Fair enough. We're actually starting to have the problem that tropical storm or hurricane remnants which used to slap up against the Catskills to our east, and stop, now make it through and cause real problems. We've flooded two years in a row, with what should have been once every 50 to 100 year floods. I know probabilities don't mean that they'll show up in those intervals, but our floods are picking up as well.
On the other hand, we're also having plenty of precipitation to go with our longer growing season, so it's always possible that some agriculture is just going to shift back to the NE.
we're already experiencing late falls, and slightly earlier springs. Two years running now the ground hasn't reliably frozen solid until well into november. Therefore, while I feel for those of you living 2 ft above sea level in Florida, I believe I speak on behalf of many residents of Upstate NY, Minnesota, Saskatchewan, etc., when I say, "Good".
It's not a bad idea, as I had a quantum mechanics prof who used to assign, but not collect or grade home work. You could hand it to him, and he'd go over it. Short of it, he found people in the class cheating on ungraded homework because they were all reproducing an error he made the previous year on a first pass through the answer key.
You could go further, and spend some time creating bad papers, then seeding the net with them. A simple cut and paste job from assignments would do nicely.
I've kind of wanted to use a service like turnitin, but do more of a genetic analysis on the papers, and see if student papers just naturally fall into a few, distinct, phenotypes in any given field of study.
Personally, I think he should offer it that way. Offer to pre-install Firefox for them, with a few useful extensions, ask if they want OpenOffice, then give them a CD with the other programs on it so they can install them themselves if they're actually interested.
Otherwise, if he's forcing his favorite set of OpenSource applications on them without their getting any say in the matter, he should be forced to use an OS/360 emulated environment with appropriate apps, chosen by an old IBM card-whalloper, for a couple of months.
A little evangalism is a good thing (like a prominent but tasteful logo combining the Firefox/Distro-of-your-Choice), but surprising people with unplanned 'upgrades' is not.
and/or landfill methane. OTOH, a process that turns those into CO2 probably isn't the best, unless we have a way to convert that waste stream into something more useful. I've seen, and worked on some chemistry, for that, but not really on the scale they'd need here. I suppose we could use a varient of carbonic anhydrase to convert the carbon dioxide to carbonate anions, which could be co-precipitated with calcium to form the Great DuPont Reef of Northern Delaware, but that's a different project.
[OffTopic Rantlett] Today, we have a real science, or at least engineering, article with real applications. Yesterday we had another "oops, I waved away a couple of integrals and invented a reactionless space-drive". Take bets on which one accumulats more total responses, and is duped more frequently.
Most likely techie kid sister will boil it down to, "the iPod is much cooler than Zune". She will be privately thinking "and less likely to cause him to call me at midnight during the week when his make-out music suddenly says, 'you are not authorized to play this song at this time'."
The end result is the same as happened to the other music players, except this time it's a company with more money and fewer clues about end-users than the previous entrants. Zunes will probably whack whatever is left of Creative's market, and be invisible otherwise. Of course, MS could require all OEMs to bundle a Zune with their PCs, like they did with Windows 3.0, and then all bets are off.
I've actually been more in favor of a system where if your laptop, cell phone, crackberry gets more than a predetermined distance from you, it explodes. Having dealt with people who've had their computers stolen, I really think this should be a standard feature, and now, thanks to Dell, it probably is.
In all seriousness, there should just be an option to have it charge a capacitor, which would then deliver enough of a jolt to fuse some critical components, rendering the device useless and the data safe.
Actually, I do this for a living. Check out Science 304 (5669), 396. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1092677], Science 304 (5669), 414. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1086895], and Science 16 April 2004: Vol. 304. no. 5669, pp. 414 - 417 DOI: 10.1126/science.1086895. They are working in the Southern Ocean for this experiment, which used to be known as the Antarctic. Last I knew very little tropical grows south of 60 degrees.
Phytoplankton uses a vanadium-containing enzyme to produce hypohalous acids from halides extracted from seawater and peroxide, most likely from normal metabolic processes. The hypohalous acid then halogenate a variety of organic substrates to form volatile haloorganics, most probably for protective purposes for the algae. For Corallina officinalis the purpose may be to discourage predators, which then eat neighboring species and increase the potential habitat for the Corallina. The more volatile of these are released into the atmosphere. For these mechanisms, I would refer you to Pecararo, V. L., Butler, A., and Wever, R. I like Inorg. Chem.; (Article); 2006; 45(18); 7133-7143, and J. Am. Chem. Soc.; (Article); 2005; 127(3); 953-960.
It's a strange strategy, based on two assumptions:
(1) I personally don't believe that this software is worth preserving, but have some responsibility as the faculty overseer of the lab.
(2) I've run SuSE, Ubuntu, etc., but our target audience is going to break out in Hives if it isn't as close to pure Windows as possible. If ReactOS works, then, great, we're still running with our old programs. If it doesn't, then, great, I get to hire an undergrad fluent in PHP, Python, etc., and have them re-implement the offending programs.
Of course, there is also, "... and maybe the damned horse will learn to talk..." aspect of this as well; maybe ReactOS will grow up to a point where it's a close enough drop-in replacement for Windows NT that we can free ourselves of OS's that insist on phoning home, unreliably.
... and even Geeks have software that they need to run. Right now, I'm beginning to look at ReactOS, to keep an expensive, but older, package running in our labs. We'll see how this goes.
OTOH, I would expect that by this point a Win98 user will (a) upgrade to a new computer running WindowsWhatever, (b) buy a Mac, (c) quit using computers all together, and under go years of therapy.
It will be an interesting suit with the argument, "They fixed their operating system, so we're not needed any more, but they won't let us in". So, they took the part of the OS most succeptible to being tainted, and shut it off so it can't be. At least they're even handed; "Friend or Foe, Out You Go."
This sounds similar to the idea floated a few years back about fertilizing the antarctic and other polar oceans with iron compounds to induce a plankton bloom. The plankton would then suck up the CO2, and either use it personally or turn it into calcium carbonate, die, and fall to the bottom of the ocean.
Unfortunately, these are the same phytoplankton which produce volatile haloorganics, on roughly the same scale as anthropogenic sources. End result; we stop global warming and blow away the ozone layer. A sub-optimal trade, to say the least.
Personally, I say it's time we start to cut back on the warming gases, and get ready to live with a warmer world with higher sea levels. Unless, of course, shutting down the Gulf Stream cools western Europe off enough that it starts snowing, reflecting heat back into space, and induces a new ice-age. The joys of climatology; we won't know until we finish the experiment.
Or you could do what I've taken to doing; posting occasional slides and original papers online for them to read, then creating everything else with Chalk at the board. This is partially self-defense (PowerPoint, etc., are really only useful in an environment when you're not going to have to stop and expand the material), and partially in their interest (I am capable of doing a slide every 30 seconds for an hour lecture, and if they're already made up, I will). For my upper-level course, I work with mainly original literature and student presentations. For the lower-level one, where it's my job to separate the Sheep from the Goats (and send the sheep off to become sociology majors, while keeping the goats in our program), I work from a basic outline of topics that i consider essential, add examples from the open literature and personal experience, and revise as necessitated by textbook we use that year, and experience the previous. I also indicate where the material came from, and post the original papers online where applicable. Exams are problem-solving oriented, and created annually. For the lower-level, non-ambiguous core knowledge and computation, for the upper, vague, essay-style "what ifs". This is all time-consuming, and a point of concern for my senior colleagues who wish I would start pre-packaging my courses in the file cabinet for reuse later, and get back to writing grant proposals.
The only problem with the demand that you guys are making that we footnote all of our lecture materials is that It sounds funny when you stop mid-sentence for, "footnote 6 footnote 7 endnote 3", but if it makes the TPUs happy (tuition-paying units), we'll give it a try.
As long as you can find the originals, I wouldn't mind seeing the bridge, engine room, etc, brought up to at least the quality of Wrath of Khan. Just keep the original characters, dialogue, and incidental music, and it would compete with most of the newer shows out there. Internally consistent Klingons might not be a bad idea either, although the old ones had a certain panache.
Yes, Yes, the cheesy look has some charm once in a while (I particularly remember an Alien world in the old Jon Pertwee Dr. Who episodes that was a coal slag heap shot through a blue filter), and maybe they ought to just go with a more out-there version of that. However, it would be nice if the environment the actors are in looked as good as it did for the later, unwatchable, versions.
Yep. There is a finite amount of top-10 talent out there, and unlike the NBA, it leaves every 4 years, or sooner if a good offer from the pros comes along. So, you have to compete for that pool, and success breeds success, i.e. the talent knows your stats, and is going to go to the schools that win, because that enhances their chances with the pros.
Therefore, unless you have some intangible to offer that will attract a core of decent players and coaches, which will then build up rapidly into a competitive team (you've just incorporated yourself on the california coast, for instance), you're doomed. The classic "big fish in a small pond" sounds great, but only a small percentage of talented people will follow that precept, hence the problem. For college sports players, who have a much shorter shelf-life than professors, it's a very real concern. The scouts aren't watching my school for potential hires, or if they are, they aren't doing it nearly as often as they are Penn State, for instance. If your goal is to play ball for more than your college years, then we're a bad bet, and they're a good one.
You'll see the same problems on the academic side as well; very few professors look at an offer from Harvard and say, "there are too many other high powered people there, I think I'll go to North Dakota State U. where I can dominate the department". The ones that do turn down Harvard go to Stanford, U. Chicago, UT Austin, etc, the rest of the top 10 to 20 instead. They do well there, and play the academic superstart market, and do (financially and famewise) rather well. On the other hand, we've had people do lateral or slight upward moves (same sized U., but in California rather than the frozen NE), but very rarely does anyone start here in the 2nd tier schools, and move up to one of the top 10 or 20. Top 50, maybe, and then they can leverage themselves up another rank later, but it's rare.
So, unless you can hire away a coach and a core of a winning team in one shot, then provide the recruiting muscle to bring in a lot of good but new people fast, you're not going to make it to the upper reaches, because you're going to get squashed, and get a rep as a program that gets squashed. That's why the money spent on Div 1 sports for the schools other than the top few is a losing proposition, because they'll most likely never make it to the ranks that will let them earn back what they put in.
Trust me on this; maybe if you're in the top 20, you have a shot of moving up and can justify the expense, but I currently work for a university that had a decent Division 3 basketball team (won often enough to have fans), promoted it, and now has a very expensive, Division 1 doormat. We still don't have a shot at top-10, but we're spending a lot more money not having a shot. University of Vermont took this approach a few years back, and bagged their losing football team. Rutgers has discussed canning their basketball team for the same reason, and frankly many mid-sized schools should; money is not infinite, and a sports program that vastly exceeds what it earns is a bad use of that money. In college, I fenced, friends were in cross-country and track, and people I knew played lacrosse and/or rugby. These are small, low-impact (the Ruggers were an intermural club), high-participation sports that drew decent student audiences and didn't cost a mint to maintain. Most importantly, they got people involved, promoted teamwork and all of the other athletic values, and were open to the entire campus, not just the gladiatorial elite. We were division 3 even in sports we were good at, so no scholarships, no direct athletic recruiting, and a more balanced student-athlete population.
Football makes money for about 8-10 universities, and for the rest it's a money pit, both directly, and indirectly in campus security and additional tutoring expenses. It would be better if about 20 schools ran football Div 1, and the rest demoted them to rugby teams. If the teams are so important, maybe schools should band together and sponsor semi-pro teams, separate from the University proper.
But there were so many ways for the Crewman in the Red Shirt to check out, going through them was only one of a whole spectrum of bad endings. I was thinking more along the lines of, "watch W.S. overact and hog the limelight, while waiting for this week's alien menace to come and get you."
They'll redo them again, except this time in 3d. Finally, you, the audience member, will personally feel and understand what the Crewman in the Red Shirt went through every week.
Although I do look forward to the re-mastered space hippies.:~
While I hate to disagree with you, in many fields of science, the changes over a decade are significant, and merit new editions. I just selected a book this year for a junior-level class which I generally like (rigorous in areas that other texts dumb-down), but that has some seriously... Wrong material. Explanations and models from the era of Nehru jackets and mutton-chop side-burns, and just as relevant to modern science. That book needs a thorough revision that doesn't ruin it like happened to my preferred text. Third edition, clean, clear, if a bit mathematical and tough-sledding at times. Fourth edition tried to become "student-friendly" and "relevant", and made it muddy, choppy, and unreadable.
In math, you may be right, but in chemistry/physics/biology, especially when you consider that the people writing textbooks tend to be late in their career, a revision once every five to 10 years is certainly within reason.
If you want prevent the spiral in education costs, then convince your (legislature/board of directors) to (1) reign in the explosion of deans with their retinues, (2) reign in the athletics departments (if you aren't top 10 nationally, cut the program back to intramurals and fire the surplus coaching staff), and (3) reign in the entitlement mentality of students these days. The last would go a long way to controlling costs, as things they consider necessities now (such as single dorm rooms at all levels, well-equiped modern gyms, cable tv to the rooms), were luxuries or unavailable 20 years ago. Trim back the gilding, and control the explosion of non-educational management, and you'll have a shot at controlling costs.
As far as limits go, why use a VM? It's all there in the VMS code-base, from which NT (Arose/Escaped/Was Semi-Intelligently Designed). I used to be able to set a whole host of user limits (this much physical memory, that much cpu, those many page-faults), and I don't see why that capability isn't used in Windows systems. A simple default of (for instance) 64M and not more than 20% of available CPU cycles for all processes to keep them in-bounds, which can be adjusted for the memory hogs, or turned down farther for the truly minimal programs.
Of course, what I really want on a day to day basis is something similar to OS/400 with Office and a web-browser on top of it for office use. The "all you can eat" theory of computing. (Deal. This is all you can eat)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well, that was then. Security is *much* stronger now. They've upgraded the codes to 00000001.
Fair enough. We're actually starting to have the problem that tropical storm or hurricane remnants which used to slap up against the Catskills to our east, and stop, now make it through and cause real problems. We've flooded two years in a row, with what should have been once every 50 to 100 year floods. I know probabilities don't mean that they'll show up in those intervals, but our floods are picking up as well.
On the other hand, we're also having plenty of precipitation to go with our longer growing season, so it's always possible that some agriculture is just going to shift back to the NE.
we're already experiencing late falls, and slightly earlier springs. Two years running now the ground hasn't reliably frozen solid until well into november. Therefore, while I feel for those of you living 2 ft above sea level in Florida, I believe I speak on behalf of many residents of Upstate NY, Minnesota, Saskatchewan, etc., when I say, "Good".
It's not a bad idea, as I had a quantum mechanics prof who used to assign, but not collect or grade home work. You could hand it to him, and he'd go over it. Short of it, he found people in the class cheating on ungraded homework because they were all reproducing an error he made the previous year on a first pass through the answer key.
You could go further, and spend some time creating bad papers, then seeding the net with them. A simple cut and paste job from assignments would do nicely.
I've kind of wanted to use a service like turnitin, but do more of a genetic analysis on the papers, and see if student papers just naturally fall into a few, distinct, phenotypes in any given field of study.
Personally, I think he should offer it that way. Offer to pre-install Firefox for them, with a few useful extensions, ask if they want OpenOffice, then give them a CD with the other programs on it so they can install them themselves if they're actually interested.
Otherwise, if he's forcing his favorite set of OpenSource applications on them without their getting any say in the matter, he should be forced to use an OS/360 emulated environment with appropriate apps, chosen by an old IBM card-whalloper, for a couple of months.
A little evangalism is a good thing (like a prominent but tasteful logo combining the Firefox/Distro-of-your-Choice), but surprising people with unplanned 'upgrades' is not.
and/or landfill methane. OTOH, a process that turns those into CO2 probably isn't the best, unless we have a way to convert that waste stream into something more useful. I've seen, and worked on some chemistry, for that, but not really on the scale they'd need here. I suppose we could use a varient of carbonic anhydrase to convert the carbon dioxide to carbonate anions, which could be co-precipitated with calcium to form the Great DuPont Reef of Northern Delaware, but that's a different project.
[OffTopic Rantlett] Today, we have a real science, or at least engineering, article with real applications. Yesterday we had another "oops, I waved away a couple of integrals and invented a reactionless space-drive". Take bets on which one accumulats more total responses, and is duped more frequently.
Most likely techie kid sister will boil it down to, "the iPod is much cooler than Zune". She will be privately thinking "and less likely to cause him to call me at midnight during the week when his make-out music suddenly says, 'you are not authorized to play this song at this time'."
The end result is the same as happened to the other music players, except this time it's a company with more money and fewer clues about end-users than the previous entrants. Zunes will probably whack whatever is left of Creative's market, and be invisible otherwise. Of course, MS could require all OEMs to bundle a Zune with their PCs, like they did with Windows 3.0, and then all bets are off.
I've actually been more in favor of a system where if your laptop, cell phone, crackberry gets more than a predetermined distance from you, it explodes. Having dealt with people who've had their computers stolen, I really think this should be a standard feature, and now, thanks to Dell, it probably is.
In all seriousness, there should just be an option to have it charge a capacitor, which would then deliver enough of a jolt to fuse some critical components, rendering the device useless and the data safe.
Actually, I do this for a living. Check out Science 304 (5669), 396. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1092677], Science 304 (5669), 414. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1086895], and Science 16 April 2004: Vol. 304. no. 5669, pp. 414 - 417 DOI: 10.1126/science.1086895. They are working in the Southern Ocean for this experiment, which used to be known as the Antarctic. Last I knew very little tropical grows south of 60 degrees.
Phytoplankton uses a vanadium-containing enzyme to produce hypohalous acids from halides extracted from seawater and peroxide, most likely from normal metabolic processes. The hypohalous acid then halogenate a variety of organic substrates to form volatile haloorganics, most probably for protective purposes for the algae. For Corallina officinalis the purpose may be to discourage predators, which then eat neighboring species and increase the potential habitat for the Corallina. The more volatile of these are released into the atmosphere. For these mechanisms, I would refer you to Pecararo, V. L., Butler, A., and Wever, R. I like Inorg. Chem.; (Article); 2006; 45(18); 7133-7143, and J. Am. Chem. Soc.; (Article); 2005; 127(3); 953-960.
It's a strange strategy, based on two assumptions:
(1) I personally don't believe that this software is worth preserving, but have some responsibility as the faculty overseer of the lab.
(2) I've run SuSE, Ubuntu, etc., but our target audience is going to break out in Hives if it isn't as close to pure Windows as possible. If ReactOS works, then, great, we're still running with our old programs. If it doesn't, then, great, I get to hire an undergrad fluent in PHP, Python, etc., and have them re-implement the offending programs.
Of course, there is also, "... and maybe the damned horse will learn to talk..." aspect of this as well; maybe ReactOS will grow up to a point where it's a close enough drop-in replacement for Windows NT that we can free ourselves of OS's that insist on phoning home, unreliably.
...Most linux converts are already geeks....
... and even Geeks have software that they need to run. Right now, I'm beginning to look at ReactOS, to keep an expensive, but older, package running in our labs. We'll see how this goes.
OTOH, I would expect that by this point a Win98 user will (a) upgrade to a new computer running WindowsWhatever, (b) buy a Mac, (c) quit using computers all together, and under go years of therapy.
It will be an interesting suit with the argument, "They fixed their operating system, so we're not needed any more, but they won't let us in". So, they took the part of the OS most succeptible to being tainted, and shut it off so it can't be. At least they're even handed; "Friend or Foe, Out You Go."
This sounds similar to the idea floated a few years back about fertilizing the antarctic and other polar oceans with iron compounds to induce a plankton bloom. The plankton would then suck up the CO2, and either use it personally or turn it into calcium carbonate, die, and fall to the bottom of the ocean.
Unfortunately, these are the same phytoplankton which produce volatile haloorganics, on roughly the same scale as anthropogenic sources. End result; we stop global warming and blow away the ozone layer. A sub-optimal trade, to say the least.
Personally, I say it's time we start to cut back on the warming gases, and get ready to live with a warmer world with higher sea levels. Unless, of course, shutting down the Gulf Stream cools western Europe off enough that it starts snowing, reflecting heat back into space, and induces a new ice-age. The joys of climatology; we won't know until we finish the experiment.
Or you could do what I've taken to doing; posting occasional slides and original papers online for them to read, then creating everything else with Chalk at the board. This is partially self-defense (PowerPoint, etc., are really only useful in an environment when you're not going to have to stop and expand the material), and partially in their interest (I am capable of doing a slide every 30 seconds for an hour lecture, and if they're already made up, I will). For my upper-level course, I work with mainly original literature and student presentations. For the lower-level one, where it's my job to separate the Sheep from the Goats (and send the sheep off to become sociology majors, while keeping the goats in our program), I work from a basic outline of topics that i consider essential, add examples from the open literature and personal experience, and revise as necessitated by textbook we use that year, and experience the previous. I also indicate where the material came from, and post the original papers online where applicable. Exams are problem-solving oriented, and created annually. For the lower-level, non-ambiguous core knowledge and computation, for the upper, vague, essay-style "what ifs". This is all time-consuming, and a point of concern for my senior colleagues who wish I would start pre-packaging my courses in the file cabinet for reuse later, and get back to writing grant proposals.
The only problem with the demand that you guys are making that we footnote all of our lecture materials is that It sounds funny when you stop mid-sentence for, "footnote 6 footnote 7 endnote 3", but if it makes the TPUs happy (tuition-paying units), we'll give it a try.
There are always those moments when you need to blast either "Ride of the Valkyries" or "The End" through the copter's sound system...
As long as you can find the originals, I wouldn't mind seeing the bridge, engine room, etc, brought up to at least the quality of Wrath of Khan. Just keep the original characters, dialogue, and incidental music, and it would compete with most of the newer shows out there. Internally consistent Klingons might not be a bad idea either, although the old ones had a certain panache. Yes, Yes, the cheesy look has some charm once in a while (I particularly remember an Alien world in the old Jon Pertwee Dr. Who episodes that was a coal slag heap shot through a blue filter), and maybe they ought to just go with a more out-there version of that. However, it would be nice if the environment the actors are in looked as good as it did for the later, unwatchable, versions.
RXVT. Not fancy, but at least the scroll-bar looks nice.
Yep. There is a finite amount of top-10 talent out there, and unlike the NBA, it leaves every 4 years, or sooner if a good offer from the pros comes along. So, you have to compete for that pool, and success breeds success, i.e. the talent knows your stats, and is going to go to the schools that win, because that enhances their chances with the pros.
Therefore, unless you have some intangible to offer that will attract a core of decent players and coaches, which will then build up rapidly into a competitive team (you've just incorporated yourself on the california coast, for instance), you're doomed. The classic "big fish in a small pond" sounds great, but only a small percentage of talented people will follow that precept, hence the problem. For college sports players, who have a much shorter shelf-life than professors, it's a very real concern. The scouts aren't watching my school for potential hires, or if they are, they aren't doing it nearly as often as they are Penn State, for instance. If your goal is to play ball for more than your college years, then we're a bad bet, and they're a good one.
You'll see the same problems on the academic side as well; very few professors look at an offer from Harvard and say, "there are too many other high powered people there, I think I'll go to North Dakota State U. where I can dominate the department". The ones that do turn down Harvard go to Stanford, U. Chicago, UT Austin, etc, the rest of the top 10 to 20 instead. They do well there, and play the academic superstart market, and do (financially and famewise) rather well. On the other hand, we've had people do lateral or slight upward moves (same sized U., but in California rather than the frozen NE), but very rarely does anyone start here in the 2nd tier schools, and move up to one of the top 10 or 20. Top 50, maybe, and then they can leverage themselves up another rank later, but it's rare.
So, unless you can hire away a coach and a core of a winning team in one shot, then provide the recruiting muscle to bring in a lot of good but new people fast, you're not going to make it to the upper reaches, because you're going to get squashed, and get a rep as a program that gets squashed. That's why the money spent on Div 1 sports for the schools other than the top few is a losing proposition, because they'll most likely never make it to the ranks that will let them earn back what they put in.
Trust me on this; maybe if you're in the top 20, you have a shot of moving up and can justify the expense, but I currently work for a university that had a decent Division 3 basketball team (won often enough to have fans), promoted it, and now has a very expensive, Division 1 doormat. We still don't have a shot at top-10, but we're spending a lot more money not having a shot. University of Vermont took this approach a few years back, and bagged their losing football team. Rutgers has discussed canning their basketball team for the same reason, and frankly many mid-sized schools should; money is not infinite, and a sports program that vastly exceeds what it earns is a bad use of that money. In college, I fenced, friends were in cross-country and track, and people I knew played lacrosse and/or rugby. These are small, low-impact (the Ruggers were an intermural club), high-participation sports that drew decent student audiences and didn't cost a mint to maintain. Most importantly, they got people involved, promoted teamwork and all of the other athletic values, and were open to the entire campus, not just the gladiatorial elite. We were division 3 even in sports we were good at, so no scholarships, no direct athletic recruiting, and a more balanced student-athlete population. Football makes money for about 8-10 universities, and for the rest it's a money pit, both directly, and indirectly in campus security and additional tutoring expenses. It would be better if about 20 schools ran football Div 1, and the rest demoted them to rugby teams. If the teams are so important, maybe schools should band together and sponsor semi-pro teams, separate from the University proper.
But there were so many ways for the Crewman in the Red Shirt to check out, going through them was only one of a whole spectrum of bad endings. I was thinking more along the lines of, "watch W.S. overact and hog the limelight, while waiting for this week's alien menace to come and get you."
They'll redo them again, except this time in 3d. Finally, you, the audience member, will personally feel and understand what the Crewman in the Red Shirt went through every week.
:~
Although I do look forward to the re-mastered space hippies.
While I hate to disagree with you, in many fields of science, the changes over a decade are significant, and merit new editions. I just selected a book this year for a junior-level class which I generally like (rigorous in areas that other texts dumb-down), but that has some seriously ... Wrong material. Explanations and models from the era of Nehru jackets and mutton-chop side-burns, and just as relevant to modern science. That book needs a thorough revision that doesn't ruin it like happened to my preferred text. Third edition, clean, clear, if a bit mathematical and tough-sledding at times. Fourth edition tried to become "student-friendly" and "relevant", and made it muddy, choppy, and unreadable.
In math, you may be right, but in chemistry/physics/biology, especially when you consider that the people writing textbooks tend to be late in their career, a revision once every five to 10 years is certainly within reason.
If you want prevent the spiral in education costs, then convince your (legislature/board of directors) to (1) reign in the explosion of deans with their retinues, (2) reign in the athletics departments (if you aren't top 10 nationally, cut the program back to intramurals and fire the surplus coaching staff), and (3) reign in the entitlement mentality of students these days. The last would go a long way to controlling costs, as things they consider necessities now (such as single dorm rooms at all levels, well-equiped modern gyms, cable tv to the rooms), were luxuries or unavailable 20 years ago. Trim back the gilding, and control the explosion of non-educational management, and you'll have a shot at controlling costs.
Machines like that tend to report double-precision Linpack numbers, so that's probably what it's in. 64-bit matrix algebra.
As far as limits go, why use a VM? It's all there in the VMS code-base, from which NT (Arose/Escaped/Was Semi-Intelligently Designed). I used to be able to set a whole host of user limits (this much physical memory, that much cpu, those many page-faults), and I don't see why that capability isn't used in Windows systems. A simple default of (for instance) 64M and not more than 20% of available CPU cycles for all processes to keep them in-bounds, which can be adjusted for the memory hogs, or turned down farther for the truly minimal programs.
Of course, what I really want on a day to day basis is something similar to OS/400 with Office and a web-browser on top of it for office use. The "all you can eat" theory of computing. (Deal. This is all you can eat)