The fact that the competition itself is still treated as new and novel after all these years shows that it has failed in its basic goals.
While I won't deny that it is somewhat disappointing that FIRST has not garnered more attention from the general public, your statement couldn't be farther from the truth. FIRST's primary goal is to motivate and inspire the high school students involved to pursue careers in science and technology, and as a participant myself (High school senior and captain of Team 246, BU Overclocked) as far as I can tell FIRST has been VERY successful at achieving it's goals.
According to the website at USFIRST.org, "FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs that build not only science and technology skills and interests, but also self-confidence, leadership, and life skills."
Thousands of the high school students who are coming out of this program, myself included, have found something and have experience in something they love and want to pursue through college and, perhaps, the rest of their lives. FIRST reaches over 10,000 students every year and accomplishes more with regards to high school engineering education than any other program I have heard of. Every year it is growing and, as the article said, attracting the attention of more and more major sponsors. This year, the director of DARPA spoke before the final matches of the Championship event, pledging to become a major sponsor of FIRST over the next few years.
Given all this, I can't think of a way which FIRST *isn't* achieving its goals.
This uses the bluetooth capibilitys of the Wiimote, not the infrared pointing capabilitys, which means there is nothing to plug in. Essentially, it uses the accelerometer to sense the directions of your movements but cannot tell where you are pointing it.
I think you have the right idea about that, but you're looking at it the wrong way. I don't read slashdot, or any other blogs, so that I can post to inflate my own ego, and I don't think the majority of Slashdoters do either. Rather, I go to slashdot because it (usually) has interesting content and, more importantly, *other people* comment on it. I don't usually comment on things I don't know much about, and it's wonderful to be able to read an article and then compare it to other people's knowlage and opinions. It's often hard to tell how biased an article might be, or what it's significance is in a broder context, but having (usually) intellegent discussion and comments on it makes the articles much more useful and stimulating.
I agree completely. I actually have an old Gatway PC running windows 98 *right now* that my younger brother uses for word processing and surfing the web, not much more. It's about useless for even that, though, given it's age. I'm going to buy a new Mac Mini this week to replace it with. We fall into the catagory of "Don't care about *that* computer because it does a fine job of what it does, but would like something nicer when we replace it."
Admittedly this upgrade has nothing to do with Windows 89 support, but many of the people looking to upgrade their 'just barely working' 89 systems will probably look beyond the cheapest Dell they can find.
- Toby
*disclosure* - I do consider myself to be a mac fan boy, and I have been using them since they looked like this: http://www.futurebots.com/mac.jpg
How long will it be before I can just play PS3 games on my own non-PS3 PC? It seems to me that it can't be *too* hard to make that happen, and make the PS3 completely pointless to begin with.
Sony, of course, will DRM the crap out of it, but that didn't stop PSP homebrew apps from being developed.
Am I the only one who read the title and thought "Wow, Microsoft wants to hire Steve Jobs? AND Steve Jobs is might become the largest stock holder of Disney? Good day for him..."
- Toby
Slashdot Mirror
While I won't deny that it is somewhat disappointing that FIRST has not garnered more attention from the general public, your statement couldn't be farther from the truth. FIRST's primary goal is to motivate and inspire the high school students involved to pursue careers in science and technology, and as a participant myself (High school senior and captain of Team 246, BU Overclocked) as far as I can tell FIRST has been VERY successful at achieving it's goals.
According to the website at USFIRST.org, "FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs that build not only science and technology skills and interests, but also self-confidence, leadership, and life skills."
Thousands of the high school students who are coming out of this program, myself included, have found something and have experience in something they love and want to pursue through college and, perhaps, the rest of their lives. FIRST reaches over 10,000 students every year and accomplishes more with regards to high school engineering education than any other program I have heard of. Every year it is growing and, as the article said, attracting the attention of more and more major sponsors. This year, the director of DARPA spoke before the final matches of the Championship event, pledging to become a major sponsor of FIRST over the next few years.
Given all this, I can't think of a way which FIRST *isn't* achieving its goals.
- Toby
This uses the bluetooth capibilitys of the Wiimote, not the infrared pointing capabilitys, which means there is nothing to plug in. Essentially, it uses the accelerometer to sense the directions of your movements but cannot tell where you are pointing it.
-Toby
I think you have the right idea about that, but you're looking at it the wrong way. I don't read slashdot, or any other blogs, so that I can post to inflate my own ego, and I don't think the majority of Slashdoters do either. Rather, I go to slashdot because it (usually) has interesting content and, more importantly, *other people* comment on it. I don't usually comment on things I don't know much about, and it's wonderful to be able to read an article and then compare it to other people's knowlage and opinions. It's often hard to tell how biased an article might be, or what it's significance is in a broder context, but having (usually) intellegent discussion and comments on it makes the articles much more useful and stimulating.
- Toby
I agree completely. I actually have an old Gatway PC running windows 98 *right now* that my younger brother uses for word processing and surfing the web, not much more. It's about useless for even that, though, given it's age. I'm going to buy a new Mac Mini this week to replace it with. We fall into the catagory of "Don't care about *that* computer because it does a fine job of what it does, but would like something nicer when we replace it."
Admittedly this upgrade has nothing to do with Windows 89 support, but many of the people looking to upgrade their 'just barely working' 89 systems will probably look beyond the cheapest Dell they can find.
- Toby
*disclosure* - I do consider myself to be a mac fan boy, and I have been using them since they looked like this: http://www.futurebots.com/mac.jpg
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=360995396
How long will it be before I can just play PS3 games on my own non-PS3 PC? It seems to me that it can't be *too* hard to make that happen, and make the PS3 completely pointless to begin with.
Sony, of course, will DRM the crap out of it, but that didn't stop PSP homebrew apps from being developed.
You really didn't deserve that kiss if the first thing you did when you got it was brag about it on /.
While it's true that the force wouldn't change, that's not the point. It is providing a unit of pressure, not a unit of force.
Pressure = Force / Area.
Therefore, even though the force would remain the same, the MUCH smaller area would cause a MUCH higher pressure.
Am I the only one who read the title and thought "Wow, Microsoft wants to hire Steve Jobs? AND Steve Jobs is might become the largest stock holder of Disney? Good day for him..." - Toby
Admittedly, I can't cite a source, but the diversity of life can be taken as evidence, there must be a whole lot of it.
Looks like you must be wrong then..
Your post is the only comment modded funny with a score of three or above..
Looks like toilets are worthwhile afterall!
article here You're welcome!
I care, you insensitive clod!