I'm writing to my MP, with a long list of everything that's been reported here. It might do anything, but he'll at least respond. I'm fed up with this incompetent government being completely and utterly unable to do anything without bringing terrorism and an illiberal attitude into everything. Argh.
Who exactly proposed this motion, so that I may gather my friends and pitchforks? A revolution in this country is long overdue. Ironically, I quite like our system of government, just not the weak ignorants who find themselves in it...
I just spent 9-5 yesterday underground in our labs, programming a simple processor with one or two byte opcodes, having just wired up a very large number of logic gates (via a patch panel) to its control lines in order to create subtraction and addition functions. Registers are displayed in the form of eight blinking LEDs on the front. The whole thing is about as big as a large modern laptop, and infinitely more simple -- it had a very limited instruction set (jump conditional, add, subtract, jump unconditional, start subroutine, etc) and a selectable clock speed of between 1Hz and 300 Hz. The standard method of debugging is, of course, to step through cycle-by-cycle and check the values of the registers and memory making sure they're what you expect them to be.
After two hours trying to get a program to print out the first 12 fibronanci numbers to work (entered via lots and lots of hex on the 'front panel', compounded by the fact that I hadn't noticed one of the wires had fallen out...), I can tell you that the final sight of this very simple computer working to do something useful was inspiring indeed. I've written some assembly overnight that should act as a 4-bit multiplier, and some more assembly to act as a memory-checker.
Regarding what others have said on the page: Millikan's Oil-Drop hurts your eyes, and doesn't give very good results. I personally hate it. On the other hand, if you first years have done Maxwells equations properly (I learnt them in my first year; and it's not hard to derive c=1/sqrt(\mu_0 \epsilon_0) in free space from them), then it's easy to have equipment that allows you to very, very, accurately measure the speed of light. This I did find cool indeed. Likewise for fourier optics and information theory, along with anything that involved liquid nitrogen ("Introduction to pressure gauges"). Finally, there are a few important QM demonstrations that you might like to consider -- Stern-Gerlach, Zeeman effect, and so on.
Do you perhaps think that the "Slow HD uptake" referred to in the article might be as a consequence of the overwhelming cost of, and over-restrictive DRM associated with HD video? Have you thought perhaps that for the vast majority of spice-girl-loving, Shrek-3 adoring consumers, DVD is more than "Good enough"?
A TI-89 Titanium is by far the best graphic calculator I would ever think to own - it's almost enough to make me want to learn Motorola 68k assembly. However, I do think you should remember that the trouble with getting something too amazing, too wonderful, too....advanced....is that, such with the TI-89 Ti, you'll get a wonderful computer algebra system on it, and then a large number of exams suddenly become a lot more frustrating should you become reliant upon it....
I've just been offered a place to read Physics at the University of Oxford, and I have to ask this - as a future academic, what about letting students use the machine to print their own 'books'? I'd put a fair bit more effort into making my lecture notes - across all modules - more understandable if I knew that one day I'd have a whole series of paperbacks sitting on my desk with my name on them, even if they were all in a production run of '1'! It would be lovely to present an arts student with a book filled with *their* essays at the end of their degree - and this machine makes it practical. I'm sure that (somehow...) it'd be quite happy with pdf's - something most people would be able to produce with a little bit of help - and the end result would be a bit cheaper than printing it all out yourself, and getting it bound somewhere...
Sir, you have educated me greatly, and I am pleased to discover that there are still some people with brains on Slashdot. I am most certainly not a biologist - I haven't had any studies in it post-16 - but I am a physicist with a chemical background, and your effort is very much appreciated:-).
Alas, I have just seen that one of the wondrous features the new iTunes Music Store boasts is the ability to lock out iTunes 5. This is the version I've been using on all my macs for one real reason - when I download their free singles of the week (which vary a lot in quality), I like to be able to remove the DRM immediately afterwards.
It appears that I am being forced to upgrade. Ahh well. I can also presume that my 4th Gen iPod Colour will not be able to play the new games. How I love thy, apple....
No, no, no! It would be the person who sold the data-mined product who'd be infringing on Amazons "Click to buy" patent! And you know what we do to Patent Infringers...
Personally, my favourite is his "Why Does This Always Happen To Me", from Poodle Hat. Not only are the lyrics hysterical, but the Ben Folds' Piano is just loverly - I've been really impressed by him as a musician, and I dohope that right after that track is one starting "Screw the RIAA...."
Not a podcast I know, but, and I hate to sound like I'm spamming, one of the best non-music sources of audio on this planet that I know about. You can get selected programmes - From Our Own Correspondent, for example - as podcasts (they're in the iTunes database of podcasts), and listen live, albeit over an EVIL real stream. In terms of fiction, radio four really is top notch - watch out for some of the plays, and have fun for the 'Listen again' buttons. Download the stream, and convert to MP3 for iPod-liciousness. Yes, I hate streams too...
Part of the reason I think we see lots of information-orientated podcasts is simply because most commercial radio seems to be not exactly unbiased - and doesn't cover 'speciality' subjects - and, it has to be said, probably because good original fiction is a hell of a lot harder to produce than throwing a skirt infront of a microphone and feeding the result into a DJ-4000 box (á la Bart).
Oh! And for 'erotic fiction' that is actually quite good, as well as a not-really-smutty talk about the adult industry, try open source sex (If you're into that kind of thing).
The worrying thing is that this is probably going to allow him to have a greater influence over GTA than all that publicity did. However, I still think the next GTA will hit the shops irrespective somehow....
HDCP protection you say? Good thing it's already been broken (albeit anonymously). Coming new to you, DRM'd speakers, and your very own set of ContentProtection ((TM)) eyelids!
If you RTFA, then you'll find that this isn't a case of "Modded xboxes = bad" it's "Modded xbox + large amounts of commercial copyright violation = bad". Which I don't think most people would have a problem with. Slashdot strikes again!
(Although, having said that, I'm here on a day-pass. Anyone else think that the idea is actually pretty great?)
...then I will be able to rip it. I'm willing to bet money that just plonking that disc in (on my mac) will automatically open iTunes up nicely (NOT autorun, by the way- it's a preference set in system preferences to 'Open all Audio CDs with...') and then automatically rip and eject. Considering Start.app doesn't seem to do anything other than install two kexts (kextunload, anyone? Tad easier than removing XCP!) I really don't think people would open it by default....
Slashdot Mirror
I'm writing to my MP, with a long list of everything that's been reported here. It might do anything, but he'll at least respond. I'm fed up with this incompetent government being completely and utterly unable to do anything without bringing terrorism and an illiberal attitude into everything. Argh.
Who exactly proposed this motion, so that I may gather my friends and pitchforks? A revolution in this country is long overdue. Ironically, I quite like our system of government, just not the weak ignorants who find themselves in it...
I just spent 9-5 yesterday underground in our labs, programming a simple processor with one or two byte opcodes, having just wired up a very large number of logic gates (via a patch panel) to its control lines in order to create subtraction and addition functions. Registers are displayed in the form of eight blinking LEDs on the front. The whole thing is about as big as a large modern laptop, and infinitely more simple -- it had a very limited instruction set (jump conditional, add, subtract, jump unconditional, start subroutine, etc) and a selectable clock speed of between 1Hz and 300 Hz. The standard method of debugging is, of course, to step through cycle-by-cycle and check the values of the registers and memory making sure they're what you expect them to be.
After two hours trying to get a program to print out the first 12 fibronanci numbers to work (entered via lots and lots of hex on the 'front panel', compounded by the fact that I hadn't noticed one of the wires had fallen out...), I can tell you that the final sight of this very simple computer working to do something useful was inspiring indeed. I've written some assembly overnight that should act as a 4-bit multiplier, and some more assembly to act as a memory-checker.
Regarding what others have said on the page: Millikan's Oil-Drop hurts your eyes, and doesn't give very good results. I personally hate it. On the other hand, if you first years have done Maxwells equations properly (I learnt them in my first year; and it's not hard to derive c=1/sqrt(\mu_0 \epsilon_0) in free space from them), then it's easy to have equipment that allows you to very, very, accurately measure the speed of light. This I did find cool indeed. Likewise for fourier optics and information theory, along with anything that involved liquid nitrogen ("Introduction to pressure gauges"). Finally, there are a few important QM demonstrations that you might like to consider -- Stern-Gerlach, Zeeman effect, and so on.
Good luck!
Do you perhaps think that the "Slow HD uptake" referred to in the article might be as a consequence of the overwhelming cost of, and over-restrictive DRM associated with HD video? Have you thought perhaps that for the vast majority of spice-girl-loving, Shrek-3 adoring consumers, DVD is more than "Good enough"?
Like an astronaut, I imagine you'd be wearing a diaper :-).
I for one still run 2000 Pro...in the rare occasions where my x86-64 boxen aren't running linux :-).
Where might I see said statue?
Purely for.....exhibitionary....purposes, of course....
I feel obliged to point you to this at this point :-).
Cue the 'My computer's on fire!' jokes in 5, 4, 3, 2...
"...Remember the world before Photoshop, the laser printer, and Desktop Publishing?..."
I was born in 1989 you insensitive clod!
A TI-89 Titanium is by far the best graphic calculator I would ever think to own - it's almost enough to make me want to learn Motorola 68k assembly. However, I do think you should remember that the trouble with getting something too amazing, too wonderful, too....advanced....is that, such with the TI-89 Ti, you'll get a wonderful computer algebra system on it, and then a large number of exams suddenly become a lot more frustrating should you become reliant upon it....
I've just been offered a place to read Physics at the University of Oxford, and I have to ask this - as a future academic, what about letting students use the machine to print their own 'books'? I'd put a fair bit more effort into making my lecture notes - across all modules - more understandable if I knew that one day I'd have a whole series of paperbacks sitting on my desk with my name on them, even if they were all in a production run of '1'! It would be lovely to present an arts student with a book filled with *their* essays at the end of their degree - and this machine makes it practical. I'm sure that (somehow...) it'd be quite happy with pdf's - something most people would be able to produce with a little bit of help - and the end result would be a bit cheaper than printing it all out yourself, and getting it bound somewhere...
Sir, you have educated me greatly, and I am pleased to discover that there are still some people with brains on Slashdot. I am most certainly not a biologist - I haven't had any studies in it post-16 - but I am a physicist with a chemical background, and your effort is very much appreciated :-).
Alas, I have just seen that one of the wondrous features the new iTunes Music Store boasts is the ability to lock out iTunes 5. This is the version I've been using on all my macs for one real reason - when I download their free singles of the week (which vary a lot in quality), I like to be able to remove the DRM immediately afterwards. It appears that I am being forced to upgrade. Ahh well. I can also presume that my 4th Gen iPod Colour will not be able to play the new games. How I love thy, apple....
No, no, no! It would be the person who sold the data-mined product who'd be infringing on Amazons "Click to buy" patent! And you know what we do to Patent Infringers...
Personally, my favourite is his "Why Does This Always Happen To Me", from Poodle Hat. Not only are the lyrics hysterical, but the Ben Folds' Piano is just loverly - I've been really impressed by him as a musician, and I do hope that right after that track is one starting "Screw the RIAA...."
Standards Compliant Hmn?
:).
Try the CSS one for a real laugh
Is this going to be the successor to Intel's somewhat vapourware "WiMAX" project - or is it this in all but name?
Have you tried good 'ol Radio 4?
Not a podcast I know, but, and I hate to sound like I'm spamming, one of the best non-music sources of audio on this planet that I know about. You can get selected programmes - From Our Own Correspondent, for example - as podcasts (they're in the iTunes database of podcasts), and listen live, albeit over an EVIL real stream. In terms of fiction, radio four really is top notch - watch out for some of the plays, and have fun for the 'Listen again' buttons. Download the stream, and convert to MP3 for iPod-liciousness. Yes, I hate streams too...
Part of the reason I think we see lots of information-orientated podcasts is simply because most commercial radio seems to be not exactly unbiased - and doesn't cover 'speciality' subjects - and, it has to be said, probably because good original fiction is a hell of a lot harder to produce than throwing a skirt infront of a microphone and feeding the result into a DJ-4000 box (á la Bart).
Oh! And for 'erotic fiction' that is actually quite good, as well as a not-really-smutty talk about the adult industry, try open source sex (If you're into that kind of thing).
The worrying thing is that this is probably going to allow him to have a greater influence over GTA than all that publicity did. However, I still think the next GTA will hit the shops irrespective somehow....
"If you cannot view this Captcha, please email foo@bar.com [spam assasin'd, of course], or call 0800-1234-567"
The question we all REALLY want to know the answer to is this: How does the xbox 360 power supply brick compare to your electric space heater?
HDCP protection you say? Good thing it's already been broken (albeit anonymously). Coming new to you, DRM'd speakers, and your very own set of ContentProtection ((TM)) eyelids!
If you RTFA, then you'll find that this isn't a case of "Modded xboxes = bad" it's "Modded xbox + large amounts of commercial copyright violation = bad". Which I don't think most people would have a problem with. Slashdot strikes again!
(Although, having said that, I'm here on a day-pass. Anyone else think that the idea is actually pretty great?)
...then I will be able to rip it. I'm willing to bet money that just plonking that disc in (on my mac) will automatically open iTunes up nicely (NOT autorun, by the way- it's a preference set in system preferences to 'Open all Audio CDs with ...') and then automatically rip and eject. Considering Start.app doesn't seem to do anything other than install two kexts (kextunload, anyone? Tad easier than removing XCP!) I really don't think people would open it by default....