Wow that is a huge difference in fuel, thanks for the info. Any speculation if hit by a similar 767ER if the Empire State Building would have suffered the same fate as the twin towers then? Would it be practical to build a tower that could withstand such a collision, like we build buildings to withstand the 100 year storms or what not?
I always wondered why the cockpit was not just locked and all. Was it because most hijackings before were not suicide missions and procedure was to try and save the passengers by negotiation or something?
Are there any authoritative sources saying what you are saying that I can reference?
Along the same lines a friend of mine would point out that the Empire State building stood up to a collision from a WW2 bomber plane and only lost three floors to fire. If we would just build are towers to withstand commercial airline collisions then we would not have to worry so much either. I am not being facetious either.
I want all the security theater done away with, guns, knifes, explosives, cell phones, let them bring them on the plane. The plane should be able to handle it and keep flying and us passengers can take care of the rest. I am just tired of taking off my shoes and taking out my laptop when it does not seem like it would stop anyone really wanting to blow something up.
What is even more ridiculous is when people try to pull violence into an argument about sex like they are on equal ground and therefore there is some kind of hypocrisy as a result.
Violence is not that hard to understand in comparison to sex. From day one most every health person is capable of experience the results of violence in the same manner and figures out violence and its physical and emotional consequences early on. Everyone experiences more pain than they would ever like to experience again at some point in early life, a cut, a bruise, some blood. This experience is easily extrapolated to larger acts of violence and how such violence would result in a lot more pain than the minimal experiences of pain that one knows they already want to avoid. Furthermore most children loose a goldfish, a dog, or a grandparent and have to grapple with the concept of death one of the ultimate results of violence. Granted there are mental illnesses and extreme cases, but fortunately most people do not really have to deal with those situations head on in civilized society. Violence is mostly limited to an action movie, a video game, or a news report. Violence is pretty black and white, you never want to have to use it and if you do it is at a last resort.
Does that mean our treatment of violence in society is without fault? No not at all, but it is simply not comparable to sex.
Sex on the other hand is easily identified as more complex be simply looking at puberty and the physical and emotional changes that occur in a person at that time. A prepubescent child simply cannot fully grasp sex and its consequences to its fullest, they are not physically, mentally, or emotionally capable of doing so, and the results of adult sexuality imposed on children can have devastating consequences. Sex cannot be presented to preteens in the same way as adults as opposed to something like violence. But that does not address the assertion of 14-16 year olds being capable of understanding sex and its consequences. But most grown adults still do not even understand or deal with sex properly, the assertion that teenagers, who are essentially sexual infants just having gone through puberty can fully understand sex and all its consequences is absurd. Sex unlike violence is not black and white. Most everyone is taught and urged to avoid violence at all costs, violence is always bad or negative, albeit perhaps sometimes necessary. On the other hand everyone is told you will have sex someday (unless you are reading this), it is necessary, and most everyone is a least warned to some extent that it is not an action to approach lightly. The grey areas and additional complexities of sex abound in comparison to violence. That being said, like violence, the treatment of sex could still afford improvement of course.
Sex and violence are unfortunately grouped together and it is certainly a disservice to both issues. Arguing the treatment of sex is hypocritical in comparison to violence is simply ridiculous and dangerously minimizes sex.
Hmm, For the computer based exams I was mostly thinking ACT, SAT, and most AP type exams were a TI graphing calculator is overkill anyway. The GRE was entirely computer based and it is far higher level then those exams and no calculator was allowed for the math anyway. They had special testing stations setup to go take the GRE, no reason ACT, SAT, and AP exams could not employ the same technique. The biggest problem for exams on computer in a college setting would seem to be supplying the computer lab for the exam is all.
As for EE exams I could have made it through my undergrad exams without my TI-89. Entering and dealing with the large exponential numbers is a lot easier on those calculators of course, but a properly written exam could determine if the student understands the concepts without any real numerical calculations. The exams could ban calculators altogether, that way and avoid cheating. But really even if I had my iPhone and EE friend sitting on the other end it would have easier to know the material than cheat. Granted solving linear algebra problems without the lovely matrix functions on my TI-89 would take a bit longer.
I am still thinking EE exams could be done on computer, although the partial credit we all depend on might be harder to earn. You would be allowed scratch paper to hammer out your equations and a built in calculator to run the numbers. The only entry would be a number. Granted there are the occasional graphing or diagram problem, but I have seen all of those done digital in online homework; from simple RCL circuits to transistors and what not. I had online homework that allowed basic equations entered into the input field and the javascript would do the math.
I had 100 level physics courses: mechanics, electromagnetics, thermodynamisc, and quantum mechancis, that had online homework where the problem were broken into pieces to help you learn the material. There would be 5 to 6 sub questions that led you to the answer, something like that could be provided with the avoidance of to much help to give partial credit on a computer exam. Heck all those physics courses used scan trons for exams anyway. They had three test forms handed out, but that would be easy to circumvent by sitting two people away from your friend. All you would need to do is rig your TI with some wireless and transmit (1.A 2.C 3.B...) but again I trust myself more than a friend and knowing the material would probably be easier than cheating.
But really there was never any time to cheat on an EE exam. By the time you would type the question to your outside friend or your inside friend typed the answer to you, you should have solved the problem already. I am still maintaining that only poorly written exams and stupid subject matters can be cheated on (I am looking at you Biology).
I loved my TI-83 in high school, what great calculator. The TI-83 was also a great portable gaming device and my first introduction to assembly programming. I still carry my TI-89 around with me as I have yet to find a good substitute (not that I have looked very hard). But I wonder with the ubiquity of mobile phones how long it will be before it is more economical to have student download a graphing calculator app for their iPhone/iPod/Android device.
The latest smartphones appear to have way more processing power than the latest TI Calculator offerings, plus the phones are near competitively priced with contracts and much more practical uses beyond class than a $150 calculator offer. Seems the software is were it is at, but heck I had a TI-89 emulator for Windows. Granted on an exam it might be difficult for a teacher to curb cheating via instant messenger, but my philosophy has always been if you can cheat on an exam it is a poor exam--or at least have different forms of the exam to deter instant message cheating with in the same class.
TI sucks for restricting the TI-Nspire from running native code, but I can imagine reasons why they would do so. Often the calculators that students are able to use on exams and standardized tests are restricted to curb cheating. I remember having to put tape over my TI-83's IR port during the ACT exam. Really these exams should be on computers now days with a basic calculator built in to the program.
To preface, I despise Flash as much as anyone, primarily for its closed nature. But I have to play devils advocate here.
You make valid points about the lack of a keyboard and mouse on the iPhone inhibiting the use of current Flash apps by iPhone users.
Your argument for resizing a web page to 320x480 is where your short sightedness is completely revealed though.
Many web sites, flash or no flash, do not display well on a 320x480 screen resolution, or rather a 3.x" screen even at the higher resolution of 480x800--but that is why most sites have adopted a mobile version of their website.
The lack of a keyboard and mouse on a non-flash web site can be just as detrimental, but again we have seen an adaptation of web sites to accommodate big blob fingers.
The Wii's built in browser and flash support motivated a whole slew of Flash games with the Wii motion controller alone in mind--no keyboard.
Now imagine that Adobe is allowed to bring Flash to the iPhone. Surly Flash programmers would adapt their apps and games to accommodate the lack of a keyboard and giant click areas--heck Adobe may even offer an API to support multi-touch.
Now I am not fan of Apple and its closed nature. While I have an iPhone and MacBook, for the purpose of creating iPhone apps, I hope for Apple's demise.
But I despise Flash even more than Apple and find it quite amusing that Google and Apple are helping to bury Flash.
I agree an email address is intrinsically easier to remember to a human, but it has a huge flaw I experience all the time. Ever try to give your email address out over the phone, or any combination of unfamiliar letters? 'V' gets confused with 'B' and so on, especially when you have a unique spelling for a a name. My email address and my first name have been malformed a number of times by humans over the phone, but my phone number not once. Numbers are just easier to convey and less ambiguous, I always wondered if by design?
That being said there are technological solutions to the problem, when I meet someone in person I should not be verbally relaying my address (phone number or email...) we should be doing some digital vcard exchange over Bluetooth or something between our phones. Over the phone I should not be verbally relaying information that is more clearly conveyed in text. When ordering my air plane tickets over the phone (sometimes the human operators can pull off things that the online interface is not letting me do in booking) I should simply be able to switch to instant/text messaging the operator and clearly relay any text as long as I do not hit the wrong key on my damn virtual keyboard...
Thanks, someday I hope grow up to be a real DBMS hot dog!
What about Robert Johnson's claim that there is no clear segregation? Is he wrong?
What is the problem, Facebook should be even easier with a real DBMS and scale very nicely.
The only problem I see is over time an individual's profile expanding, like saving all your emails form the last 10 years.
But computer hardware advances or archiving the older less accessed stuff off to another server will help.
I want to take a crack at this, I know enough about databases to make a PHP MySQL web pageis all! How can there be no clear segregation? The data is about me, about someone else, or about a group (a group being a single entity on Facebook similar to an individual) and the data either came from me, someone else, or a group.
My inbox in Facebook is no different than my email inbox, all the messages are to me, just like my email inbox it should reside on one search-able database restricted to a certain manageable size like every other email inbox in the world. My inbox can be on one server and my friend's on another, the whole thing should be segmented by user. Same with my outbox, just like email I retain a copy of sent messages in my personal Facebook database. Wall posts and pictures should work the same way, anything that shows up in my profile should be copied to my personal tables and database.
Now the trickiest part is when another user posts a picture and tags me in that picture. That picture reference should then be duplicated and placed in my picture database. This is in contrast to retaining one copy stored in a Facebook wide database and searching that database for pictures of me each time someone wants to bring up my pictures. The picture data storage can be spread across multiple servers and when someone views the my pictures section of my profile there is simply a dump done on my picture database of references to the pictures to present, links to the pictures and the pictures are retrieved from storage and displayed. When the owner of a picture deletes a picture or the owner untags me or I untag myself from a picture, the picture would simply be deleted from my picture reference database.
I am going to go watch Robert Johnson's ACM talk cause this seems easy and the segregation is as clear as good ole email. From what I can see each individual's profile is fairly small in database terms and never viewed all at once. A profile is viewed by wall, inbox, pictures (and not even all the pictures at once), info...
I am amateur at this at best, but with my hack mySQL skills I do not see it as a big deal to create an easily scalable Facebook segmented by users.
Yeah, after taking an AI course in college and building robots in graduate school I was no longer afraid of movies like the Terminator and the Matrix.
Although my weed cutting robot did cut the crap out of the PhD's hand and my JAVA based GoMoku playing AI, using alpha beta pruning trees, still beats me most of the time.
OK, I live on the second floor, with some liquid steel, in a dark place (that whole Matrix block out the sun, humans make good batteries for the AI, does not make sense to me).
I am glad you brought this up! I have been worried about this. I want my cable, DSL, fibre and cellular ISPs to be dumb pipes as much as the next Slashdotter, but I worried about the quality of service when I needed it for making a VoIP call while my neighbors P2P has the same priority. I do not work in networking so I am hoping for your expert feedback on my understanding and ideas.
I agree that "jitter-sensitive", like VoIP, data should have priority in high traffic situations over less sensitive traffic like Bittorrent traffic. But I am not convinced that automated network management systems are where I want the decision to be made. Plus I may feel my Bittorrent traffic or what appears to be less sensitive traffic to you or the system is important and do not want to leave it to the automated network management to decide what to prioritize. I would bet net neutrality is a pipe dream for wire based networks and essentially impossible for wireless networks. I do not see why we cannot achieve the overprovisioning fantasy-level of service on the ground, but agree it is most likely a waste of resources. But in the air, it seems today at least, there will always be very strong technical reasons for why people cannot just have all the bandwidth they are willing to pay for, it is not just artificially limited by politics and the lack of infrastructure spending, but by the natural limitation of spectrum real estate. That being said I think a tiered internet service will be necessary even if net neutrality is implemented. No, not the evil tiered plans we hear with service providers like Google paying, the other way around.
First off I will make the assumption that there are four major classes of internet traffic types: low-latency high-bandwidth (video conferencing, remote desktop today, 3D video and smell streaming tomorrow), low-latency low-bandwidth (VoIP, gaming, live chat and collaboration), high-latency high-bandwidth (bittorrent, one way video streaming), high-latency low-bandwidth (text, and simple web pages). Maybe the latency factor would be replaced with reliability or quality, some quantity that measures the jitter factor. Now this is not to unlike how I see the current mobile industry today: messaging (low-bandwidth, high reliability), voice (mid-bandwidth, mid-reliability), data (high-bandwidth, low-reliability). I like it this way to a certain extent. I know someone streaming YouTube videos will not delay my voice calls. But what is disappointing is that I am stuck with my carriers voice service, I cannot use my own VoIP application, service, or protocol. With net neutrality would all three tiers be smashed into one? Would the YouTube videos get streamed with the same priority as my VoIP? That is what it seems would happen, and you and I agree this is not a good idea either. But do I not want the dumb pipe analyzing my packets and deciding for itself what priority to give them? No, what if it judges my VoIP not as important, either intentionally and maliciously to push the carriers own voice service, or just unintentionally. Or what if I really want to stream that YouTube video down, NOW. Well then I let the carrier know what priority or tier to place the connection in, and I pay based on free market demand for that tier. The ISP then has no choice but to treat it like any other packet in that tier, whether it be voice or P2P or streaming video, I just pay accordingly. If the low-latency tiers get clogged up they boost the price for using them and hopefully get rid of the YouTube streamers or P2P traffic costumers that can wait. This also reduces the overhead on the ISP's side as well with packet inspecting equipment and cost.
Sorry I am not going to let you get away with raining on their parade so easily. I am hoping you have some BIOS and firmware expertise or insight to share and advance my knowledge and back up your claims.
Why are UEFI, OpenFirmware and the like exempt? Why would a unified or open standard for a firmware not make it easier, since it could possibly remove your first objection of requiring specific payloads?
Sure these more modern firmwares may be intrinsically more secure. But the UEFI group it self admits that the BIOS and firmware are not completely going away. Perhaps it will be enough to render such exploits void, but I would not be so quick to claim that.
Malware is all about being persistent and difficult to remove. We are talking about an exploit that gets as close to the holy grail of malware, infecting the hardware, as virtually possible. The only deeper exploit would be hard coded malware in the hardware.
I, myself, am quick to try and deflate someone else's party balloons in my own arrogance for sure. But come on, have some humility to admit this is at least interesting. Maybe you are not worried, but it is impressive. It at least has peaked my interest to take a low level look at BIOS and motherboard firmware again.
First off Portable Operating Environments (POE) are an exciting idea, an old promise that no one has ever come through on. But the idea of a detachable boot device does not make much sense, nor is a detachable boot device a necessary part of a POE. Live CDs and now Live USB drives are fun, but always impractical. The diversity of hardware out there makes a Live boot device intrinsically bloated with excessively useless drivers to support every possible piece of hardware it would encounter. If a Live boot device did not carry around all the extra weight it will assuredly be wasting the potential computer power of the hardware it encounters.
The thin client is not dead, it looked bad for awhile but the internet resurrected it. While the thin client may live on in web-based email and now in Google apps perhaps, this is more the ugly disfigured inbred version of the thin client. The true successor to the thin client is the remote desktop. I have been carrying my desktop with me everywhere I go for years now. I simply fire up VNC, the JAVA http client is great if I cannot install the native client for the computer I am using. I have no increased concern about the security of my files and data since they always reside on my personal computer and are not directly accessible unless I allow them to be. Better yet I am not carrying my files around encrypted or not where they could get lost or stolen more readily. The remote desktop situation is improving by the minute. Bandwidth is better and internet connections more readily available, hell I can use it on my mobile phone over the cellular network. But there are still limitations.
Running the applications locally will most always be more responsive then trying to stream video and key commands over TCP/IP, but again that is always improving. Local key loggers could be a problem as well with a remote desktop connection if you do not trust the client computer.
The adoption drivers for POE are still pretty weak, especially crippled by the unnecessary tethering of POE to a USB drive.
For users who have both desktop and a notebook, setting up identical apps and OSes both systems is easy, other than licensing issues, than I just need a simple desktop syncing program to make sure any changes on either system show up on the other, plus redundancy of incremental backup between both devices is a nice bonus.
Hardware replacement, still brings up the issue of optimization for the platform and the fact that setting up a new OS is generally a onetime or rare occurrence. But the POE does offer a nice way to setup things like the app and desktop icon arrangements.
Leave the notebook at home. Carrying nothing at all is even easier. Transferring the POE over the internet or remote desktop for the win. Of course no net access and a huge POE could be an inhibitor. I carry around a USB device with my large files if necessary, but it is a pain when I forget them, much easier to use the internet.
Backup. How many times have USB drives failed me? Too many. How many times do I bother making a backup, not often enough. Backup needs to be automated, and that is hard when the POE does not know what hardware it will be encountering or if it is friendly to make a copy there.
Lower cost of ownership, versus what? I guess if you are paying software licenses for your twenty computers spread through the house then it would be. But cost is in the hardware and there is no less of it.
Development in Hardware benefits all solutions fairly equally.
Privacy, never killed the pure thin client, the cost of the network versus the cost of distributed computing power made it not as appealing. The thin client is not popular because the resources needed to transport the data from the âoemainframeâ out weight the cost of duplicating the fraction of the mainframeâ(TM)s power being used locally. In other words it is of course cheaper to have a less powerful computer that out puts the same amount of computing power that the user would be getting from their fraction of the mainframe. In a remote desktop si
Wii play $50, bundled with a Wii Remote. Wii Remote $40. Wii play is a bundled game, albeit a fun one. For awhile the easiest way to get an extra Wii Remote was to buy Wii Play.
The Wii hardware is the same architecture as the Gamecube, Gamecube has been in developers hands longer than the 360. Arguably the Wii Remote has not. The reason developers are behind, is because they did not plan on the Wii becoming so successful, and did not have games in the pipe.
Nintendo has had the habit of short console-lives....However if you look at Sony...
I will conjecture that the Nintendo's console release time frames were forced by competition. The SNES release was fairly delayed (the NES was doing fine and SMB3 was hugely anticipated) and finally came out to trump the Genesis' success. The N64 was late to the game, the PlayStation had a huge jump on it. Again the Gamecube was late, being trumped by the PS2. Finally the Wii was a year behind the 360 but finally matched Sony, in terms of release, for the first time in three console generations. Nintendo would have loved to draw out the life of its existing consoles but could not afford not to compete with new tech.
Sony on the other hand was able to draw out the PS1 and PS2 lifespans because their was no competition. The Saturn was beat from the drawing board. The N64s lack of optical drive gimped it, and the PS1 was too established. The Dreamcast got beat by DVD-ROM drive. The Gamecube and xbox were to little to late, again the PS2 was too established. Without the 360 or HD-DVD we probably would not have seen the PS3 until this X-Mas.
It is cheaper to sell old tech and never develop new stuff as long as it is selling. Especially when the money is being made in software and lost on hardware.
Nintendo has changed that, they are now making a profit off the hardware. They were smart enough to own their last chip architecture and make the second generation easily backwards compatible. Now they can have the best of both worlds: an established existing library and a perpetual hardware base. While Sony put all their R&D into the the new cell and blu-ray tech today hoping for a 10 year payout, Nintendo can slowly and cheaply up their hardware over time. In two years or so Nintendo can turn around and put out a new console, just as or more powerful than the PS3 but with the full library support of the Gamecube and Wii. The programmers will not have to learn a new and difficult architecture like with the PS2 and PS3, the development tools will just be given a small upgrade. Microsoft realized this as well, that is why the 360 is not an Intel processor. Of course Nintendo could not compete as Microsoft could in R&D, they are slipping in with the novelty of the wiiMote, first party games, and easy development.
The big question is will the console community accept incremental upgrades the way the PC market does? I think they will, they will bitch and moan, but the sheeple will buy it.
If Nintendo is smart about it they will release the Wiii but have developers make their games for both the Wii and the Wiii. You stick the disc in your Wii and you get 480p, you stick it in the Wiii and you get 720p or 1080p. Same game. They could even have games out for the Wii with the Wiii on the way and say buy it now and play it in HD later! Of course better graphics are not the only aspect, better AI and physics needs some horse power, but even better, play your Wii game tomorrow in the Wiii with better AI and better physics. It would take a little more programming on the developers part but less than supporting different PC hardware. Adds a little more replay value to the game (not exactly a money maker) but it eliminates this console generation chicken (system) before the egg (software) problem. The PS3 promised this a little with upscaling your PS2 games, but Sony did not play it well they screwed it up and it cost them to much because they needed to support two hardware architectures.
And you must also take into consideration, games can only get as realistic as real life. It's one thing to go from Super Mario Brothers on the NES to Crysis, but Crysis to real life won't be that big of a jump. And when graphics/physics/AI get as good as real life, there is no major drive for a new console for "next-gen" games, they won't be able to get any better (gameplay aside for this arguement). It is also taking us longer to increase realism, th
"The first HD format that becomes affordable (and actually works) on the PC platform is the HD format I'll be adopting. I'm not alone."
You are not alone! If I was not so lazy I might have said it first.
The first blue lasered drive with cheap media will win! Who buys HD movies? I have the 1080p big LCD in the living room, but I do not even own any DVDs. I am waiting for the UHD where I can see the grain in the film and know there is no higher quality to sell me later.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow that is a huge difference in fuel, thanks for the info. Any speculation if hit by a similar 767ER if the Empire State Building would have suffered the same fate as the twin towers then? Would it be practical to build a tower that could withstand such a collision, like we build buildings to withstand the 100 year storms or what not?
I love your comment!
I always wondered why the cockpit was not just locked and all. Was it because most hijackings before were not suicide missions and procedure was to try and save the passengers by negotiation or something? Are there any authoritative sources saying what you are saying that I can reference?
Along the same lines a friend of mine would point out that the Empire State building stood up to a collision from a WW2 bomber plane and only lost three floors to fire. If we would just build are towers to withstand commercial airline collisions then we would not have to worry so much either. I am not being facetious either.
I want all the security theater done away with, guns, knifes, explosives, cell phones, let them bring them on the plane. The plane should be able to handle it and keep flying and us passengers can take care of the rest. I am just tired of taking off my shoes and taking out my laptop when it does not seem like it would stop anyone really wanting to blow something up.
What is even more ridiculous is when people try to pull violence into an argument about sex like they are on equal ground and therefore there is some kind of hypocrisy as a result. Violence is not that hard to understand in comparison to sex. From day one most every health person is capable of experience the results of violence in the same manner and figures out violence and its physical and emotional consequences early on. Everyone experiences more pain than they would ever like to experience again at some point in early life, a cut, a bruise, some blood. This experience is easily extrapolated to larger acts of violence and how such violence would result in a lot more pain than the minimal experiences of pain that one knows they already want to avoid. Furthermore most children loose a goldfish, a dog, or a grandparent and have to grapple with the concept of death one of the ultimate results of violence. Granted there are mental illnesses and extreme cases, but fortunately most people do not really have to deal with those situations head on in civilized society. Violence is mostly limited to an action movie, a video game, or a news report. Violence is pretty black and white, you never want to have to use it and if you do it is at a last resort.
Does that mean our treatment of violence in society is without fault? No not at all, but it is simply not comparable to sex.
Sex on the other hand is easily identified as more complex be simply looking at puberty and the physical and emotional changes that occur in a person at that time. A prepubescent child simply cannot fully grasp sex and its consequences to its fullest, they are not physically, mentally, or emotionally capable of doing so, and the results of adult sexuality imposed on children can have devastating consequences. Sex cannot be presented to preteens in the same way as adults as opposed to something like violence. But that does not address the assertion of 14-16 year olds being capable of understanding sex and its consequences. But most grown adults still do not even understand or deal with sex properly, the assertion that teenagers, who are essentially sexual infants just having gone through puberty can fully understand sex and all its consequences is absurd. Sex unlike violence is not black and white. Most everyone is taught and urged to avoid violence at all costs, violence is always bad or negative, albeit perhaps sometimes necessary. On the other hand everyone is told you will have sex someday (unless you are reading this), it is necessary, and most everyone is a least warned to some extent that it is not an action to approach lightly. The grey areas and additional complexities of sex abound in comparison to violence. That being said, like violence, the treatment of sex could still afford improvement of course.
Sex and violence are unfortunately grouped together and it is certainly a disservice to both issues. Arguing the treatment of sex is hypocritical in comparison to violence is simply ridiculous and dangerously minimizes sex.
Hmm, For the computer based exams I was mostly thinking ACT, SAT, and most AP type exams were a TI graphing calculator is overkill anyway. The GRE was entirely computer based and it is far higher level then those exams and no calculator was allowed for the math anyway. They had special testing stations setup to go take the GRE, no reason ACT, SAT, and AP exams could not employ the same technique. The biggest problem for exams on computer in a college setting would seem to be supplying the computer lab for the exam is all.
As for EE exams I could have made it through my undergrad exams without my TI-89. Entering and dealing with the large exponential numbers is a lot easier on those calculators of course, but a properly written exam could determine if the student understands the concepts without any real numerical calculations. The exams could ban calculators altogether, that way and avoid cheating. But really even if I had my iPhone and EE friend sitting on the other end it would have easier to know the material than cheat. Granted solving linear algebra problems without the lovely matrix functions on my TI-89 would take a bit longer.
I am still thinking EE exams could be done on computer, although the partial credit we all depend on might be harder to earn. You would be allowed scratch paper to hammer out your equations and a built in calculator to run the numbers. The only entry would be a number. Granted there are the occasional graphing or diagram problem, but I have seen all of those done digital in online homework; from simple RCL circuits to transistors and what not. I had online homework that allowed basic equations entered into the input field and the javascript would do the math.
I had 100 level physics courses: mechanics, electromagnetics, thermodynamisc, and quantum mechancis, that had online homework where the problem were broken into pieces to help you learn the material. There would be 5 to 6 sub questions that led you to the answer, something like that could be provided with the avoidance of to much help to give partial credit on a computer exam. Heck all those physics courses used scan trons for exams anyway. They had three test forms handed out, but that would be easy to circumvent by sitting two people away from your friend. All you would need to do is rig your TI with some wireless and transmit (1.A 2.C 3.B...) but again I trust myself more than a friend and knowing the material would probably be easier than cheating.
But really there was never any time to cheat on an EE exam. By the time you would type the question to your outside friend or your inside friend typed the answer to you, you should have solved the problem already. I am still maintaining that only poorly written exams and stupid subject matters can be cheated on (I am looking at you Biology).
I loved my TI-83 in high school, what great calculator. The TI-83 was also a great portable gaming device and my first introduction to assembly programming. I still carry my TI-89 around with me as I have yet to find a good substitute (not that I have looked very hard). But I wonder with the ubiquity of mobile phones how long it will be before it is more economical to have student download a graphing calculator app for their iPhone/iPod/Android device.
The latest smartphones appear to have way more processing power than the latest TI Calculator offerings, plus the phones are near competitively priced with contracts and much more practical uses beyond class than a $150 calculator offer. Seems the software is were it is at, but heck I had a TI-89 emulator for Windows. Granted on an exam it might be difficult for a teacher to curb cheating via instant messenger, but my philosophy has always been if you can cheat on an exam it is a poor exam--or at least have different forms of the exam to deter instant message cheating with in the same class.
TI sucks for restricting the TI-Nspire from running native code, but I can imagine reasons why they would do so. Often the calculators that students are able to use on exams and standardized tests are restricted to curb cheating. I remember having to put tape over my TI-83's IR port during the ACT exam. Really these exams should be on computers now days with a basic calculator built in to the program.
To preface, I despise Flash as much as anyone, primarily for its closed nature. But I have to play devils advocate here.
You make valid points about the lack of a keyboard and mouse on the iPhone inhibiting the use of current Flash apps by iPhone users.
Your argument for resizing a web page to 320x480 is where your short sightedness is completely revealed though.
Many web sites, flash or no flash, do not display well on a 320x480 screen resolution, or rather a 3.x" screen even at the higher resolution of 480x800--but that is why most sites have adopted a mobile version of their website.
The lack of a keyboard and mouse on a non-flash web site can be just as detrimental, but again we have seen an adaptation of web sites to accommodate big blob fingers.
The Wii's built in browser and flash support motivated a whole slew of Flash games with the Wii motion controller alone in mind--no keyboard.
Now imagine that Adobe is allowed to bring Flash to the iPhone. Surly Flash programmers would adapt their apps and games to accommodate the lack of a keyboard and giant click areas--heck Adobe may even offer an API to support multi-touch.
Now I am not fan of Apple and its closed nature. While I have an iPhone and MacBook, for the purpose of creating iPhone apps, I hope for Apple's demise.
But I despise Flash even more than Apple and find it quite amusing that Google and Apple are helping to bury Flash.
I agree an email address is intrinsically easier to remember to a human, but it has a huge flaw I experience all the time. Ever try to give your email address out over the phone, or any combination of unfamiliar letters? 'V' gets confused with 'B' and so on, especially when you have a unique spelling for a a name. My email address and my first name have been malformed a number of times by humans over the phone, but my phone number not once. Numbers are just easier to convey and less ambiguous, I always wondered if by design?
That being said there are technological solutions to the problem, when I meet someone in person I should not be verbally relaying my address (phone number or email...) we should be doing some digital vcard exchange over Bluetooth or something between our phones. Over the phone I should not be verbally relaying information that is more clearly conveyed in text. When ordering my air plane tickets over the phone (sometimes the human operators can pull off things that the online interface is not letting me do in booking) I should simply be able to switch to instant/text messaging the operator and clearly relay any text as long as I do not hit the wrong key on my damn virtual keyboard...
Thanks, someday I hope grow up to be a real DBMS hot dog!
What about Robert Johnson's claim that there is no clear segregation? Is he wrong?
What is the problem, Facebook should be even easier with a real DBMS and scale very nicely.
The only problem I see is over time an individual's profile expanding, like saving all your emails form the last 10 years.
But computer hardware advances or archiving the older less accessed stuff off to another server will help.
I want to take a crack at this, I know enough about databases to make a PHP MySQL web pageis all! How can there be no clear segregation? The data is about me, about someone else, or about a group (a group being a single entity on Facebook similar to an individual) and the data either came from me, someone else, or a group.
My inbox in Facebook is no different than my email inbox, all the messages are to me, just like my email inbox it should reside on one search-able database restricted to a certain manageable size like every other email inbox in the world. My inbox can be on one server and my friend's on another, the whole thing should be segmented by user. Same with my outbox, just like email I retain a copy of sent messages in my personal Facebook database. Wall posts and pictures should work the same way, anything that shows up in my profile should be copied to my personal tables and database.
Now the trickiest part is when another user posts a picture and tags me in that picture. That picture reference should then be duplicated and placed in my picture database. This is in contrast to retaining one copy stored in a Facebook wide database and searching that database for pictures of me each time someone wants to bring up my pictures. The picture data storage can be spread across multiple servers and when someone views the my pictures section of my profile there is simply a dump done on my picture database of references to the pictures to present, links to the pictures and the pictures are retrieved from storage and displayed. When the owner of a picture deletes a picture or the owner untags me or I untag myself from a picture, the picture would simply be deleted from my picture reference database.
I am going to go watch Robert Johnson's ACM talk cause this seems easy and the segregation is as clear as good ole email. From what I can see each individual's profile is fairly small in database terms and never viewed all at once. A profile is viewed by wall, inbox, pictures (and not even all the pictures at once), info...
I am amateur at this at best, but with my hack mySQL skills I do not see it as a big deal to create an easily scalable Facebook segmented by users.
What type of chat room?
Yeah but I am the exception to the morons, I can actually drive down the interstate at 70 and text.
Yeah, after taking an AI course in college and building robots in graduate school I was no longer afraid of movies like the Terminator and the Matrix. Although my weed cutting robot did cut the crap out of the PhD's hand and my JAVA based GoMoku playing AI, using alpha beta pruning trees, still beats me most of the time. OK, I live on the second floor, with some liquid steel, in a dark place (that whole Matrix block out the sun, humans make good batteries for the AI, does not make sense to me).
I am glad you brought this up! I have been worried about this. I want my cable, DSL, fibre and cellular ISPs to be dumb pipes as much as the next Slashdotter, but I worried about the quality of service when I needed it for making a VoIP call while my neighbors P2P has the same priority. I do not work in networking so I am hoping for your expert feedback on my understanding and ideas.
I agree that "jitter-sensitive", like VoIP, data should have priority in high traffic situations over less sensitive traffic like Bittorrent traffic. But I am not convinced that automated network management systems are where I want the decision to be made. Plus I may feel my Bittorrent traffic or what appears to be less sensitive traffic to you or the system is important and do not want to leave it to the automated network management to decide what to prioritize. I would bet net neutrality is a pipe dream for wire based networks and essentially impossible for wireless networks. I do not see why we cannot achieve the overprovisioning fantasy-level of service on the ground, but agree it is most likely a waste of resources. But in the air, it seems today at least, there will always be very strong technical reasons for why people cannot just have all the bandwidth they are willing to pay for, it is not just artificially limited by politics and the lack of infrastructure spending, but by the natural limitation of spectrum real estate. That being said I think a tiered internet service will be necessary even if net neutrality is implemented. No, not the evil tiered plans we hear with service providers like Google paying, the other way around.
First off I will make the assumption that there are four major classes of internet traffic types: low-latency high-bandwidth (video conferencing, remote desktop today, 3D video and smell streaming tomorrow), low-latency low-bandwidth (VoIP, gaming, live chat and collaboration), high-latency high-bandwidth (bittorrent, one way video streaming), high-latency low-bandwidth (text, and simple web pages). Maybe the latency factor would be replaced with reliability or quality, some quantity that measures the jitter factor. Now this is not to unlike how I see the current mobile industry today: messaging (low-bandwidth, high reliability), voice (mid-bandwidth, mid-reliability), data (high-bandwidth, low-reliability). I like it this way to a certain extent. I know someone streaming YouTube videos will not delay my voice calls. But what is disappointing is that I am stuck with my carriers voice service, I cannot use my own VoIP application, service, or protocol. With net neutrality would all three tiers be smashed into one? Would the YouTube videos get streamed with the same priority as my VoIP? That is what it seems would happen, and you and I agree this is not a good idea either. But do I not want the dumb pipe analyzing my packets and deciding for itself what priority to give them? No, what if it judges my VoIP not as important, either intentionally and maliciously to push the carriers own voice service, or just unintentionally. Or what if I really want to stream that YouTube video down, NOW. Well then I let the carrier know what priority or tier to place the connection in, and I pay based on free market demand for that tier. The ISP then has no choice but to treat it like any other packet in that tier, whether it be voice or P2P or streaming video, I just pay accordingly. If the low-latency tiers get clogged up they boost the price for using them and hopefully get rid of the YouTube streamers or P2P traffic costumers that can wait. This also reduces the overhead on the ISP's side as well with packet inspecting equipment and cost.
Sorry I am not going to let you get away with raining on their parade so easily. I am hoping you have some BIOS and firmware expertise or insight to share and advance my knowledge and back up your claims.
Why are UEFI, OpenFirmware and the like exempt? Why would a unified or open standard for a firmware not make it easier, since it could possibly remove your first objection of requiring specific payloads?
Sure these more modern firmwares may be intrinsically more secure. But the UEFI group it self admits that the BIOS and firmware are not completely going away. Perhaps it will be enough to render such exploits void, but I would not be so quick to claim that.
Malware is all about being persistent and difficult to remove. We are talking about an exploit that gets as close to the holy grail of malware, infecting the hardware, as virtually possible. The only deeper exploit would be hard coded malware in the hardware.
I, myself, am quick to try and deflate someone else's party balloons in my own arrogance for sure. But come on, have some humility to admit this is at least interesting. Maybe you are not worried, but it is impressive. It at least has peaked my interest to take a low level look at BIOS and motherboard firmware again.
The new fragrance by Calvin Klein.
Hehe! I do not comment much sorry, did not realize I could use html tags...
First off Portable Operating Environments (POE) are an exciting idea, an old promise that no one has ever come through on. But the idea of a detachable boot device does not make much sense, nor is a detachable boot device a necessary part of a POE. Live CDs and now Live USB drives are fun, but always impractical. The diversity of hardware out there makes a Live boot device intrinsically bloated with excessively useless drivers to support every possible piece of hardware it would encounter. If a Live boot device did not carry around all the extra weight it will assuredly be wasting the potential computer power of the hardware it encounters. The thin client is not dead, it looked bad for awhile but the internet resurrected it. While the thin client may live on in web-based email and now in Google apps perhaps, this is more the ugly disfigured inbred version of the thin client. The true successor to the thin client is the remote desktop. I have been carrying my desktop with me everywhere I go for years now. I simply fire up VNC, the JAVA http client is great if I cannot install the native client for the computer I am using. I have no increased concern about the security of my files and data since they always reside on my personal computer and are not directly accessible unless I allow them to be. Better yet I am not carrying my files around encrypted or not where they could get lost or stolen more readily. The remote desktop situation is improving by the minute. Bandwidth is better and internet connections more readily available, hell I can use it on my mobile phone over the cellular network. But there are still limitations. Running the applications locally will most always be more responsive then trying to stream video and key commands over TCP/IP, but again that is always improving. Local key loggers could be a problem as well with a remote desktop connection if you do not trust the client computer. The adoption drivers for POE are still pretty weak, especially crippled by the unnecessary tethering of POE to a USB drive. For users who have both desktop and a notebook, setting up identical apps and OSes both systems is easy, other than licensing issues, than I just need a simple desktop syncing program to make sure any changes on either system show up on the other, plus redundancy of incremental backup between both devices is a nice bonus. Hardware replacement, still brings up the issue of optimization for the platform and the fact that setting up a new OS is generally a onetime or rare occurrence. But the POE does offer a nice way to setup things like the app and desktop icon arrangements. Leave the notebook at home. Carrying nothing at all is even easier. Transferring the POE over the internet or remote desktop for the win. Of course no net access and a huge POE could be an inhibitor. I carry around a USB device with my large files if necessary, but it is a pain when I forget them, much easier to use the internet. Backup. How many times have USB drives failed me? Too many. How many times do I bother making a backup, not often enough. Backup needs to be automated, and that is hard when the POE does not know what hardware it will be encountering or if it is friendly to make a copy there. Lower cost of ownership, versus what? I guess if you are paying software licenses for your twenty computers spread through the house then it would be. But cost is in the hardware and there is no less of it. Development in Hardware benefits all solutions fairly equally. Privacy, never killed the pure thin client, the cost of the network versus the cost of distributed computing power made it not as appealing. The thin client is not popular because the resources needed to transport the data from the âoemainframeâ out weight the cost of duplicating the fraction of the mainframeâ(TM)s power being used locally. In other words it is of course cheaper to have a less powerful computer that out puts the same amount of computing power that the user would be getting from their fraction of the mainframe. In a remote desktop si
Wii play $50, bundled with a Wii Remote. Wii Remote $40. Wii play is a bundled game, albeit a fun one.
For awhile the easiest way to get an extra Wii Remote was to buy Wii Play.
The Wii hardware is the same architecture as the Gamecube, Gamecube has been in developers hands longer than the 360. Arguably the Wii Remote has not. The reason developers are behind, is because they did not plan on the Wii becoming so successful, and did not have games in the pipe.
I will conjecture that the Nintendo's console release time frames were forced by competition.
The SNES release was fairly delayed (the NES was doing fine and SMB3 was hugely anticipated) and finally came out to trump the Genesis' success.
The N64 was late to the game, the PlayStation had a huge jump on it.
Again the Gamecube was late, being trumped by the PS2.
Finally the Wii was a year behind the 360 but finally matched Sony, in terms of release, for the first time in three console generations.
Nintendo would have loved to draw out the life of its existing consoles but could not afford not to compete with new tech.
Sony on the other hand was able to draw out the PS1 and PS2 lifespans because their was no competition.
The Saturn was beat from the drawing board. The N64s lack of optical drive gimped it, and the PS1 was too established.
The Dreamcast got beat by DVD-ROM drive. The Gamecube and xbox were to little to late, again the PS2 was too established.
Without the 360 or HD-DVD we probably would not have seen the PS3 until this X-Mas.
It is cheaper to sell old tech and never develop new stuff as long as it is selling. Especially when the money is being made in software and lost on hardware.
Nintendo has changed that, they are now making a profit off the hardware. They were smart enough to own their last chip architecture and make the second generation easily backwards compatible. Now they can have the best of both worlds: an established existing library and a perpetual hardware base. While Sony put all their R&D into the the new cell and blu-ray tech today hoping for a 10 year payout, Nintendo can slowly and cheaply up their hardware over time. In two years or so Nintendo can turn around and put out a new console, just as or more powerful than the PS3 but with the full library support of the Gamecube and Wii. The programmers will not have to learn a new and difficult architecture like with the PS2 and PS3, the development tools will just be given a small upgrade. Microsoft realized this as well, that is why the 360 is not an Intel processor. Of course Nintendo could not compete as Microsoft could in R&D, they are slipping in with the novelty of the wiiMote, first party games, and easy development.
The big question is will the console community accept incremental upgrades the way the PC market does?
I think they will, they will bitch and moan, but the sheeple will buy it.
If Nintendo is smart about it they will release the Wiii but have developers make their games for both the Wii and the Wiii. You stick the disc in your Wii and you get 480p, you stick it in the Wiii and you get 720p or 1080p. Same game. They could even have games out for the Wii with the Wiii on the way and say buy it now and play it in HD later! Of course better graphics are not the only aspect, better AI and physics needs some horse power, but even better, play your Wii game tomorrow in the Wiii with better AI and better physics. It would take a little more programming on the developers part but less than supporting different PC hardware. Adds a little more replay value to the game (not exactly a money maker) but it eliminates this console generation chicken (system) before the egg (software) problem. The PS3 promised this a little with upscaling your PS2 games, but Sony did not play it well they screwed it up and it cost them to much because they needed to support two hardware architectures.
"The first HD format that becomes affordable (and actually works) on the PC platform is the HD format I'll be adopting. I'm not alone." You are not alone! If I was not so lazy I might have said it first. The first blue lasered drive with cheap media will win! Who buys HD movies? I have the 1080p big LCD in the living room, but I do not even own any DVDs. I am waiting for the UHD where I can see the grain in the film and know there is no higher quality to sell me later.