The Cyberiad is my favorite book of Science Fiction. It's a collection of short stories that tell the adventures of Trurl and Klapaucius, the constructors. Impossible to believe that this is not currently available as an ebook. Everything by Lem is worth reading, but especially His Master's Voice and The Chain of Chance (this last isn't scifi, but you can't have everything).
Lem is the master. He's not really forgotten, but you can only get maybe two or three of his books as ebooks. The Cyberiad is my favorite work of science fiction.
This is the first bit of science I've seen that could plausibly be turned into one of the staples of SciFi, the tractor beam. How long before they have one that can move the (levitating) puck at a distance?
Neither product is designed to be used from 10 feet away. The test should be how similar they appear at the actual distance they are used, i.e. arm's length.
Bring your laptop and hook it to the classroom projector. Take a photo of the teacher and open it in two or more different photo editing programs. If you have a Mac, photoshop and Photo Booth will provide a very teachable contrast.
Now demonstrate a variety of different effects you can apply to the photo, comparing and contrasting the UIs, discussing various design/programming decisions that go into developing this kind of program.
Then take some pictures of the students and invite them to try the program, demonstrating the good and bad aspects of the UI for new users.
This will give you an educational presentation that is engaging and interactive, on a subject that is relevant to the students.
Don't forget to Email all the files to the teacher.
I show this to my students every year. It's a remarkable thing that couldn't have been created even ten years ago. Dr. King's powerful voice is the perfect vehicle for the Autotune treatment.
But if Phelps has the right to stand on the street corner to yell their asinine ravings, don't Anonymous have the right to stand right next to him and yell even louder, so no one can hear him? Or maybe to crowd the street with people who aren't listening, so no one else can get close enough to hear?
Isn't this basically what a DDOS attack is? Soak up all Phelps' available bandwidth filling requests from people who aren't really listening, so no one else can be exposed to his hateful rants.
The entire movie Timecode (directed by Mike Figgis) is four uninterrupted 90-minute takes, all shot simultaneously and shown on the screen at once (in a four-way split screen). In other words they turned on four cameras at the same time and didn't turn them off for 90 minutes, and put all four images on the screen at once. They shot something like 17 takes.
I bought a Nook in July and one of the features that sold me on it (aside from the drop to $150) was the ability to borrow ebooks from the library. Not all books are available in ebook format, but many are.
This suggestion highlights a fundamental misunderstanding which is extremely common among non-teachers, which is to equate Knowledge of your subject with teaching ability. The most important asset a teacher has is their knowledge of how to teach. Knowledge of the subject is much, much less important.
I remember back in the early 80s when CD players were just hitting the market. Somebody got a bunch of members of a local audiophile group to do a double-blind A-B-X comparison test on three different CD players: a $200 Sony Discman (or something like that), a $500 model, and a $1,000 "top of the line" unit. Now this wasn't a test of which is better. What you would do is hear a selection played by player A, then the same selection on player B, then you heard the selection a third time and had to identify if it was player A or B. In other words, not does one sound better, but can you tell the two apart at all.
The answer was that for musical samples, no individual could reliably tell the difference between any two players. There was a sine wave sample that a few people could match the X sample to either A or B, but that was it.
Again these were members of an audiophile group. And not one of them could even tell the difference between any two CD players.
By far the best solution from an educational perspective is to have the kids provide their own support. If the kids can't provide most of the support then you've chosen the wrong platform.
I don't pretend to know enough about the current market to know platform is the best for the kids to manage. But that should be the deciding factor.
The iPod touch can play music, play movies, show pictures, run apps, surf the web, and do email. For all but the first of these activities a larger screen is a massive improvement. If the iPad were truly nothing more than an oversized iPod touch, why does anyone think that would be bad or pointless?
The revolution part lies not in the brand new features etc., but in how many people begin using the new interface in the real world. The original Macintosh was an evolution on Xerox PARC designs, but the Mac spread those ideas to millions of actual people, from whence they spread to Windows (and thus billions of people). Same with the iPod: comparable devices existed, but the iPod is the one that everyone started using. That's the revolution, and it never looks like one to people on the inside of the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
The Cyberiad is my favorite book of Science Fiction. It's a collection of short stories that tell the adventures of Trurl and Klapaucius, the constructors. Impossible to believe that this is not currently available as an ebook. Everything by Lem is worth reading, but especially His Master's Voice and The Chain of Chance (this last isn't scifi, but you can't have everything).
Lem is the master. He's not really forgotten, but you can only get maybe two or three of his books as ebooks. The Cyberiad is my favorite work of science fiction.
But... you're the one on the way out, right?
So is a "nanostrain" equal to 1/40th of an inch? That seems too big for the nano prefix.
"... forcing the company to publicly drop Christoforo as its marketing representative."
and from the guy
"I haven't lost any clients."
...capable of playing just about any type of sport they like. Take the money you saved on the test and buy your kid a bicycle.
This is the first bit of science I've seen that could plausibly be turned into one of the staples of SciFi, the tractor beam. How long before they have one that can move the (levitating) puck at a distance?
Neither product is designed to be used from 10 feet away. The test should be how similar they appear at the actual distance they are used, i.e. arm's length.
Encode the data on the drives in Playsforsure format. That will render it unreadable.
Now demonstrate a variety of different effects you can apply to the photo, comparing and contrasting the UIs, discussing various design/programming decisions that go into developing this kind of program.
Then take some pictures of the students and invite them to try the program, demonstrating the good and bad aspects of the UI for new users.
This will give you an educational presentation that is engaging and interactive, on a subject that is relevant to the students.
Don't forget to Email all the files to the teacher.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0F4iXEzOqY
I show this to my students every year. It's a remarkable thing that couldn't have been created even ten years ago. Dr. King's powerful voice is the perfect vehicle for the Autotune treatment.
That doesn't mean it's a bad idea. It's a terrific idea—the current technology may not quite be there yet.
The Skype is falling! The Skype is falling!
They couldn't have made it 1337?
But if Phelps has the right to stand on the street corner to yell their asinine ravings, don't Anonymous have the right to stand right next to him and yell even louder, so no one can hear him? Or maybe to crowd the street with people who aren't listening, so no one else can get close enough to hear?
Isn't this basically what a DDOS attack is? Soak up all Phelps' available bandwidth filling requests from people who aren't really listening, so no one else can be exposed to his hateful rants.
The entire movie Timecode (directed by Mike Figgis) is four uninterrupted 90-minute takes, all shot simultaneously and shown on the screen at once (in a four-way split screen). In other words they turned on four cameras at the same time and didn't turn them off for 90 minutes, and put all four images on the screen at once. They shot something like 17 takes.
Maybe there's code that examines the results before they are instantly shown, and decides at that point if the results are possibly offensive.
377. ???
378. Profit!
I bought a Nook in July and one of the features that sold me on it (aside from the drop to $150) was the ability to borrow ebooks from the library. Not all books are available in ebook format, but many are.
This suggestion highlights a fundamental misunderstanding which is extremely common among non-teachers, which is to equate Knowledge of your subject with teaching ability. The most important asset a teacher has is their knowledge of how to teach. Knowledge of the subject is much, much less important.
The answer was that for musical samples, no individual could reliably tell the difference between any two players. There was a sine wave sample that a few people could match the X sample to either A or B, but that was it.
Again these were members of an audiophile group. And not one of them could even tell the difference between any two CD players.
By far the best solution from an educational perspective is to have the kids provide their own support. If the kids can't provide most of the support then you've chosen the wrong platform. I don't pretend to know enough about the current market to know platform is the best for the kids to manage. But that should be the deciding factor.
The iPod touch can play music, play movies, show pictures, run apps, surf the web, and do email. For all but the first of these activities a larger screen is a massive improvement. If the iPad were truly nothing more than an oversized iPod touch, why does anyone think that would be bad or pointless?
I've been reading Apple Tablet stories on slashdot for five years
Why do you keep reading them? It's not like they're secretly given misleading summaries.
I don't like hockey but I don't go around on NHLBLOG.COM telling everybody to shut up.
The revolution part lies not in the brand new features etc., but in how many people begin using the new interface in the real world. The original Macintosh was an evolution on Xerox PARC designs, but the Mac spread those ideas to millions of actual people, from whence they spread to Windows (and thus billions of people). Same with the iPod: comparable devices existed, but the iPod is the one that everyone started using. That's the revolution, and it never looks like one to people on the inside of the industry.