It's totally true! Although I normally try and drive semi-efficiently and not push the car too much, the fact is that I'm often in a rush and will accelerate fast to get in front of other cars, etc. etc. But with my new prius with a fuel economy display I'm always driving nice and easily trying to up that mileage rating! Every time the average for the whole trip goes up I'm very proud.:)
This story pops up every 6 months or so (I guess not here, but in general)... Has no one else heard about this banana scare story about 10 times before??
There's even a snopes article about it.
Banana Extinction
Although in general I agree that the point of Open Source should not just be to get as many people as possible to use it, I think in this case there's other things to consider. Firefox is obviously one of open source's biggest success stories and it serves as a great advertisement for all of open source software and is probably the main reason that a lot of people know about open source at all. Now obviously it would be ideal if we could just tell people about the open source philosophy, but for people to take open source seriously you need some examples where it has succeeded against commercial software. And unfortunately, for Firefox to continue to be a success story and to compete against Microsoft, which will obviously be including IE with Vista, I think they have to do something like this.
But did the general public even know that Real was shitty to begin with? Based on Real's popularity I'd say they never even caught on to that trend, and it was mainly geeks who didn't like Real.
First, a knife impact is still normally going to have a very strong impact if you're trying to stab someone, and so this vest will stop it. In fact, you can see this in the video when the lab assistant trys to stab the cloth, and they're starting by selling it to prison guards to prevent against stabbings.
Secondly, they're integrating it with kevlar, so you will still have pretty good protection against that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I've done the same thing: gotten home, flicked the light switch and realized the power's out, then gone and sat down at the computer and felt like an idiot.
Yeah, I was in charge of helping my family get a new computer and was discussing it with my dad when my mom tried to join in and asked how many 'grams of megahertz' it would have.
I've had teachers who do the same thing, as long as the audience is small I doubt anyone's going to care. And if you run into someone who does care, do you think they're really going to sue you for compensation for all the past times that you've done it? No, they'll probably just ask you to stop, and you can stop then.
Well, in all honesty, I'm not really that anti-microsoft, and yeah, I actually considered not posting the comment because it was just shameless microsoft bashing. I'll admit some of the stuff in the interview was quite interesting, and I probably should've mentioned that in my post. Really it's the interviewers that I have more of a problem with here, they come off sounding way too eager to please, as if they're just regurgitating info from the press release or something.
Seems more like a bunch of pre-approved PR junk... Some sample 'questions':
A lot of people are complaining, "Oh, why won't we have DirectX 10 for Windows XP." There's a good technical explanation for that, where it's really not possible to do what DX10 does in the Windows XP driver model."
So if the decision had been made, "Yes, we're going to try to make all this work on XP," you'd really have to sort of hamstring DirectX 10. You'd have to say, "Then we can't do this, we can't do that..."
You could even see the graphics card having a big hand in doing some of the stuff that was traditionally done on the CPU. Things like collision detection, or calculating obscured geometry so you don't have to render it. You start to see a lot of flexibility in how developers can use both the geometry shader and the stream-out-to-memory function together.
Video is another area where you're starting to see the graphics card manufacturers doing a lot of fun stuff with their video processing using the power of the GPU. And you could see DX10, especially with the reduced overhead, enabling more powerful video processing on the graphics unit.
It's not a standard deviation. If you actually look at the link you realize that it's actually the amount of change since the benchmark (real world results?). MSN used to be at ~10% and now it's at ~19%, so thus the 192%. Nowhere does it mention the sample size.
Well, aesthetically speaking, my guess is that we'd have less to worry about from mining operations, and more to worry about from corporations who would want to turn the moon into a giant billboard. I mean, really, I don't think mines would be even close to visible... Look at pictures of the earth from space now, even with the huge impact humans have had on the earth, the amount of change you can see from space is pretty minimal. And on the moon you'd probably just have pretty utilitarian settlements with a minimal amount of people, and most of the work being done under the ground. As for the untouched landscape part... Well, the moon is a 'pretty big' place, I'm pretty sure that there'd be lots of untouched space still.
As for the impacts on the Earth... I really don't think that'd have any effect, I mean, like I said the moon is pretty big, and the amount we'd be transferring would be infinitesimal... The effects probably wouldn't be felt for millions of years? And except for any valuable metals, most of it would probably be used for creating stuff to travel further, rather than being transfered back to earth. And I think I read in some dumb forwarded e-mail that something like 4 tons of space dust falls on the earth every single day anyways, and probably there are tons of asteroids hitting the moon too, so I really don't think it's anything to be concerned about... Although, like you said, it'd probably be a good idea to check.
I don't see how ecology even comes into it? I mean, ecology is the study of living organisms, right? And there are no living organisms on the moon, so even if you are a 'deep ecologist' you shouldn't have anything against mining there. Unless you're just against humans altering nature in any way at all (which isn't deep ecology as far as I understand), in which case you'd probably better just kill yourself right now.
Anyone ever notice how as you go further and further back in history animals get bigger and bigger compared to their present day counterparts? Like, you go back a little while and you have stuff like mastodons, saber tooth tigers, etc... Then you go back farther and you have stuff like dinosaurs... Trilobites are just like huge bugs... Doesn't anyone else find it weird, like maybe the bones are expanding as time passes or something?
Anyways, I don't actually think this is true, I'm just randomly rambling, being stupid.
Heck, knowing Microsoft, they could probably even come up with "OpenWindows"
Yeah, but why would they want to name their OS after its security policy?
But seriously, yeah, I think you're being paranoid, as most technical people would know the difference, and it would gain so much bad will (since it's basically false advertising) that it would negate any gains they could make from it.
I definitely agree with the parent poster. In this vein, and since generally kids are becoming more and more computer literate I'd say that a better way to teach would be to actually make them use software that they're not used to. i.e. Put them on a nice linux distribution with OpenOffice or something like that, as too often people are just put off because of the fact that something is different than they're used to. In addition, this would put all the kids on a bit more of an equal playing field, and then as for the actual learning part the parent poster had it right, that they should actually have to figure out stuff for themselves, and learn how to find the information that they need.
About the last point though: I'd like to see a day where a skill that is searched for on a resumé is no longer a specific ability with a specific tool, but simply the line "Fast and adaptive learner" or "Excel at creative solution design in novel environments." That's what I'd be looking for in an employee, and for future generations of technology users.
I'm pretty sure everyone does that already. The problem is that anyone can write it, and it's not exactly something you can test very well in a 30 minute interview.
Yeah, seriously, I find water to be by far the most refreshing drink. And most offices have water coolers, so it's free too, so you don't have to worry about the tapwater, like that other guy (although that's BS anyways, most tapwater is perfectly fine for drinking unless you're living in some developing country).
I found this: http://lrnj.com/ to be a fun way to help me learn the characters (although probably writing them repeatedly is the best for drilling them into your brain)
You know I'll never understand the thing all slashdot readers have with dupes. Think of a normal newspaper for a minute, and think about how stories are posted. If a story is interesting it'll usually be discussed for days on end by multiple reporters, editors, etc. and there'll be tons of repeating of information. Now, I know slashdot isn't exactly like this, but there are some similarities that can be drawn. Also, I'm not sure as to the number of stories submitted that the editors have to go through, but I'm sure it's quite a large number, and did you ever think that maybe the reason the editors are posting it again is because they've been receiving it a couple times and so obviously not everyone saw it the first time? I dunno, I'm sure this has been discussed endlessly too, but that's just my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
It's totally true! Although I normally try and drive semi-efficiently and not push the car too much, the fact is that I'm often in a rush and will accelerate fast to get in front of other cars, etc. etc. But with my new prius with a fuel economy display I'm always driving nice and easily trying to up that mileage rating! Every time the average for the whole trip goes up I'm very proud. :)
This story pops up every 6 months or so (I guess not here, but in general)... Has no one else heard about this banana scare story about 10 times before?? There's even a snopes article about it. Banana Extinction
Although in general I agree that the point of Open Source should not just be to get as many people as possible to use it, I think in this case there's other things to consider. Firefox is obviously one of open source's biggest success stories and it serves as a great advertisement for all of open source software and is probably the main reason that a lot of people know about open source at all. Now obviously it would be ideal if we could just tell people about the open source philosophy, but for people to take open source seriously you need some examples where it has succeeded against commercial software. And unfortunately, for Firefox to continue to be a success story and to compete against Microsoft, which will obviously be including IE with Vista, I think they have to do something like this.
But did the general public even know that Real was shitty to begin with? Based on Real's popularity I'd say they never even caught on to that trend, and it was mainly geeks who didn't like Real.
2 things:
:p
First, a knife impact is still normally going to have a very strong impact if you're trying to stab someone, and so this vest will stop it. In fact, you can see this in the video when the lab assistant trys to stab the cloth, and they're starting by selling it to prison guards to prevent against stabbings.
Secondly, they're integrating it with kevlar, so you will still have pretty good protection against that kind of stuff.
In conclusion, RTFA,
Reminds me of this comic. From the Perry Bible Fellowship, which is all very quality stuff (Archive currently temporarily here)
Yeah, I've done the same thing: gotten home, flicked the light switch and realized the power's out, then gone and sat down at the computer and felt like an idiot.
Yeah, I was in charge of helping my family get a new computer and was discussing it with my dad when my mom tried to join in and asked how many 'grams of megahertz' it would have.
I've had teachers who do the same thing, as long as the audience is small I doubt anyone's going to care. And if you run into someone who does care, do you think they're really going to sue you for compensation for all the past times that you've done it? No, they'll probably just ask you to stop, and you can stop then.
Well, in all honesty, I'm not really that anti-microsoft, and yeah, I actually considered not posting the comment because it was just shameless microsoft bashing. I'll admit some of the stuff in the interview was quite interesting, and I probably should've mentioned that in my post. Really it's the interviewers that I have more of a problem with here, they come off sounding way too eager to please, as if they're just regurgitating info from the press release or something.
Seems more like a bunch of pre-approved PR junk... Some sample 'questions':
A lot of people are complaining, "Oh, why won't we have DirectX 10 for Windows XP." There's a good technical explanation for that, where it's really not possible to do what DX10 does in the Windows XP driver model."
So if the decision had been made, "Yes, we're going to try to make all this work on XP," you'd really have to sort of hamstring DirectX 10. You'd have to say, "Then we can't do this, we can't do that..."
You could even see the graphics card having a big hand in doing some of the stuff that was traditionally done on the CPU. Things like collision detection, or calculating obscured geometry so you don't have to render it. You start to see a lot of flexibility in how developers can use both the geometry shader and the stream-out-to-memory function together.
Video is another area where you're starting to see the graphics card manufacturers doing a lot of fun stuff with their video processing using the power of the GPU. And you could see DX10, especially with the reduced overhead, enabling more powerful video processing on the graphics unit.
It's not a standard deviation. If you actually look at the link you realize that it's actually the amount of change since the benchmark (real world results?). MSN used to be at ~10% and now it's at ~19%, so thus the 192%. Nowhere does it mention the sample size.
Well, aesthetically speaking, my guess is that we'd have less to worry about from mining operations, and more to worry about from corporations who would want to turn the moon into a giant billboard. I mean, really, I don't think mines would be even close to visible... Look at pictures of the earth from space now, even with the huge impact humans have had on the earth, the amount of change you can see from space is pretty minimal. And on the moon you'd probably just have pretty utilitarian settlements with a minimal amount of people, and most of the work being done under the ground. As for the untouched landscape part... Well, the moon is a 'pretty big' place, I'm pretty sure that there'd be lots of untouched space still.
As for the impacts on the Earth... I really don't think that'd have any effect, I mean, like I said the moon is pretty big, and the amount we'd be transferring would be infinitesimal... The effects probably wouldn't be felt for millions of years? And except for any valuable metals, most of it would probably be used for creating stuff to travel further, rather than being transfered back to earth. And I think I read in some dumb forwarded e-mail that something like 4 tons of space dust falls on the earth every single day anyways, and probably there are tons of asteroids hitting the moon too, so I really don't think it's anything to be concerned about... Although, like you said, it'd probably be a good idea to check.
I don't see how ecology even comes into it? I mean, ecology is the study of living organisms, right? And there are no living organisms on the moon, so even if you are a 'deep ecologist' you shouldn't have anything against mining there. Unless you're just against humans altering nature in any way at all (which isn't deep ecology as far as I understand), in which case you'd probably better just kill yourself right now.
Anyone ever notice how as you go further and further back in history animals get bigger and bigger compared to their present day counterparts? Like, you go back a little while and you have stuff like mastodons, saber tooth tigers, etc... Then you go back farther and you have stuff like dinosaurs... Trilobites are just like huge bugs... Doesn't anyone else find it weird, like maybe the bones are expanding as time passes or something? Anyways, I don't actually think this is true, I'm just randomly rambling, being stupid.
Heck, knowing Microsoft, they could probably even come up with "OpenWindows"
Yeah, but why would they want to name their OS after its security policy?
But seriously, yeah, I think you're being paranoid, as most technical people would know the difference, and it would gain so much bad will (since it's basically false advertising) that it would negate any gains they could make from it.
I definitely agree with the parent poster. In this vein, and since generally kids are becoming more and more computer literate I'd say that a better way to teach would be to actually make them use software that they're not used to. i.e. Put them on a nice linux distribution with OpenOffice or something like that, as too often people are just put off because of the fact that something is different than they're used to. In addition, this would put all the kids on a bit more of an equal playing field, and then as for the actual learning part the parent poster had it right, that they should actually have to figure out stuff for themselves, and learn how to find the information that they need.
About the last point though:
I'd like to see a day where a skill that is searched for on a resumé is no longer a specific ability with a specific tool, but simply the line "Fast and adaptive learner" or "Excel at creative solution design in novel environments." That's what I'd be looking for in an employee, and for future generations of technology users.
I'm pretty sure everyone does that already. The problem is that anyone can write it, and it's not exactly something you can test very well in a 30 minute interview.
Yeah, I guess this is basically just very old, out of date news?
Yeah, seriously, I find water to be by far the most refreshing drink. And most offices have water coolers, so it's free too, so you don't have to worry about the tapwater, like that other guy (although that's BS anyways, most tapwater is perfectly fine for drinking unless you're living in some developing country).
I found this: http://lrnj.com/ to be a fun way to help me learn the characters (although probably writing them repeatedly is the best for drilling them into your brain)
You keep your laptop in your pockets?
You know I'll never understand the thing all slashdot readers have with dupes. Think of a normal newspaper for a minute, and think about how stories are posted. If a story is interesting it'll usually be discussed for days on end by multiple reporters, editors, etc. and there'll be tons of repeating of information. Now, I know slashdot isn't exactly like this, but there are some similarities that can be drawn. Also, I'm not sure as to the number of stories submitted that the editors have to go through, but I'm sure it's quite a large number, and did you ever think that maybe the reason the editors are posting it again is because they've been receiving it a couple times and so obviously not everyone saw it the first time? I dunno, I'm sure this has been discussed endlessly too, but that's just my opinion.