions is not, in fact, cutting spyware out of the picture. Reading the article reveals they are merely ceasing the inclusion of Integrated Search Technologies marvelous toolbar/browser hijackers.
Man how I love getting called in to fix a slow computer and seeing 3 or 4 of those toolbars, plus Yahoo, Google, and Lycos toolbars taking up half the screen.
To their credit, they have made the current version of Hotmail work properly with Firefox. It even had a fallback last time I tried to use Netscape 4.7. On the other hand, their Exchange web interface only works properly with IE. When using Firefox, it falls back on a stripped-down version, just like Hotmail does with Netscape 4.7. Gmail is nice enough to provide full-featured access for both of these browsers. I haven't tried either in any other browsers, so I can't speak for their capabilities there.
Ooh, Ooh, Ooh! Flamebait! I can't wait to respond.
Seriously, who ever said there was a pretense? We are talking about the military here. The same goes for joining the military. Every recruit or cadet knows they could be ordered to kill another human being. That's a part of war. Sure war sucks, but that doesn't change the fact that we have to deal with it. You can go on hating all the soldiers and all the people who, with good intent behind their endeavors, try to make life easier for our soldiers by making things like unmanned vehicles, but that isn't going to magically end war.
It's theoretically possible to "crack" a reactor vessel open with a torpedo, which would be kind of messy, but it's unlikely anything would spread very far because the reactors are tough. There very likely wouldn't be enough energy left to break up the fuel rods significantly and disperse the fuel. As far as cooking off a nuclear missile, I'm guessing that's pretty unlikely, too. Starting a critical reaction of a modern warhead requires a very uniform implosion of the plutonium. The warheads are protected against reentry, so I don't expect the temperature or pressure to rise high enough from a blast that's already traveled through an Ohio's 3+ inch pressure hull, plus several feet of empty space and a missile tube to even start a dirty reaction. That leaves the same concern as with the reactor about dispersing radioactive material.
As soon as you start allowing the Designer to tinker with the universe in motion (designing Humans, apes, and other such forms of life) you run into serious basic physics issues-- where is the designer? If the Designer is designing the whole universe, how is the Designer transmitting the designs to various places without violating c?
I might not consider intelligent design in quite the same fashion as many of it's other proponetns, but, if you're willing to accept my stepping out onto the metaphysics branch, I'd suggest that the Designer, whom I know as God, is Himself independent of the universe He created. Essentially, He exists outside of it and is not bound to it's order, which is part of His creation. In regards to C, my unverifiable conjecture is that it's part of His creation. Remember here, most devout Christians consider God to be omnipotent, which is a pretty dramatic concept. If He can create the rules of physics which govern our lives, why shouldn't He also be able to break them or work around them? And if He's omniscient, neither should uncertainty principle pose any problem?
As far as proposing a rigorous theory, much less some wonderful proof of God's existance, I can't. I really like the line of reasoning about how the existance of a clock hints at the existance of a clockmaker, but it still requires faith. I can point to all sorts of stories in the Bible or modern times about miracles, but those who haven't experienced them will always be able to come up with an alternative explanation. I will, however, paraphrase one Bible verse, from Mark if I remember right, about life that seems to speak directly to this issue: "The truth is given to those who willing to seek it, but it is kept secret from those who don't." We can grab at little strands of the truth all thoughout life, but ultimately, I believe there's a lot more behind it than many people are willing to accept.
For the record, intelligent design does not intrinsically deny the validity of any of the current leading theories or observations regarding the formation of the universe, evolution, or whatever else. It simply asserts that some underlying order (God) is behind the functioning of the universe. Think of it as either an alternative to the anthropic principle (the universe is how it is because we wouldn't be here observe that it is if it were otherwise) or else a rather poor articulation of religious beliefs. Sadly, the loudest proponents do, as I gather you've noticed, seem to share much in common with the electric universe crowd.
Personally, although I see the concepts of intelligent design a feasible and very attractive union of my religious beliefs and modern scientific observation, I don't understand the need to discuss it in public school curricula. Discussing the universe from the viewpoint afforded by scientific observation and theory presents no threat to theology.
To build on what you said, in fact, Microsoft does not appear to be making any significant changes to IE 7 to bring it closer to standards compliance. From the discussion I've heard coming from MSDN beta users, it sounds like only very small improvements are being made to the CSS 1 support, virtually nothing for CSS 2, and no fix to the IE box model. I suppose what they're doing when they say they're re-writing it from the ground up is re-writing the framework, but leaving the rendering the same.
I agree. This is pretty ridiculous. I'm not going to get carried away with my thoughts on suing gun manufacturers for crimes committed with their products, but this takes the same line of reasoning one alarming step further. Let's think about this for a second. You can't blame the company that installed the burglar alarm in your house for your stuff getting ripped off if you tell your code to the first random guy who knocks on your door and says, "Hi, I am Mtumombo Zaifi, the sweepstakes administrator for Nigerian Remodeling, Incorporated..."
In the same way the banks can't protect stupid people who give out their personal information to people who send them unsolicited emails with poor spelling. Banks can and should educate their customers about the dangers that exist in sharing any information, and they should take every precaution to make sure they aren't the source of a leak of their customers information, but this is clearly, too far.
Of course, that implies being personally responsible for yourself. The people who fall prey to 419 scams are the same sort whose computers I find myself removing the Blaster worm from 2 years after the Windows update came out that protects against it.
I thought there was a phase back in the 30's or so of trying penicillin as a treatment for everything? I'm amazed this connection wasn't made until 1982. How long have we been treating open sores with antibiotic ointment? I know since at least 1982, since that's the year I was born, and my mom's always had a tube handy to smear into my wounds, exacerbating the pain.
I'm a little curious to see what the inside of a Kirov class cruiser looks like. I doubt even the CIA or the navy knows exactly. Based on what I've been allowed to see of our own conventionally powered Aegis cruisers and destroyers in the tours I've been on, and the fact that the layout of nuclear-powered ships is even more protected in both the US navies, there has to be a huge amount of conjecture going on here.
Still, I've always been interested in playing a game that effectively encompasses all of a relatively small area, rather than meandering through small parts of a huge area. Quite a few pictures of the Kirovs are publicly available, and if they study other ships (retired destroyers, battleships, etc), they should be able to create a very believable environment, with all sorts of mundane curiousities to explore. If the entire game really takes place on this ship, notwithstanding the fact that it's dimensionally nearly as big as an Iowa class battleship, it should lend itself well to that sort of game design. Being on a ship also offers some fun. For example, they could change the weather and sea states throughout the game (how about throwing a grenade in a 40 knot wind?). I thought the varying weather was one of the nice subtleties of Enigma: Rising Tide (although that's not an FPS).
Of course, it could end up simply sucking like most other games out there.
I agree. They should just leave it as KB2004 or whatever the heck it was before until they decided if it's a planet or a Kuiper Belt object, then give it a proper Roman mythology name (if it's a planet), like Persephone. I think that name fits pretty well for something so far away and cold. None of this Inuit crap like Sedna, and to take a name from New Zealand TV show is downright unscientific.
I assume it's intended to more generally portray what everything else looks like, that aged and eroded. Contours and features across the solar system generally tend to be smoothed over by erosion or the settling of debris from subsequent meteor impacts. In contrast, Hyperion show's quite a few sharply defined ridges. By the way, I think the second image is taken in infrared, and the color choices for displaying it are even more confusing.
Interesting, I didn't notice it before. Could be something tectonic. Plus, that picture is of Tethys, which has already been noticed for having a more obvious peculiar feature. That's no moon that's a...no wait, it is a moon, otherwise we'd be dead by now.
Whoa, calm down there. I was being sarcastic. Perhaps not very effectively, but trying anyways. If well-to-do people didn't invest in this sort of thing, the benefits would never become available to the common man. I'm excited about it, too, and I think it's completely awesome that you have this opportunity. Have a blast...pun intended.
It took me a second to figure out which record-setting Voyager you were talking about: the first plane to fly non-stop around the world (although it took 9 days!) or the one that left our solar system (depending how you define it) a couple months ago. That would've been a really fast return trip!
Slashdot Mirror
Last time we discussed it (I was a student representative on the committee until I graduated), I was told the details of the decision was privileged, but the general form of the evaluation was as follows. It was a weighted analysis with different importance assigned to each consideration. The criteria I remember were features, cost of ownership (including license, hardware, and administration personel), familiarity, expandability, and compatibility with our overall strategic plan. There were several other options evaluated, but those three were the only ones I remember and only one of the forgotten ones scored comparably (actually beating webct, if I remember correctly). Obviously, Moodle earns high marks for expandability and cost, although the latter was affected significantly by the expectation that it would require more administration/development labor.
Well, I personally think you should be able to competantly draw in 11 dimensions on the back of a napkin if you're going to study physics, but your comment was good enough to earn you a resounding "Zing!" for the day.
I was actually thinking he should draw them as 11-dimensional strings. We currently don't have much evidence supporting Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who model of the universe.
Always hard to say. My school just went through a really long discussion and evaluation period on the three (Blackboard, WebCT, and Moodle) and determined that a TCO analysis slightly favored Moodle (open source), but the ultimate decision was to go with Blackboard based on the fact half the faculty who wanted course management software were already familiar with it due to their trial licenses. If things stagnate while they figure out how best to accomplish their merger and promote their products, then things look good for Moodle. From the discussion we had, I think had Blackboard been in a position of change like this, we very well may have gone with Moodle. It honestly came down to, "Well, Blackboard costs a little bit more, but the nursing faculty already know how to use it." Institutions in a similar position could now might say, "Our experience with Blackboard has been good, but who knows what their next move will be."
You're missing every bit as much as I am. The article is just begging to ignite the bickering on Slashdot.
I could talk all I wanted about how much I love GAIM compared to any of the IM clients I've used, but that's just not important in regards to this article. The only thing I can think of from the article that GAIM doesn't do, is the annoying screen shake thing (*shudders*). With the sort of people for whom that makes or breaks the IM experience, functionality is nothing compared style (I personally prefer the looks of GAIM, but that's me). The same people don't buy iPods because of the great interface, they buy them because they're shiny and they like the shadow figure dancing around on the commercials. They don't use Windows because of compatibility issues in Linux, they use it because they're "not a Mac person" and either think Linux is too complicated for them or can't think beyond two options for an OS. GAIM is not limiting Linux adoption.
I see. Parent must've been modded down to heck, because I couldn't find the comment.
Crap, I must've gotten a defective camera then, because my $250 digital camera takes much better pictures than my sisters $150 film camera, and it has way more versatility. Sure, it's still nothing compared to an SLR, but it's a little more portable and a lot less expensive. If a camera fails under normal operating conditions before it's warranty is up, the vendor is at fault, as they admit in their warranty statements.
Aside from noting that an adware company ending their bundling of spyware with their product is roughly analogous to a suicide bomber deciding not to include shrapnel in his bomb when he takes out school bus, the article is mistitled. 180 Solutions is not, in fact, cutting spyware out of the picture. Reading the article reveals they are merely ceasing the inclusion of Integrated Search Technologies marvelous toolbar/browser hijackers.
Man how I love getting called in to fix a slow computer and seeing 3 or 4 of those toolbars, plus Yahoo, Google, and Lycos toolbars taking up half the screen.
To their credit, they have made the current version of Hotmail work properly with Firefox. It even had a fallback last time I tried to use Netscape 4.7. On the other hand, their Exchange web interface only works properly with IE. When using Firefox, it falls back on a stripped-down version, just like Hotmail does with Netscape 4.7. Gmail is nice enough to provide full-featured access for both of these browsers. I haven't tried either in any other browsers, so I can't speak for their capabilities there.
Ooh, Ooh, Ooh! Flamebait! I can't wait to respond.
Seriously, who ever said there was a pretense? We are talking about the military here. The same goes for joining the military. Every recruit or cadet knows they could be ordered to kill another human being. That's a part of war. Sure war sucks, but that doesn't change the fact that we have to deal with it. You can go on hating all the soldiers and all the people who, with good intent behind their endeavors, try to make life easier for our soldiers by making things like unmanned vehicles, but that isn't going to magically end war.
It's theoretically possible to "crack" a reactor vessel open with a torpedo, which would be kind of messy, but it's unlikely anything would spread very far because the reactors are tough. There very likely wouldn't be enough energy left to break up the fuel rods significantly and disperse the fuel. As far as cooking off a nuclear missile, I'm guessing that's pretty unlikely, too. Starting a critical reaction of a modern warhead requires a very uniform implosion of the plutonium. The warheads are protected against reentry, so I don't expect the temperature or pressure to rise high enough from a blast that's already traveled through an Ohio's 3+ inch pressure hull, plus several feet of empty space and a missile tube to even start a dirty reaction. That leaves the same concern as with the reactor about dispersing radioactive material.
Unless, of course, you consider Canada to be land.
I might not consider intelligent design in quite the same fashion as many of it's other proponetns, but, if you're willing to accept my stepping out onto the metaphysics branch, I'd suggest that the Designer, whom I know as God, is Himself independent of the universe He created. Essentially, He exists outside of it and is not bound to it's order, which is part of His creation. In regards to C, my unverifiable conjecture is that it's part of His creation. Remember here, most devout Christians consider God to be omnipotent, which is a pretty dramatic concept. If He can create the rules of physics which govern our lives, why shouldn't He also be able to break them or work around them? And if He's omniscient, neither should uncertainty principle pose any problem?
As far as proposing a rigorous theory, much less some wonderful proof of God's existance, I can't. I really like the line of reasoning about how the existance of a clock hints at the existance of a clockmaker, but it still requires faith. I can point to all sorts of stories in the Bible or modern times about miracles, but those who haven't experienced them will always be able to come up with an alternative explanation. I will, however, paraphrase one Bible verse, from Mark if I remember right, about life that seems to speak directly to this issue: "The truth is given to those who willing to seek it, but it is kept secret from those who don't." We can grab at little strands of the truth all thoughout life, but ultimately, I believe there's a lot more behind it than many people are willing to accept.
For the record, intelligent design does not intrinsically deny the validity of any of the current leading theories or observations regarding the formation of the universe, evolution, or whatever else. It simply asserts that some underlying order (God) is behind the functioning of the universe. Think of it as either an alternative to the anthropic principle (the universe is how it is because we wouldn't be here observe that it is if it were otherwise) or else a rather poor articulation of religious beliefs. Sadly, the loudest proponents do, as I gather you've noticed, seem to share much in common with the electric universe crowd.
Personally, although I see the concepts of intelligent design a feasible and very attractive union of my religious beliefs and modern scientific observation, I don't understand the need to discuss it in public school curricula. Discussing the universe from the viewpoint afforded by scientific observation and theory presents no threat to theology.
To build on what you said, in fact, Microsoft does not appear to be making any significant changes to IE 7 to bring it closer to standards compliance. From the discussion I've heard coming from MSDN beta users, it sounds like only very small improvements are being made to the CSS 1 support, virtually nothing for CSS 2, and no fix to the IE box model. I suppose what they're doing when they say they're re-writing it from the ground up is re-writing the framework, but leaving the rendering the same.
I agree. This is pretty ridiculous. I'm not going to get carried away with my thoughts on suing gun manufacturers for crimes committed with their products, but this takes the same line of reasoning one alarming step further. Let's think about this for a second. You can't blame the company that installed the burglar alarm in your house for your stuff getting ripped off if you tell your code to the first random guy who knocks on your door and says, "Hi, I am Mtumombo Zaifi, the sweepstakes administrator for Nigerian Remodeling, Incorporated..."
In the same way the banks can't protect stupid people who give out their personal information to people who send them unsolicited emails with poor spelling. Banks can and should educate their customers about the dangers that exist in sharing any information, and they should take every precaution to make sure they aren't the source of a leak of their customers information, but this is clearly, too far.
Of course, that implies being personally responsible for yourself. The people who fall prey to 419 scams are the same sort whose computers I find myself removing the Blaster worm from 2 years after the Windows update came out that protects against it.
Which doesn't make it any easier to read or follow. Please tell me Ender's game is not written like that article.
I thought there was a phase back in the 30's or so of trying penicillin as a treatment for everything? I'm amazed this connection wasn't made until 1982. How long have we been treating open sores with antibiotic ointment? I know since at least 1982, since that's the year I was born, and my mom's always had a tube handy to smear into my wounds, exacerbating the pain.
I'm a little curious to see what the inside of a Kirov class cruiser looks like. I doubt even the CIA or the navy knows exactly. Based on what I've been allowed to see of our own conventionally powered Aegis cruisers and destroyers in the tours I've been on, and the fact that the layout of nuclear-powered ships is even more protected in both the US navies, there has to be a huge amount of conjecture going on here.
Still, I've always been interested in playing a game that effectively encompasses all of a relatively small area, rather than meandering through small parts of a huge area. Quite a few pictures of the Kirovs are publicly available, and if they study other ships (retired destroyers, battleships, etc), they should be able to create a very believable environment, with all sorts of mundane curiousities to explore. If the entire game really takes place on this ship, notwithstanding the fact that it's dimensionally nearly as big as an Iowa class battleship, it should lend itself well to that sort of game design. Being on a ship also offers some fun. For example, they could change the weather and sea states throughout the game (how about throwing a grenade in a 40 knot wind?). I thought the varying weather was one of the nice subtleties of Enigma: Rising Tide (although that's not an FPS).
Of course, it could end up simply sucking like most other games out there.
I agree. They should just leave it as KB2004 or whatever the heck it was before until they decided if it's a planet or a Kuiper Belt object, then give it a proper Roman mythology name (if it's a planet), like Persephone. I think that name fits pretty well for something so far away and cold. None of this Inuit crap like Sedna, and to take a name from New Zealand TV show is downright unscientific.
The gravity of this planetoid is insignificant next to the power of the force.
I assume it's intended to more generally portray what everything else looks like, that aged and eroded. Contours and features across the solar system generally tend to be smoothed over by erosion or the settling of debris from subsequent meteor impacts. In contrast, Hyperion show's quite a few sharply defined ridges. By the way, I think the second image is taken in infrared, and the color choices for displaying it are even more confusing.
Interesting, I didn't notice it before. Could be something tectonic. Plus, that picture is of Tethys, which has already been noticed for having a more obvious peculiar feature. That's no moon that's a...no wait, it is a moon, otherwise we'd be dead by now.
Whoa, calm down there. I was being sarcastic. Perhaps not very effectively, but trying anyways. If well-to-do people didn't invest in this sort of thing, the benefits would never become available to the common man. I'm excited about it, too, and I think it's completely awesome that you have this opportunity. Have a blast...pun intended.
It took me a second to figure out which record-setting Voyager you were talking about: the first plane to fly non-stop around the world (although it took 9 days!) or the one that left our solar system (depending how you define it) a couple months ago. That would've been a really fast return trip!