These laptops will be virtually worthless by the time the 6th - 9th graders get to graduation. So the expectation of being able to collect a "nominal fee" upon graduation is unlikely for that group of students. I would anticipate a scaled fee for any of the older students, with the current 12th graders expected to shoulder a bigger fee than the 10th graders since their laptops are worth more as they walk away from school.
I have been in one school where you bought a computer from them, and eventually owned it upon graduation. This was in 1985 at Clarkson and we have Zenith somethingorothers. By Sophomore year, 12 months after starting the payment plan, already there were newer better computes. By Senior year, the computers were worth not much more than doorstops. So much for paying a few thousand for a computer I get to "take with me once I graduate!"
It isn't necessarily the boobies that are worrisome for many parents, although there are a segment that are worried about any nudity. It is the really weird stuff. There was a time when anal sex, e.g. sodomy, was considered a fringe activity. The way the Internet portrays it now, you'd think you are weird for not giving it a go. Same with furries, 2girls1cup etc. There is just some really weird stuff out there, and to someone just finding out about this stuff I just don't think it right to give them the keys to the porn shop and saying "Have a go, see you in a few years, hope you turn out alright."
Never mind. I just figured it out... social security numbers and private information. Once again, that little problem of social security numbers raises its ugly head. If it was just used for social security taxes, and nothing else we'd be fine. But now it is used for all kinds of financial transactions any organization has to guard those 9 numbers better than Fort Knox guards its gold.
I cannot understand what needs to be so secret about anything in the IRS that any portion of a report would need to be redacted. I do understand that there might be investigations into white collar crime, but if the summary is correct and "large portions are redacted", what are they worried about us finding out? This is not the FBI or CIA here, it is the IRS, the US government agency charged with collecting taxes.
Once again I think we have a serious issue with power and openness in our government. It has gotten so way out of control it seems ridiculous!
There are some people from work who I added as friends, before I knew them really well. Now I get all their exciting updates like "So and So just joined the group 'Whereever you go, there is a Jew' or 'Jews are the nicest people'". This person is really nice at work, but I'd really like to sever this facebook relationship. Not because they are Jewish, mind you, but because they wear their religion on their sleeve, have some strong religious views (they could easily be Hindu, Muslim, Christina and I'd think the same) and I don't like it. The problem is, I can't figure out how to either a) turn off their notifications or b) defriend them without causing an issue in the office.
I know you are being funny about the gun store, but it does happen since gun stores are often not open for 24 hours. Locally we have a gun store that has been robbed a few times over the past 20 years. In one case the robbers burned the place down afterward, which was all over the news as the ammunition started to go off. They rebuilt at another location just down the street, with full cages on the windows. A few years later, at 3 in the morning, a robber drove his full sized pickup through the reinforced doorways and made off with only a few guns while the alarms were blaring.
They have since build a new building on top of a hill, presumably so any trucks can't get enough momentum to smash through the doors. They also have a building with concrete pillars around the doors *and* you have to walk down a long hallway past the shooting range to get into the retail section so there is no way to crash any vehicle smaller than a tank into the store. At least they learned eventually!
You take the first step, and then maybe I'll give up my gun in an urban environment. Post a sign on your apartment window that says "I believe in gun control. There are no firearms in this residence." The availability of firearms is a general, not specific deterrent. However if you let folks know of your views of how the world should be, then perhaps we can see how well it works out for you.
Good luck.
p.s. You might also help your cause by learning when to use capital letters. It really helps the reader determine when your next sentence begins, and also conveys a sense of pride in authorship.
Why is this piece of tripe on Slashdot? You can read this stuff all you want on CNN.com or any other "news" channel. I thought Slashdot was "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
I think the pointer stick common on laptops is a perfect alternative to the mouse. It lets me keep my fingers on the home row and I can use my thumbs to do clicking. When working on my laptop I think I am much more efficiently navigating my system than on my full size desktop/mouse. I don't feel like buying another keyboard, but if I was in the market for one, I'd see one out that has a casual pointer stick feature. That is, one that can be used when I am browsing the web but I can pick up my mouse at any time and have it still function - in the event I want to play a game.
This is fine and dandy for anyone to say who is sitting comfortably at a computer, likely in a warm/cool house, on a weekend away from work until the next Monday. However, I would argue that most people on Slashdot, though not all, have absolutely no idea what it is like to be truly poor.
Having just watched a TV show on Delhi, India, and read the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, I think I understand why all these people are whinging about bailouts. It could be called the "snowball effect" for lack of a better term - if you allow a large business to fail, it may take some time to split up the assets and it will likely be a long time before the company is employing the same number of people again. In the meantime, that is a lot of people who are not buying other things and that causes yet more companies to have smaller demand, and potentially fail.
I agree that head should roll all around. However taking a Randian rather than a Keynsian approach, keeping government intervention to a minimum, is likely what started this mess in the first place. Perhaps it is time to reconsider more government intervention, tighter regulations tied to any funding, and a longer term, inclusive approach.
I don't know exactly, but I can turn my head to the side so that my chin almost lines up with my collar bone/shoulder. I wish I could turn it all the way around!:-)
Stupid, reply to myself. First paragraph, I watched the movie in 2D. It was a little fuzzy but nothing like watching the old time 3D movies w/ the blue/red tinted glasses!
They'll need to solve the motion sickness problem for some people first. I got quite sick at a 3D IMAX production, I think called "Deep Sea" a number of years ago. They had these big polarized goggles that would sit on your head and you would get a 3D effect from looking around. The problem was, as far as I could tell, was that any movement in 3 dimensional space was not accompanies by movement of the inner ear. So my eyes were thinking I was moving along the sea floor, but ears said "no way". I ended up taking them off and watching the movie in 3D. I was OK by the end of the movie.
Second experience was riding on the Aladdin carpet ride at Disney World/EPCOT in Florida. I believe this is the virtual ride developed by Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon, the guy that gave that great speech when he got cancer. I got really sick on this one, in fact ended up puking after the ride. It was similar, one part of my brain said that I was moving in space but other parts said "no way". I am a sailor and was training to be a pilot, and hadn't been seasick in years... but this ride made me hot, sweaty and eventually pukey. Nastiest experience I have had in years.
I am assuming that the display, if just used for navigation, won't have a lot of movement that might induce motion sickness. After all, I can look around in space now without a problem, changing focus on things near and far, looking from right to left etc. So maybe it won't be any kind of problem. I can tell you I won't be a first adopter though! Blech!
Not only does the cartel get to arrange the pricing, but the distribution network is artificially limited also. Not to be anti-semitic, but I used to work in a Jewelry store in Massachusetts, and the owner told me that you had to be Jewish in order to be in the distribution chain. He told me that the only people allowed to train to cut large stones in New York are Hasidic Jews. Once past the initial wholesale level and moving toward retail, it apparently opens up some more. In fact, I bought my wife her first diamond at the diamond district in New York from a store run by some Lebanese friends of the family.
Just remember that there is a difference between industrial grade diamonds, which are sold relatively cheaply, and jewelry quality diamonds. So your average price per carat does what averages do -- you sell millions of tons of industrial grade diamonds, for things like sandpaper, drill bits, grinding stones, and anything else, for cheap brings offsets the lower volume/higher cost ring-quality diamonds. A majority of diamonds produced from any mine are industrial quality, the rest are still relatively rare.
I hope for your sake it was a "loving" slap, and you got to wear your leather chaps also. 'cause otherwise I'd say you have problems in your relationship if upsetting things are handled physically.
But any investment is a matter of directness of money getting to people. In the case of investment in high engineering salaries at NASA, all that money gets used somehow. It eventually goes to teacher salaries, firemen, roadwork, groceries etc. Because they are engineers, and I will stereotype for a bit, you might also say that some portion of the money you spend goes to fund other high tech development first, from computers to games to fast cars. Eventually the $1 you spend at NASA likely gets spent on the same things that a $1 invested in Detroit does. However the money you spend at NASA moves us further along our technological timeline, whereas any money spent in Detroit keeps us in the automobile age.
In that case, Nintendo might have been better off not including a strap at all. Then there can be no doubt that any flying remotes are the fault of the user for not handing onto the damn thing. In the current situation, the blame has now shifted back to Nintendo for improperly engineering a strap that may only be there for convenience rather than safety.
What is with the entitlement mentality within government? I am sure the article blows what actually happened way out of proportion, but if there *was* any sort of conversation asking industry partners to stonewall, resist, camoflage or otherwise derail the effort to understand the risk/reward of future space efforts, everyone involved within the government should be canned. If I did anything of the sort at my place of work, I'd be out on my ass so quickly!
Unless you have a moped, I challenge you to prove or cite you get 100 mpg from your motorcycle. A recent Motorcyclist article showed the mileage available from a couple of small, current motorcycles. On average, they were getting 45 mpg during normal riding. Riding at 55 mph for as long as possible, the best they could get (out of a very underpowered Honda Rebel 250) was something like 78 mpg, if I recall correctly.
Motorcycles have much better efficiency that most cars, when comparing a single person transport mechanism. However the almost 2:1 advantage disappears very quickly when you start adding in diesels or carpooling into the comparison. Then motorcycling advantages become more about fun, maneuverability, splitting lanes (if legal) and ease of parking.
With that said, you do realize that you are stealing from your landlord, right?
I have moderator points and it would have been nice to give you points if you had posted non-AC.
Regardless, you make a good point. And for all the back-slapping, scientists are great, Bush is terrible, your post stands out as the only one in 50 posts that has mentioned that there is a currently highly qualified scientist running the DoE. Thank you!
How many novel ideas that finally took hold were initially bandied about as "unnecessary" and a "solution in search of a problem". As with any forward thinking company, you create ideas, test market them, further develop the ones that seem to gain interest, do it some more, and if you are lucky 1 in 5 will be successful. Fortunately for Microsoft, they seem to have deeper pockets than most and can take this ideation further along, beyond the simple 'let's try it out with a few of my friends' that casual business development takes, so we end up with articles (and responses) like this suggesting the uselessness of an idea.
If I think about all the ideas that I have dismissed as "not possible", I'd be Bill Gates or Sergey Brin kind of money. Unfortunately I am not so persistent to pursue my ideas, nor creative to find just the right kind of way to implement the ideas, and I'd think most people aren't.
Anyway, it might be an idea whose time has come. Or perhaps someone else will come along with a minor tweak that makes it take off when the idea comes up yet again in a few years. I can't blame Microsoft, Google or any other company pursuing VR for trying though. It is how they are going to make money in the future I'd bet... though I won't bet because I know I won't pick the right one and don't have enough money to spread across all the different potential VR solutions.:-)
On the day that my son was born I almost lost my wife. She had a C-section and was not doing well from the blood pressure medication. I was visiting her in the recovery area and the blood pressure alarm started going off, notifying me and the nurses at the call station. I watched as her blood pressure went down very very low but no one came. I went out to the call station where the nurses were standing around chatting and said "I don't know if I should be worried or not, but the blood pressure monitor alarm is going off in the room and out here".
I got pushed out of the way, another alarm sounded, a Doctor arrived, and they started pulling these huge blood clots out of her (I could be more graphic, it was seriously gross and very involved). Shortly afterward the doctor said to me "son, you are a hero. Your wife was a few minutes away from dying from blood loss due to hemorraging". I was || this close to being a widower... not because they needed more nurses, but the ones they had needed to pay more attention.
Slashdot Mirror
These laptops will be virtually worthless by the time the 6th - 9th graders get to graduation. So the expectation of being able to collect a "nominal fee" upon graduation is unlikely for that group of students. I would anticipate a scaled fee for any of the older students, with the current 12th graders expected to shoulder a bigger fee than the 10th graders since their laptops are worth more as they walk away from school.
I have been in one school where you bought a computer from them, and eventually owned it upon graduation. This was in 1985 at Clarkson and we have Zenith somethingorothers. By Sophomore year, 12 months after starting the payment plan, already there were newer better computes. By Senior year, the computers were worth not much more than doorstops. So much for paying a few thousand for a computer I get to "take with me once I graduate!"
It isn't necessarily the boobies that are worrisome for many parents, although there are a segment that are worried about any nudity. It is the really weird stuff. There was a time when anal sex, e.g. sodomy, was considered a fringe activity. The way the Internet portrays it now, you'd think you are weird for not giving it a go. Same with furries, 2girls1cup etc. There is just some really weird stuff out there, and to someone just finding out about this stuff I just don't think it right to give them the keys to the porn shop and saying "Have a go, see you in a few years, hope you turn out alright."
Never mind. I just figured it out... social security numbers and private information. Once again, that little problem of social security numbers raises its ugly head. If it was just used for social security taxes, and nothing else we'd be fine. But now it is used for all kinds of financial transactions any organization has to guard those 9 numbers better than Fort Knox guards its gold.
I cannot understand what needs to be so secret about anything in the IRS that any portion of a report would need to be redacted. I do understand that there might be investigations into white collar crime, but if the summary is correct and "large portions are redacted", what are they worried about us finding out? This is not the FBI or CIA here, it is the IRS, the US government agency charged with collecting taxes.
Once again I think we have a serious issue with power and openness in our government. It has gotten so way out of control it seems ridiculous!
Ah, I noticed that option and have tried it once or twice before. I will click it a few more times. Thanks for the advice!
There are some people from work who I added as friends, before I knew them really well. Now I get all their exciting updates like "So and So just joined the group 'Whereever you go, there is a Jew' or 'Jews are the nicest people'". This person is really nice at work, but I'd really like to sever this facebook relationship. Not because they are Jewish, mind you, but because they wear their religion on their sleeve, have some strong religious views (they could easily be Hindu, Muslim, Christina and I'd think the same) and I don't like it. The problem is, I can't figure out how to either a) turn off their notifications or b) defriend them without causing an issue in the office.
I know you are being funny about the gun store, but it does happen since gun stores are often not open for 24 hours. Locally we have a gun store that has been robbed a few times over the past 20 years. In one case the robbers burned the place down afterward, which was all over the news as the ammunition started to go off. They rebuilt at another location just down the street, with full cages on the windows. A few years later, at 3 in the morning, a robber drove his full sized pickup through the reinforced doorways and made off with only a few guns while the alarms were blaring.
They have since build a new building on top of a hill, presumably so any trucks can't get enough momentum to smash through the doors. They also have a building with concrete pillars around the doors *and* you have to walk down a long hallway past the shooting range to get into the retail section so there is no way to crash any vehicle smaller than a tank into the store. At least they learned eventually!
You take the first step, and then maybe I'll give up my gun in an urban environment. Post a sign on your apartment window that says "I believe in gun control. There are no firearms in this residence." The availability of firearms is a general, not specific deterrent. However if you let folks know of your views of how the world should be, then perhaps we can see how well it works out for you.
Good luck.
p.s. You might also help your cause by learning when to use capital letters. It really helps the reader determine when your next sentence begins, and also conveys a sense of pride in authorship.
Why is this piece of tripe on Slashdot? You can read this stuff all you want on CNN.com or any other "news" channel. I thought Slashdot was "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
This doesn't matter.
I think the pointer stick common on laptops is a perfect alternative to the mouse. It lets me keep my fingers on the home row and I can use my thumbs to do clicking. When working on my laptop I think I am much more efficiently navigating my system than on my full size desktop/mouse. I don't feel like buying another keyboard, but if I was in the market for one, I'd see one out that has a casual pointer stick feature. That is, one that can be used when I am browsing the web but I can pick up my mouse at any time and have it still function - in the event I want to play a game.
I do not yet see a need for touch computing.
This is fine and dandy for anyone to say who is sitting comfortably at a computer, likely in a warm/cool house, on a weekend away from work until the next Monday. However, I would argue that most people on Slashdot, though not all, have absolutely no idea what it is like to be truly poor.
Having just watched a TV show on Delhi, India, and read the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, I think I understand why all these people are whinging about bailouts. It could be called the "snowball effect" for lack of a better term - if you allow a large business to fail, it may take some time to split up the assets and it will likely be a long time before the company is employing the same number of people again. In the meantime, that is a lot of people who are not buying other things and that causes yet more companies to have smaller demand, and potentially fail.
I agree that head should roll all around. However taking a Randian rather than a Keynsian approach, keeping government intervention to a minimum, is likely what started this mess in the first place. Perhaps it is time to reconsider more government intervention, tighter regulations tied to any funding, and a longer term, inclusive approach.
I don't know exactly, but I can turn my head to the side so that my chin almost lines up with my collar bone/shoulder. I wish I could turn it all the way around! :-)
Stupid, reply to myself. First paragraph, I watched the movie in 2D. It was a little fuzzy but nothing like watching the old time 3D movies w/ the blue/red tinted glasses!
They'll need to solve the motion sickness problem for some people first. I got quite sick at a 3D IMAX production, I think called "Deep Sea" a number of years ago. They had these big polarized goggles that would sit on your head and you would get a 3D effect from looking around. The problem was, as far as I could tell, was that any movement in 3 dimensional space was not accompanies by movement of the inner ear. So my eyes were thinking I was moving along the sea floor, but ears said "no way". I ended up taking them off and watching the movie in 3D. I was OK by the end of the movie.
Second experience was riding on the Aladdin carpet ride at Disney World/EPCOT in Florida. I believe this is the virtual ride developed by Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon, the guy that gave that great speech when he got cancer. I got really sick on this one, in fact ended up puking after the ride. It was similar, one part of my brain said that I was moving in space but other parts said "no way". I am a sailor and was training to be a pilot, and hadn't been seasick in years... but this ride made me hot, sweaty and eventually pukey. Nastiest experience I have had in years.
I am assuming that the display, if just used for navigation, won't have a lot of movement that might induce motion sickness. After all, I can look around in space now without a problem, changing focus on things near and far, looking from right to left etc. So maybe it won't be any kind of problem. I can tell you I won't be a first adopter though! Blech!
Not only does the cartel get to arrange the pricing, but the distribution network is artificially limited also. Not to be anti-semitic, but I used to work in a Jewelry store in Massachusetts, and the owner told me that you had to be Jewish in order to be in the distribution chain. He told me that the only people allowed to train to cut large stones in New York are Hasidic Jews. Once past the initial wholesale level and moving toward retail, it apparently opens up some more. In fact, I bought my wife her first diamond at the diamond district in New York from a store run by some Lebanese friends of the family.
Just remember that there is a difference between industrial grade diamonds, which are sold relatively cheaply, and jewelry quality diamonds. So your average price per carat does what averages do -- you sell millions of tons of industrial grade diamonds, for things like sandpaper, drill bits, grinding stones, and anything else, for cheap brings offsets the lower volume/higher cost ring-quality diamonds. A majority of diamonds produced from any mine are industrial quality, the rest are still relatively rare.
I hope for your sake it was a "loving" slap, and you got to wear your leather chaps also. 'cause otherwise I'd say you have problems in your relationship if upsetting things are handled physically.
But any investment is a matter of directness of money getting to people. In the case of investment in high engineering salaries at NASA, all that money gets used somehow. It eventually goes to teacher salaries, firemen, roadwork, groceries etc. Because they are engineers, and I will stereotype for a bit, you might also say that some portion of the money you spend goes to fund other high tech development first, from computers to games to fast cars. Eventually the $1 you spend at NASA likely gets spent on the same things that a $1 invested in Detroit does. However the money you spend at NASA moves us further along our technological timeline, whereas any money spent in Detroit keeps us in the automobile age.
In that case, Nintendo might have been better off not including a strap at all. Then there can be no doubt that any flying remotes are the fault of the user for not handing onto the damn thing. In the current situation, the blame has now shifted back to Nintendo for improperly engineering a strap that may only be there for convenience rather than safety.
What is with the entitlement mentality within government? I am sure the article blows what actually happened way out of proportion, but if there *was* any sort of conversation asking industry partners to stonewall, resist, camoflage or otherwise derail the effort to understand the risk/reward of future space efforts, everyone involved within the government should be canned. If I did anything of the sort at my place of work, I'd be out on my ass so quickly!
Unless you have a moped, I challenge you to prove or cite you get 100 mpg from your motorcycle. A recent Motorcyclist article showed the mileage available from a couple of small, current motorcycles. On average, they were getting 45 mpg during normal riding. Riding at 55 mph for as long as possible, the best they could get (out of a very underpowered Honda Rebel 250) was something like 78 mpg, if I recall correctly.
Motorcycles have much better efficiency that most cars, when comparing a single person transport mechanism. However the almost 2:1 advantage disappears very quickly when you start adding in diesels or carpooling into the comparison. Then motorcycling advantages become more about fun, maneuverability, splitting lanes (if legal) and ease of parking.
With that said, you do realize that you are stealing from your landlord, right?
I have moderator points and it would have been nice to give you points if you had posted non-AC.
Regardless, you make a good point. And for all the back-slapping, scientists are great, Bush is terrible, your post stands out as the only one in 50 posts that has mentioned that there is a currently highly qualified scientist running the DoE. Thank you!
How many novel ideas that finally took hold were initially bandied about as "unnecessary" and a "solution in search of a problem". As with any forward thinking company, you create ideas, test market them, further develop the ones that seem to gain interest, do it some more, and if you are lucky 1 in 5 will be successful. Fortunately for Microsoft, they seem to have deeper pockets than most and can take this ideation further along, beyond the simple 'let's try it out with a few of my friends' that casual business development takes, so we end up with articles (and responses) like this suggesting the uselessness of an idea.
If I think about all the ideas that I have dismissed as "not possible", I'd be Bill Gates or Sergey Brin kind of money. Unfortunately I am not so persistent to pursue my ideas, nor creative to find just the right kind of way to implement the ideas, and I'd think most people aren't.
Anyway, it might be an idea whose time has come. Or perhaps someone else will come along with a minor tweak that makes it take off when the idea comes up yet again in a few years. I can't blame Microsoft, Google or any other company pursuing VR for trying though. It is how they are going to make money in the future I'd bet... though I won't bet because I know I won't pick the right one and don't have enough money to spread across all the different potential VR solutions. :-)
I need a "delete last 10 minutes" option.
On the day that my son was born I almost lost my wife. She had a C-section and was not doing well from the blood pressure medication. I was visiting her in the recovery area and the blood pressure alarm started going off, notifying me and the nurses at the call station. I watched as her blood pressure went down very very low but no one came. I went out to the call station where the nurses were standing around chatting and said "I don't know if I should be worried or not, but the blood pressure monitor alarm is going off in the room and out here".
I got pushed out of the way, another alarm sounded, a Doctor arrived, and they started pulling these huge blood clots out of her (I could be more graphic, it was seriously gross and very involved). Shortly afterward the doctor said to me "son, you are a hero. Your wife was a few minutes away from dying from blood loss due to hemorraging". I was || this close to being a widower... not because they needed more nurses, but the ones they had needed to pay more attention.