Using a little arithmetic, I would think that we could send two Marines (or one with enough supplies to survive) into LEO for every Marine sent to Iraq.
My state barely supports the community college system anymore. I do my department budget and we have to justify our existence based on dollars coming in from tuition and fees, with a "promise" by the state to reimburse us for credit hours 2-3 from now. Maybe.
As of the need for union protection - our district is very political and we were not unionized for the first 16 years. The problem became one of politics. If you offended the politicians voted onto the school board you could be fired. (If you think that this makes the instructor "responsive" to local needs, think of the implications of passing some arbitrary litmus test. Board members have 6 year terms, so they once they are in, they don't have to worry for several years.)
Other reasons that became significant were the fact that great gobs of money at the time (state seed funds) would have some instructors "displaced" to make way for patronage/connected "instructors". The students are the ones to suffer by bad instruction, with people like those frequenting this site bashing all organized education because they think they didn't learn a thing. Before you blame the instructor, think of who hired the instructor. What are their motivations? Sad but true.
I am in favor of on-line course-ware. Anytime you can replace a person with a DVD you should do it. They are obviously not bringing much to the classroom. The problem in our department is that the material (computer science topics) change so quickly that we can barely keep up. And if you have priced how much publishers charge for "fresh" course-ware it becomes uneconomical to deliver. We look for and hire the best part time instructors we can find. They are up-to-date and know what they are talking about. I know because I eavesdrop on student conversations. Good instructors fill in the gaps of what, how, and why, making the learning experience worthwhile. The learning experience needs to be targeted to the needs and capabilities of the student, and current on-line systems just don't do it.
We have been pushing for a hybrid of video/on-line course ware along with well mentored labs, but we need to find qualified tutors willing to work for almost nothing (no $$). Good luck with that one.
Disclaimer: I am a community college instructor and a union member.
There is no mention recording name, address, credit card numbers or any of the other stuff.
The only part of the bill I find distressing is the use of the term "unregistered sex-offender". Who is that supposed to be?
I knew a cop who once referred to everyone around him that wasn't a cop "a perp who hadn't been caught yet."
Otherwise, you have to go through an unbelievable number of existing laws to figure out what this bill is really trying to do because of the way they have this thing written. To me it looks like the bill is trying to give the U.S. Marshalls a free(er) hand in going after those involved with witness intimidation.
I remember a contract negotiation I was involved with that was written like this, and it was the worst contract "proposal" any of us had seen. BTW, the contract was rejected.
The biggest problem I see is that ISPs would have to store an unimaginably huge amount of data at (ultimately) customer cost. Don't forget the cost of back-ups and security for same.
Back in the 90's Pixar produced the short Knick Knack as 3D. I remember it well because I was at Siggraph when it was shown.
If you've ever seen Knick Knack it's a cute little flick. The long shot showing the chatchkies on the shelf was one the better ones. The bathing beauty with the 'come hither' finger was also effective.
What really sucks for those who remember or have the original on tape is that it was re-done recently and the balloon breasts on both the bathing beauty and the mermaid have been completely removed. Talk about breast reduction! Disney censors probably screamed when they saw those two characters, but they mangled a really cute classic as effectively as George Lucas.
Meanwhile, a series of other technology checks are underway to test Orion parachutes and the shuttle-derived solid rocket booster of Ares I's first stage. NASA successfully launched a 1:100 scale model of the Ares I rocket in January.
In the article they actually admit that it's an Estes rocket. OMG, I built models bigger than this thing when I was 12! And they came back in fewer pieces (by law), all of which were reusable, than NASA is going to get. Where the hell is my money going!?
The Windows security problem count is front loaded by several years.
A similar argument can be made that there are more Mac security flaws this last year than Windows 95.
Instead of counting the number of security flaws over the last year, what happens to the number if the count is over that last two years. Three years. (You get the idea.)
I know that there are many Republicans out there who already know that any turn to the right is a lot easier and more efficient than any turn to the left. Saves money (the measuring stick of it all), time, aggravation... The savings are endless.
Oh! Were we talking about traffic?
Funny how that applies to traffic too.
Interesting that the Brits turn to the Left. Hmmm....
What do you think the military could do with a technology like this? Especially in an urban environment where confusion and obfuscation would be to the aggressor's (our) advantage? I might think that it could be used as a type of camoflage or screening device which could be used to misinform or deceive a would-be target or observer without actually blasting them into the afterlife. This could definitely be used as a non-lethal system (burns and blindness not withstanding).
And the noise is not necessarily a problem. Consider all of the other noise occuring in a confrontation/battle. This actually might be an advantage.
One last thing. If the other side accidentally gets in the way of the laser without protection - so what. I know that sounds callous, but "don't ya know there's a war on"? If a relatively minor burn occurs, or some folks are blinded, well, there are worse things.
It would appear that the teacher should be arrested - not the student. The student was only doing as instructed.
But a civil rights advocate said the teacher's reaction to an essay shouldn't make it a crime.
"One of the elements is that some sort of disorder or disruption is created," said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "When something is done in private--when a paper is handed in to a teacher--there isn't a disruption."
This didn't become a disturbance or disruption until the teacher made it one.
Back in the 'old days' (the mid 80's) when customers actually listened to tech guys because the $250,000 computer cost more than their company was worth, we had a customer whose computer kept suddenly 'burping' and rebooting. This was a very scary thing to this client. They were a good client (which meant they actually paid us on time, etc.) so management displached us to Fort Wayne, Indiana (its not a bad town, just too far from home).
After the better part of a morning, we determined that the culpret was probably static electricity from the carpet. The client, being an interiors firm, knew of static resistant carpeting. Because the computer could be moved to any part of the office area, they were ready to rip up and replace all of the carpet with anti-static stuff.
After talking for a few minutes we (the tech guys) came up with the idea of spraying the area with fabric softener. Initially we thought it would solve the problem just temporarily, but the management liked it. So we looked like heros! We saved the client a bundle of money on new carpet, the computer functioned like it was supposed to, and the office smelled April fresh.
I could easily see a scenario in which this is applied to a broadcast environment. If you are not allowed to change channels during the commercial, what happens when there is a string of commercials, end-to-end? Do you get a fraction of a second window between commercials, or is that "just too bad" (Maniacal laughter follows.)
Even worse, what about infomercials?! Accidentally click into one of those and never leave that abyss. Reset the TV? Damned inconvenent I would say.
Now would this happen? Probably not, but one of the purposes of slashdot is to blow things out of proportion. That's our job.
BTW, with DVD's I have had some luck fast forwarding through the commercials. More than once my mother has been really cheesed off by the fact that the DVD player appears to be busted/malfunctioning.
"No one drop thinks it is responsible for the flood."
If you think it doesn't matter, then go ahead - shop at WalMart. And then complain that jobs are going out of the country where they earn a fraction of what we do.
This is so hypocritical. You want the right to complain, but you don't want the responsibility of doing anything about it.
If price is your only value-point, then you deserve to live in a cardboard box.
Doesn't anyone remember ADA? Language for the DoD that could do it all? Solve any problem?
Launch a missile and guide it to a target, track a ship's inventory, air traffic control system! What couldn't it do?
My gawd, it combined the best of Fortran, COBOL, assembly language, ALGOL, PL/I and many, many more. (What do you mean there was no "best of" for those languages? Oh, right...)
In my day we had only one real language: binary. Two bits, and one of them was broken. And we were damn lucky to have them!
There seems to be so much desire to get speech recognition working properly.
For many applications I think we could actually use a Wizard of Oz machine - that is, a person who is actually listening to the verbal responses but responds using canned or machine generated utterances. The WOZ operator is actually some painfully underpaid schmoe in a foreign (third world) country who knows American english but never has to actually speak it.
(Most people I know who have dealt with outsourced support complain that the person on the other end of the phone has an accent. I don't know if it is because they have trouble understanding them, or because they are jealous. BTW, have they spoken to anyone from Alabama lately?)
This fixes the problem of getting a system to understand "plain" english, whatever the hell that is.
We employ computers because people are too expensive. But after all this money and effort why not just throw in the towel and do what Wal-Mart does - use cheap foreign labor? When someone costs $.25 an hour, what the hell do you need a $2000 (or more) speech server for?
---
The idle mind knows not what it wants.
The external tank violently disassembled causing the orbiter, Challenger, to likewise be disassembled. (The big fireball confused a lot of people.)
While being too close to an IED doesn't mean you exploded, you might as well have, especially if you have been reduced to red mist.
The primary cause of the confusion seems to be that so many (even some folks here at/.) do not differentiate between Challenger, the orbiter, and Challenger, the mission. The entire stack is commonly refered to as Challenger, or just "the shuttle", not the "orbiter, ET and SRB's".
Example: "the shuttle lifted off". What exactly are you calling "the shuttle"? Is it just the orbiter, or is it the entire stack or launch system?
It sort of like pointing to the monitor, and calling it the computer. It is only one component of the system, but a most visible and identifyable component. It's the part everyone can identify. And so, almost everyone I work with points to the monitor, and says "computer". Nevermind that there is a lot more there that they don't want to be confused by.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come on. I'm not giving my money to anyone who can't write a sentence.
http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm
Using a little arithmetic, I would think that we could send two Marines (or one with enough supplies to survive) into LEO for every Marine sent to Iraq.
As of the need for union protection - our district is very political and we were not unionized for the first 16 years. The problem became one of politics. If you offended the politicians voted onto the school board you could be fired. (If you think that this makes the instructor "responsive" to local needs, think of the implications of passing some arbitrary litmus test. Board members have 6 year terms, so they once they are in, they don't have to worry for several years.)
Other reasons that became significant were the fact that great gobs of money at the time (state seed funds) would have some instructors "displaced" to make way for patronage/connected "instructors". The students are the ones to suffer by bad instruction, with people like those frequenting this site bashing all organized education because they think they didn't learn a thing. Before you blame the instructor, think of who hired the instructor. What are their motivations? Sad but true.
I am in favor of on-line course-ware. Anytime you can replace a person with a DVD you should do it. They are obviously not bringing much to the classroom. The problem in our department is that the material (computer science topics) change so quickly that we can barely keep up. And if you have priced how much publishers charge for "fresh" course-ware it becomes uneconomical to deliver. We look for and hire the best part time instructors we can find. They are up-to-date and know what they are talking about. I know because I eavesdrop on student conversations. Good instructors fill in the gaps of what, how, and why, making the learning experience worthwhile. The learning experience needs to be targeted to the needs and capabilities of the student, and current on-line systems just don't do it.
We have been pushing for a hybrid of video/on-line course ware along with well mentored labs, but we need to find qualified tutors willing to work for almost nothing (no $$). Good luck with that one.
Disclaimer: I am a community college instructor and a union member.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:
There is no mention recording name, address, credit card numbers or any of the other stuff. The only part of the bill I find distressing is the use of the term "unregistered sex-offender". Who is that supposed to be?
I knew a cop who once referred to everyone around him that wasn't a cop "a perp who hadn't been caught yet."
Otherwise, you have to go through an unbelievable number of existing laws to figure out what this bill is really trying to do because of the way they have this thing written. To me it looks like the bill is trying to give the U.S. Marshalls a free(er) hand in going after those involved with witness intimidation.
I remember a contract negotiation I was involved with that was written like this, and it was the worst contract "proposal" any of us had seen. BTW, the contract was rejected.
The biggest problem I see is that ISPs would have to store an unimaginably huge amount of data at (ultimately) customer cost. Don't forget the cost of back-ups and security for same.
Like John McCain?
1: Trademark hamburger (cheeseburger too! Fries while I'm at it.)
2: License to McDonald's
3: Profit!
http://www.space.com/news/090211-satellite-collision.html
Smashy smashy!
The size of the craft, at over 1300 kg, is a big honking'* thing. I wonder what kind of tracking systems they are using.
*Honkin' is a technical term.
If you've ever seen Knick Knack it's a cute little flick. The long shot showing the chatchkies on the shelf was one the better ones. The bathing beauty with the 'come hither' finger was also effective.
What really sucks for those who remember or have the original on tape is that it was re-done recently and the balloon breasts on both the bathing beauty and the mermaid have been completely removed. Talk about breast reduction! Disney censors probably screamed when they saw those two characters, but they mangled a really cute classic as effectively as George Lucas.
In the article they actually admit that it's an Estes rocket. OMG, I built models bigger than this thing when I was 12! And they came back in fewer pieces (by law), all of which were reusable, than NASA is going to get. Where the hell is my money going!?
Maybe that's what we need - A LAW! Oh...wait...
The Windows security problem count is front loaded by several years.
A similar argument can be made that there are more Mac security flaws this last year than Windows 95.
Instead of counting the number of security flaws over the last year, what happens to the number if the count is over that last two years. Three years. (You get the idea.)
"That's easy! The capital of France is 'F'."
Oh! Were we talking about traffic?
Funny how that applies to traffic too.
Interesting that the Brits turn to the Left. Hmmm....
My first encounter with that had a lot of honking horns behind me, and my 'navigator' saying "why are they honking at you?"
Well, this is abuse. You want room 11a.
Thank you.
Not at all. Stupid git.
just like "true" AI.
And the noise is not necessarily a problem. Consider all of the other noise occuring in a confrontation /battle. This actually might be an advantage.
One last thing. If the other side accidentally gets in the way of the laser without protection - so what. I know that sounds callous, but "don't ya know there's a war on"? If a relatively minor burn occurs, or some folks are blinded, well, there are worse things.
After the better part of a morning, we determined that the culpret was probably static electricity from the carpet. The client, being an interiors firm, knew of static resistant carpeting. Because the computer could be moved to any part of the office area, they were ready to rip up and replace all of the carpet with anti-static stuff.
After talking for a few minutes we (the tech guys) came up with the idea of spraying the area with fabric softener. Initially we thought it would solve the problem just temporarily, but the management liked it. So we looked like heros! We saved the client a bundle of money on new carpet, the computer functioned like it was supposed to, and the office smelled April fresh.
We all won!
Maybe they meant $130 CDN(!!!)
Even worse, what about infomercials?! Accidentally click into one of those and never leave that abyss. Reset the TV? Damned inconvenent I would say.
Now would this happen? Probably not, but one of the purposes of slashdot is to blow things out of proportion. That's our job.
BTW, with DVD's I have had some luck fast forwarding through the commercials. More than once my mother has been really cheesed off by the fact that the DVD player appears to be busted/malfunctioning.
If you think it doesn't matter, then go ahead - shop at WalMart. And then complain that jobs are going out of the country where they earn a fraction of what we do.
This is so hypocritical. You want the right to complain, but you don't want the responsibility of doing anything about it.
If price is your only value-point, then you deserve to live in a cardboard box.
Launch a missile and guide it to a target, track a ship's inventory, air traffic control system! What couldn't it do?
My gawd, it combined the best of Fortran, COBOL, assembly language, ALGOL, PL/I and many, many more. (What do you mean there was no "best of" for those languages? Oh, right...)
In my day we had only one real language: binary. Two bits, and one of them was broken. And we were damn lucky to have them!
For many applications I think we could actually use a Wizard of Oz machine - that is, a person who is actually listening to the verbal responses but responds using canned or machine generated utterances. The WOZ operator is actually some painfully underpaid schmoe in a foreign (third world) country who knows American english but never has to actually speak it.
(Most people I know who have dealt with outsourced support complain that the person on the other end of the phone has an accent. I don't know if it is because they have trouble understanding them, or because they are jealous. BTW, have they spoken to anyone from Alabama lately?)
This fixes the problem of getting a system to understand "plain" english, whatever the hell that is.
We employ computers because people are too expensive. But after all this money and effort why not just throw in the towel and do what Wal-Mart does - use cheap foreign labor? When someone costs $.25 an hour, what the hell do you need a $2000 (or more) speech server for?
---
The idle mind knows not what it wants.
The external tank violently disassembled causing the orbiter, Challenger, to likewise be disassembled. (The big fireball confused a lot of people.)
While being too close to an IED doesn't mean you exploded, you might as well have, especially if you have been reduced to red mist.
The primary cause of the confusion seems to be that so many (even some folks here at /.) do not differentiate between Challenger, the orbiter, and Challenger, the mission. The entire stack is commonly refered to as Challenger, or just "the shuttle", not the "orbiter, ET and SRB's".
Example: "the shuttle lifted off". What exactly are you calling "the shuttle"? Is it just the orbiter, or is it the entire stack or launch system?
It sort of like pointing to the monitor, and calling it the computer. It is only one component of the system, but a most visible and identifyable component. It's the part everyone can identify. And so, almost everyone I work with points to the monitor, and says "computer". Nevermind that there is a lot more there that they don't want to be confused by.