Yes, rapid prototyping is extremely handy for architects (as well as engineers, et al) -- if you can afford it. A few schools sport this stuff (MIT), and there are different kinds, but sadly it's not within reach of most designers:(
On the irritating skywalkerjets.com flash website, there is a video of a manned test on the "Test 2" page. He is cabled down with a force sensor.
However, there doesn't appear to be any video of somebody actually flying with this.
As some have already pointed out, it's important to realize that for some (myself included), MySpace has enabled them to expand an existing friend group and keep in touch with people that would otherwise have remained only acquaintances.
One of the crucial components of meeting people (especially for dating purposes) is seeing someone often enough to turn "hellos" into actual conversations. Add in the ability to organize events and informally (or semi-formally) invite lots of people you don't really know--it adds up to being able to meet people you wouldn't have otherwise thought appropriate to just call up, or that you're not sure if you have common ground with.
"Social networking sites" are simply the www-based expansion of an already extant device--"social networking." People have been networking socially forever. We now have an additional tool in how we network. Some people are born good at it, some will never be, and many may learn how to do it by good old fasioned work and practice. I learned how to be social this way, and I didn't need MySpace to do it. But now that I've come this far, MySpace turns out to be a great and useful addition to my repetoire.
Guess what, camp directors? If you're so deathly paranoid that someone's going to find out what really goes on at your camp, maybe you might make some effort to take control of it. Not that I would want them to, really; underage drinking and sex is part of what makes camping such a memorable part of childhood.
"...we don't want to have to deal with that kind of exposure." Maybe it's time to own up, Mr. Seving, director of Camp Fernwood.
With regards to MySpace putting all the information out there: guess what, parents and kids, if you're going to put up a bunch of pictures and information about yourself on one of the world's biggets social net sites, be prepared to deal with the possible ramifications--as well as acknowledge that those are only *possibilities* and not *certainties*.
The statements in this article about camps being worried about "online predators" somehow tracking their children down is bullshit. They're trying to find any excuse they can to keep their reputation of normalcy and safety, when in fact, kids have been doing f-ed up shit for years at camp, and they're not going to stop.
It's an uphill battle, camp directors.
However, there is a big difference between protests and strikes. Train station or construction workers can hold up tracks or the highway and it will directly and adversely affect their employers, which (supposedly or hopefully) garners them leverage. If train workers stop the trains for a whole day, their bosses lose a bunch of money, and the workers are in potentially total control of that money. Strikers are specifically trying to get the attention of their bosses or bosses' bosses. Creating awareness of their plight in the public is mostly irrelevant except to get lots of press.
Activism and protests are carried out specifically to increase public awareness, often with inconveniencing a specific business a pleasurable side-effect. They don't want to unnecessarily inconvenience the general public because they NEED them on their side. They should be as loud and attention getting as possible. Maybe 1 in 100-1000 people are going to give a shit based off their protest or their flyers, so they need to spam the HELL out of everyone without actively turning too many people against them.
Being handed a flyer is absolutely not comparable to being stuck at a train station for a day or stuck on the highway. Protesters holding up a highway to raise awareness of Cambodian occupation are definately making a lot of noise, but they're potentially losing a significant amount of signal by being so irritating.
But a strike is a different story: A lot of people in New York were (rightfully) pissed the hell off by not being able to use the subways for almost a week, and many many many people vehemently disagreed with the MTA, but the MTA employees aren't trying to win or lose the public, they're trying to effect a change with their management. The workers could not (in principal) care less about what the public thinks of them, especially in a city where everyone will go back to using the trains no matter how pissed off they once were. (And for the record, a lot of MTA employees were very resistant to the strikes and very regretful.)
You're completely right, however, that LA news video was the most hilariously sensationalist segment I've seen in a while. It really got me laughing out loud.
Something that continually impresses me is the prevalance of these devices among drivers and deliverers in New York. It's kind of amazing to see these near-future quasi-cybernetic earpieces worn by all sorts of very different people.
I think it's an excellent example of the fact that functionality and sheer usefulness will make or break any technology, and furthermore, that even the most "far-out" technology can and will be embraced by all walks of life if it fills a genuinely useful function. Some might see these devices and assume only the geeks or early adopters would give them any attention, but all over Queens and Brooklyn I see car service drivers with them, bicycling delivery guys, etc..
I always found the term "dialog" box to be an amusing misnomer. If they were really dialogs, I suspect the user would rarely have constructive things to say to their computer.
On the other hand, monologue boxes would be far too dramatic, with the spotlight and all.
An array of up to a hundred mini-antennae would be built into a soft, breast-shaped sensing device.
I actually already possess two highly effective breast-sensing devices.
Have any of you heard of The Sokal Hoax? In 1996, a daring and dissatisfied physics professor named Alan Sokal wrote a bullshit paper called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", which Sokal called "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense", which was "structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics" made by humanities academics.
In short, it caused a big scandal because the paper was readily accepted without review by Duke University's postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text.
It's probably one of the best and most controversial examples of a hoax on the "academic community," and it is excellent proof of just how much bullshit flies for "cultural studies." Run THAT through your paper detector!
Read more about it here: Skeptic's Dictionary and Museum of Hoaxes
I didn't make my career trusting scientists with names like "Professor Nutt."
And for the record, the only thing more pointless than reading articles about things that "should" "theoretically" be "possible" is writing them.
The contexts of the medium have changed very fundamentally. Instead of (comparatively) infrequently delivered paper newspapers, readers (consumers) are on-demand access to the news source. The consumption of newspapers has become dramatically less of a literary activity and more of a computational activity: Instead of a quiet evening mulling over the news in an easy chair, more are inclined to rapidly take in as much news as is relevant and necessary. This is a natural evolution towards increased efficiency.
The only thing we're losing with this adaptation is creativity, which is, in this case, effectively linguistic and textual innovation. It raises the question of how important (if at all) creativity is to news writing and reading. The intuitive answer is that it is irrelevant to the efficient consumption of news.
In the "evening newspaper" paradigm, creativity is often a basic marketing tool: take the NY Post for example. How many people do you see reading the NY Times versus the Post on the subways? It's not just the (substantial) cost difference, it's the attention-grabbing, sensational tabloid headlines. The NY Post has created a niche for the masses that works the same way any sensational media does, and in these cases efficiency is irrelevant to selling the "news" in the first place.
My conclusion would be that in the context of online news media, speed and efficiency detirmine pervasiveness, and therefore advertising revenue. In contrast, paper news media need not expect to be consumed as quickly and efficiently as online. Clearly, publications like the NY Post and the sprawling magazine industry draw their crowd with a certain kind of innovation and creative content (like it or not).
I must admit, I find it very difficult to trust any "journalism" with that many exclamation marks:
"With the help of a device, she could see again!"
This is written a lot like a press release, not a news article.
Has this not been published in any major scientific journals?
Parent and grandparent are both absolutely right on the mark. I think what makes the great grandparent resentful (and I too had the same initial reaction of resentment) is that the aforementioned military fatcats get to remain ignorant of the actual engineering. While I can't claim that they really need to know, it's in my nature to demand that everyone educate themselves. Willful ignorance is the one thing I can't stand in anyone. I have a feeling this attitude is a common trait among engineers and scientists or others who spend a great deal of time and energy learning, and thus is makes them/us/me? very resentful of those who don't bother learning anything.
While interesting in general, the article's startlingly glib overview of historical use of animals in war was unintentionally hilarious:
"WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will "wrangle" itself on to enemy ship's deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air"
and more!
Actually there's an extremely interesting quote from the Apple/Intel FAQ [http://www.appleintelfaq.com/
After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that." - 06/06/2005 [http://news.com.com/2100-7341_3-5733756-2.html%5D
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, rapid prototyping is extremely handy for architects (as well as engineers, et al) -- if you can afford it. A few schools sport this stuff (MIT), and there are different kinds, but sadly it's not within reach of most designers :(
Minimalism is not simplicity. It is most certainly not easy.
Mod this up insightful, not just funny :-/
On the irritating skywalkerjets.com flash website, there is a video of a manned test on the "Test 2" page. He is cabled down with a force sensor. However, there doesn't appear to be any video of somebody actually flying with this.
As some have already pointed out, it's important to realize that for some (myself included), MySpace has enabled them to expand an existing friend group and keep in touch with people that would otherwise have remained only acquaintances. One of the crucial components of meeting people (especially for dating purposes) is seeing someone often enough to turn "hellos" into actual conversations. Add in the ability to organize events and informally (or semi-formally) invite lots of people you don't really know--it adds up to being able to meet people you wouldn't have otherwise thought appropriate to just call up, or that you're not sure if you have common ground with. "Social networking sites" are simply the www-based expansion of an already extant device--"social networking." People have been networking socially forever. We now have an additional tool in how we network. Some people are born good at it, some will never be, and many may learn how to do it by good old fasioned work and practice. I learned how to be social this way, and I didn't need MySpace to do it. But now that I've come this far, MySpace turns out to be a great and useful addition to my repetoire.
Guess what, camp directors? If you're so deathly paranoid that someone's going to find out what really goes on at your camp, maybe you might make some effort to take control of it. Not that I would want them to, really; underage drinking and sex is part of what makes camping such a memorable part of childhood. "...we don't want to have to deal with that kind of exposure." Maybe it's time to own up, Mr. Seving, director of Camp Fernwood. With regards to MySpace putting all the information out there: guess what, parents and kids, if you're going to put up a bunch of pictures and information about yourself on one of the world's biggets social net sites, be prepared to deal with the possible ramifications--as well as acknowledge that those are only *possibilities* and not *certainties*. The statements in this article about camps being worried about "online predators" somehow tracking their children down is bullshit. They're trying to find any excuse they can to keep their reputation of normalcy and safety, when in fact, kids have been doing f-ed up shit for years at camp, and they're not going to stop. It's an uphill battle, camp directors.
However, there is a big difference between protests and strikes. Train station or construction workers can hold up tracks or the highway and it will directly and adversely affect their employers, which (supposedly or hopefully) garners them leverage. If train workers stop the trains for a whole day, their bosses lose a bunch of money, and the workers are in potentially total control of that money. Strikers are specifically trying to get the attention of their bosses or bosses' bosses. Creating awareness of their plight in the public is mostly irrelevant except to get lots of press.
Activism and protests are carried out specifically to increase public awareness, often with inconveniencing a specific business a pleasurable side-effect. They don't want to unnecessarily inconvenience the general public because they NEED them on their side. They should be as loud and attention getting as possible. Maybe 1 in 100-1000 people are going to give a shit based off their protest or their flyers, so they need to spam the HELL out of everyone without actively turning too many people against them.
Being handed a flyer is absolutely not comparable to being stuck at a train station for a day or stuck on the highway. Protesters holding up a highway to raise awareness of Cambodian occupation are definately making a lot of noise, but they're potentially losing a significant amount of signal by being so irritating.
But a strike is a different story: A lot of people in New York were (rightfully) pissed the hell off by not being able to use the subways for almost a week, and many many many people vehemently disagreed with the MTA, but the MTA employees aren't trying to win or lose the public, they're trying to effect a change with their management. The workers could not (in principal) care less about what the public thinks of them, especially in a city where everyone will go back to using the trains no matter how pissed off they once were. (And for the record, a lot of MTA employees were very resistant to the strikes and very regretful.)
You're completely right, however, that LA news video was the most hilariously sensationalist segment I've seen in a while. It really got me laughing out loud.
Something that continually impresses me is the prevalance of these devices among drivers and deliverers in New York. It's kind of amazing to see these near-future quasi-cybernetic earpieces worn by all sorts of very different people.
I think it's an excellent example of the fact that functionality and sheer usefulness will make or break any technology, and furthermore, that even the most "far-out" technology can and will be embraced by all walks of life if it fills a genuinely useful function. Some might see these devices and assume only the geeks or early adopters would give them any attention, but all over Queens and Brooklyn I see car service drivers with them, bicycling delivery guys, etc..
I recommend pure, unadulterated cocaine. It's great for parties as well as programming marathons.
In the article, the spokesman's name is Simley. Why is it an anagram of smiley??? WHY?!
I always found the term "dialog" box to be an amusing misnomer. If they were really dialogs, I suspect the user would rarely have constructive things to say to their computer. On the other hand, monologue boxes would be far too dramatic, with the spotlight and all.
It's an etching ;)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
An array of up to a hundred mini-antennae would be built into a soft, breast-shaped sensing device. I actually already possess two highly effective breast-sensing devices.
Have any of you heard of The Sokal Hoax? In 1996, a daring and dissatisfied physics professor named Alan Sokal wrote a bullshit paper called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", which Sokal called "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense", which was "structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics" made by humanities academics. In short, it caused a big scandal because the paper was readily accepted without review by Duke University's postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text. It's probably one of the best and most controversial examples of a hoax on the "academic community," and it is excellent proof of just how much bullshit flies for "cultural studies." Run THAT through your paper detector! Read more about it here: Skeptic's Dictionary and Museum of Hoaxes
I didn't make my career trusting scientists with names like "Professor Nutt." And for the record, the only thing more pointless than reading articles about things that "should" "theoretically" be "possible" is writing them.
The contexts of the medium have changed very fundamentally. Instead of (comparatively) infrequently delivered paper newspapers, readers (consumers) are on-demand access to the news source. The consumption of newspapers has become dramatically less of a literary activity and more of a computational activity: Instead of a quiet evening mulling over the news in an easy chair, more are inclined to rapidly take in as much news as is relevant and necessary. This is a natural evolution towards increased efficiency. The only thing we're losing with this adaptation is creativity, which is, in this case, effectively linguistic and textual innovation. It raises the question of how important (if at all) creativity is to news writing and reading. The intuitive answer is that it is irrelevant to the efficient consumption of news. In the "evening newspaper" paradigm, creativity is often a basic marketing tool: take the NY Post for example. How many people do you see reading the NY Times versus the Post on the subways? It's not just the (substantial) cost difference, it's the attention-grabbing, sensational tabloid headlines. The NY Post has created a niche for the masses that works the same way any sensational media does, and in these cases efficiency is irrelevant to selling the "news" in the first place. My conclusion would be that in the context of online news media, speed and efficiency detirmine pervasiveness, and therefore advertising revenue. In contrast, paper news media need not expect to be consumed as quickly and efficiently as online. Clearly, publications like the NY Post and the sprawling magazine industry draw their crowd with a certain kind of innovation and creative content (like it or not).
I must admit, I find it very difficult to trust any "journalism" with that many exclamation marks: "With the help of a device, she could see again!" This is written a lot like a press release, not a news article. Has this not been published in any major scientific journals?
I take it this will be the first "fashion" tag.
Parent and grandparent are both absolutely right on the mark. I think what makes the great grandparent resentful (and I too had the same initial reaction of resentment) is that the aforementioned military fatcats get to remain ignorant of the actual engineering. While I can't claim that they really need to know, it's in my nature to demand that everyone educate themselves. Willful ignorance is the one thing I can't stand in anyone. I have a feeling this attitude is a common trait among engineers and scientists or others who spend a great deal of time and energy learning, and thus is makes them/us/me? very resentful of those who don't bother learning anything.
While interesting in general, the article's startlingly glib overview of historical use of animals in war was unintentionally hilarious: "WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will "wrangle" itself on to enemy ship's deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air" and more!
Actually there's an extremely interesting quote from the Apple/Intel FAQ [http://www.appleintelfaq.com/ After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that." - 06/06/2005 [http://news.com.com/2100-7341_3-5733756-2.html%5D
Rupert Murdoch has said a lot of memorable things, among them, "Silence! Sieze them!"