I was thinking about that the other day. I've had my standalone GPS for 2-3 years now, and I consider it one of my best electronics purchases ever: It still works as well as it did the day I bought it, and still does everything I want it to do -- not true of my similarly aged DVD player, audio receiver, laptop computer, phone, etc. Of course, that's not good for Garmin, because I don't have any pressure to upgrade.
Yelling "Install NoScript you n00bs!!1!" won't register noobs... because they're newbs.
And if they were to install noscript, they wouldn't have the skill or patiance to configure all the exceptions, and would complain to you about their broken Internet.
Am I the only one on Slashdot who thinks javascript is a powerful tool adds much more to the web than it risks? I mean, sure, cutting off your arm is a great way to reduce the risk of fingernail infection, but who would want to do that?
"legitimate need to upload a two-hour video of good quality"
Who gets to define legitimate?
As others have pointed out, 'The Community.' But I have a hard time believing something of that length could possibly be appropriate for an encyclopedia article. Then again, that applies to be existing wikipedia articles....
because the Wikipedia Search "feature" sucks unless you know exactly what you're looking for
I feel strongly enough to throw in a 'me too.'
The wikipedia search feature is dreadful, but as others have pointed out, Google's is pretty good. I'll usually append or prepend the phrase 'wiki'. E.g.: 'wiki paw-paw' or 'wiki radiant intensity'.
Here's a test. Pick a subject that you are expert in, or even have a good passing knowledge of -- any subject, pick a few even. Go to the wikipedia page on that topic, and you will find inconsistencies, inaccuracies, conjecture, missing information and sometimes downright lies.
I've found Wikipedia to be very accurate on topics in mathematics, physics, basic chemisry, and other 'nerdy but not controversial' topics (especially as a general reference for formulas, constants, and methods). When I've examined articles on topics about which I'm especially familiar I've found that writing quality and organization are pretty good indicators of accuracy. I assume that applies broadly.
That's not the point, though. You're absolutely right that wikipedia shouldn't be the final source for anything critically important (with few exceptions). But it is good enough for most casual (entertainment) tasks, and even many professional ones, assuming you work with hard sciences.
I use google for math all the time. It's fast, convenient, recognizes units and constants, and doesn't require installing anything -- a key advantage when I'm at work and am using random computers / am prohibited from installing software. I guess I could use matlab, but that is not a fast-launching program by any stretch of the imagination.
I don't know much of anything about physics research. Here in biology, if any aspect of your research has applications to cancer, you talk that connection up, even if it's somewhat tenous. There's a glut of funding available for cancer wheras there's substantially less for equally important medical research on aspects of biology "lay people" don't understand. A lot of research funded with cancer research money really has very little chance of actually taking steps towards curing cancer (which is not to say we shouldn't be funding those projects.)
Is "homeland security" the equivalent of that for physics research? Show a link as to how your project might be used to prevent terrorism and you'll get a blank check from the government? I sincerely hope so, at least some good can come out of our paranoia.
In a word, yes. Quantum nano bio optics for counterrorism and energy independence.
This won't win points for being useful or insightful commentary, but my experience is that if you use your computer for more than typing word documents and surfing the web, you'll run into problems sooner or later. Computers are hard to use, period. And I say this as an engineer and scientist, not a computing neophyte.
Maybe it is an confusing GUI, or a required preference tweak that you shouldn't need to even know about. Maybe it is an incompatibility with a piece of harware or software whose vendors claim should 'just work.' Maybe it is a poorly written or patronizing but useless 'help' feature. All computers show some type of computing evil sooner or later.
Thanks to hard work by a lot of people, I think Windows and the Mac OS are 'equally decent for most tasks'. But let's not pretend either is 'easy to use' or 'good'.
As others have pointed out elsewhere, the Diablo games are no less than rogue like games. If you consider these games RPGs, it is hard to identify what criteria would include them but not Diablo.
Of course, the Diablo games were reasonably 'mainstream', so maybe it fails the 'rpg' test for that reason alone.
Ebay is a horrible place to buy new electronics. I don't think I've every seen a better price on a (new) computing or electronics product than what I could find through pricewatch or pricegrabber. If I saw something for a decent price, on a 'new' product, I would suspicious.
And let me now complain about the proliferation of ebay 'stores' listing hundreds of 'NEW, IN BOX' ITEMS that completely drown out the direct seller-to-buyer listings where they might be actual value.
Absolutely! Actually, it's the same thing with saying 'excuse me' to fellow pedestrians: - out of my way, you jerk - hey, you almost made me drop this - watch out, I'm going to squeeze by you - I appologize in advance for violating your personal space - I appologize after the fact for whatever I just did
One of my first noteworthy experiences after moving to NJ was using 'excuse me' for one of the latter meanings -- "I'm about to squeese closer to you than I normally would" and having it interpreted as the first, earning me an angry, sarcasm-ladden reply. Often when driving (I'm not a perfect driver) I wish I had a " d'oh! " horn, or a 'sorry' horn, so that I could communicate the times I've accidentally cut people off or pulled in front of people that it wasn't my intent.
..
Just like sports betting, where folk put money on their local team regardless of whether they're any good, or back a horse because they like the name. Well... I don't have data to prove this, but I would guess it isn't just like betting. The inherent dorkiness of paying attention to politics (as doing so is perceived in the US) probably limits participation to people who are going to take it seriously. I bet most of the participants are making objective predictions. Whether they are right or not, or based on appropriate data...
Likewise, but times have changed quite recently. It also varies tremendously by location. That's very true, at least the second part. My old troop (northeastern US, not-affiliated with any church group) is probably still more relaxed on the religion issue than one run by a church in middle American somewhere. Even then, have you visited different churches within the same denomination before? It's amazing how much variation there is in 'what rules matter' from place to place, for ostensibly hierarchical, authoritarian, organizations.
I was a boyscout, too, though not gay or atheist. I think my troop would have been pretty relaxed about the religion thing too. I don't know how they would have reacted to homosexuality -- there weren't any openly gay men or women in my social circle back then -- but my sense is it would have been unfriendly. None of this would have been because of policy from above.
I remember being very surprised by the Dale case.
But at school? Apart from one teacher science was always a dull subject, it was numbers in a way that made Maths seem exciting and it just never covered where all this science was leading to.
Speaking as someone who left the academic research track, I can that's because actually doing scientific research is a mathematically intensive, highly detail oriented job. You have to be the sort of person who finds the 30 seconds of enlightenment you feel when you see a graph that confirms your predictions worth the months or years of tedious algebra (if you're a theorist) or number crunching/detailed experiment design work (if your an experimentalist). Or, you have to enjoy math for math's sake, and engineering or engineering's sake, rather than just as means to an end.
I turn out to be one of those people who find the concepts and ideas of science (at least the brand I tried, physics) fascinating, but I don't like doing lots of math, and neither do I like the detail-oriented specialization required to succeed in academia. It turns out the 'really cool' stuff -- physically overlapping matter, momentum coupling, quantum entanglement, cosmological theory, etc. -- is hidden among piles of algebra, malfunctioning computer code, and broken lasers.
That said, I fully support trying to 'blow student's minds'.:-) The problem, though, with using things that are too far beyond comprehension for non-specialists (I'd put a lot of quantum mechanics and cosmology in this category) is it can become a bit nebulous and religious. Look at how many quack-quantum-mechanics-cosmology-applied-to-daily-life books their are. We want to inspire the scientific curiosity, not the unfounded philosophizing. One can lead to the other (that's why many people do science) but one must be careful.
Well, Mr. Troll, I'm sure an unusually talented and dillegent student (see, I flatter you!) can succeed without being forced through high school. However there are also those who: 1. Don't learn self-discipline until later in life. Required school attendence gives them time to mature before they screw themselves over. 2. Are maybe capable of learning on their own but are aided by formal instruction. If you're not one of those people, that may be hard to imagine, but I really do get more out of the combination of 'lecture+book+practice' than I get from 'book+practice' or 'practice' alone. 3. Really do use the material. I'll grant high school history was pretty much a waste, but the instruction in writing, calculus, and the natural sciences ended up being valuable.
What I will give you is that there should be more opportunities for vocational education during the high school years, and these should be without the stigma they have today. Not everyone wants more than that, not everyone needs more than that, and frankly, not everyone is capable of more than that. Furthermore I doubt, by the time the person is in their teens, that they can be practically 'forced' to do anything.
I can also imagine that some high schools are not 'learning friendly', and maybe having a way out is even more important in those cases. My high school had good teachers, and equally importantly, good students/parents. I hated the experience as much as the next stereotypical slashdot reader, but it was certainly beneficial in the long run. I wouldn't have had the motivation to study as hard as I did without the external motivation the system provided -- I didn't learn self discipline until near the end, but I had 'pride in academic achievement', e.g. grades, to push me until I realized that learning was important for my goals.
Am I a brainless machine? Well, obviously I wouldn't know if I was! I doubt it, though. I may be a machine in that I chose to be an engineer/scientist, which requires a certain analytic mindset, but I doubt I'm brainless, or criminal.:-)
On my Comcast Internet connection, for which I pay almost $60/mo, I have yet to see downloads/torrents much above HALF that number, so I wouldn't exactly be worried about a limit that high.
Alright, the consensus seems to be 'honest complaint.' I agree with what tomhudson said. Removing the extraneous commentary and drilling down to the original source is what the editors SHOULD be doing for the stories, and it is horribly frustrating when they don't. If I want commentary, I'll read the comments. Often, I do, though usually for entertainment rather than insight.
With due respect to afeinberg, I think his complaint greatly overstates the value of news commentary (anyone's news commentary, not specifically Feinberg's). This is especially true of blogs based on mainstream media sources, stories which are already written for the layman public and don't often benefit from the extra layer of interpretation. That's why I mistook the comment for parody. It's a stereotype, I know, but nothing typifies bloggers in my eyes more than
Overestimating the importance of blogs in particular and news commentary in general
Complaining about how much work blogging is
Complaining about being censored, kept down, denied access, etc., by 'the man'
Complaining about the lack of respect bloggers receive.
The news story this discussion concerns confirms that stereotype; unfortunately, Mr. Feinberg's comment does too, so I thought it satirical.
That said, it's just a stereotype. Many blogs are valuable, and some indignation is justified. In this case, though, slashdot worked. Post the news, not the spin.
Let's see, just exactly WHO should be responsible for the banks' security? Some random customer who is using them, or a staff of professionals whose entire industry is founded on the protection of money belonging to random customers? Seriously, if the banks were to pull that stunt on me, I'd switch to cash as there's absolutely no reason to use the banks if they're not going to offer me basic safeguards.
I don't know if I agree with the rest of your speculation, but I certainly agree with this first part. I use banks primarily because I expect that my money is much safer with them than it would be if I maintained it myself (with coffee cans buried in the cemetery, grey-market loans, whatever). It is the bank's job to protect my money, no matter how unsophisticated (or sophisticatedly malicious) other customers are.
I used to be a stronger advocate of the 'users should be more responsible' mantra but I am starting to doubt that is realistic. The obligatory automobile metaphor would be to require government inspections and mandate liability insurance, and I don't see that going over very well, even if it were feasible. No, my ISP should protect me from spam, DoS attacks, email viruses, and bot nets, and my bank should protect my money. Now, if I were to fall victim to a confidence scam, well, that'd be pretty much my own problem, but even then, I think you could argue that if some third party knew or could reasonably be expected to know a scam was going on, and did nothing to stop it, then that party would share some liability. There's a lot of weight to be shouldered out there, and not by the users.
As someone who has enough problems with the eye-hand-cooridnation demanded of mousing (let alone mouse gestures! holy frustrating! Nothing like having to try five times just go get your browser to recognize you want to visit the previous page) I hope your vision of intricate whole-body gymnastics never comes to fruition. I guess I can imagine gloves and gestures and the like being useful in some applications (and sure, visual arts might be just those applications), but I think the demand for short learning curves and economy of movement will keep the complexity under control.
Maybe I just suffer from a lack of imagination. There's no reason a position and velocity sensitive interface needs to be as frustrating as mouse gestures are. And I guess, too, from the nutso-praise for mouse gestures I see on slashdot (but do they support ogg-vorbis?) that my experience with them is unusual.
Well, the stated reason was to so they could test an IR tracking system; they needed for the sattelite to warm up.
But another possibility that comes up in other weapons tests, at least, is the desire to stay safe and succeed in the mission. If you're not at war, and no one is forcing your hand, it makes no sense to take chances. You run your test in a way that maximizes safety and chance of success.
Ok, here's a question...bugging the hell out of me! If there is NO oxygen in space then how was there a FIRE ball at impact with the missle which had no explosive warhead???
Who says there was a fire ball? Anyway, one answer could be: if there were a hydrazine explosion, that would not require oxygen. Alternately, maybe by 'fireball' they mean 'cloud of red hot debris', which might also be possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking about that the other day. I've had my standalone GPS for 2-3 years now, and I consider it one of my best electronics purchases ever: It still works as well as it did the day I bought it, and still does everything I want it to do -- not true of my similarly aged DVD player, audio receiver, laptop computer, phone, etc. Of course, that's not good for Garmin, because I don't have any pressure to upgrade.
That's what I was thinking. I wasn't even aware that the iPhone had turn-by-turn GPS apps yet. Surely that must be very recent.
And if they were to install noscript, they wouldn't have the skill or patiance to configure all the exceptions, and would complain to you about their broken Internet.
Am I the only one on Slashdot who thinks javascript is a powerful tool adds much more to the web than it risks? I mean, sure, cutting off your arm is a great way to reduce the risk of fingernail infection, but who would want to do that?
As others have pointed out, 'The Community.' But I have a hard time believing something of that length could possibly be appropriate for an encyclopedia article. Then again, that applies to be existing wikipedia articles....
I feel strongly enough to throw in a 'me too.'
The wikipedia search feature is dreadful, but as others have pointed out, Google's is pretty good. I'll usually append or prepend the phrase 'wiki'. E.g.: 'wiki paw-paw' or 'wiki radiant intensity'.
I've found Wikipedia to be very accurate on topics in mathematics, physics, basic chemisry, and other 'nerdy but not controversial' topics (especially as a general reference for formulas, constants, and methods). When I've examined articles on topics about which I'm especially familiar I've found that writing quality and organization are pretty good indicators of accuracy. I assume that applies broadly.
That's not the point, though. You're absolutely right that wikipedia shouldn't be the final source for anything critically important (with few exceptions). But it is good enough for most casual (entertainment) tasks, and even many professional ones, assuming you work with hard sciences.
I use google for math all the time. It's fast, convenient, recognizes units and constants, and doesn't require installing anything -- a key advantage when I'm at work and am using random computers / am prohibited from installing software. I guess I could use matlab, but that is not a fast-launching program by any stretch of the imagination.
Or, "Where did you bury the body of your eleventh victim?"
In a word, yes. Quantum nano bio optics for counterrorism and energy independence.
This won't win points for being useful or insightful commentary, but my experience is that if you use your computer for more than typing word documents and surfing the web, you'll run into problems sooner or later. Computers are hard to use, period. And I say this as an engineer and scientist, not a computing neophyte.
Maybe it is an confusing GUI, or a required preference tweak that you shouldn't need to even know about. Maybe it is an incompatibility with a piece of harware or software whose vendors claim should 'just work.' Maybe it is a poorly written or patronizing but useless 'help' feature. All computers show some type of computing evil sooner or later.
Thanks to hard work by a lot of people, I think Windows and the Mac OS are 'equally decent for most tasks'. But let's not pretend either is 'easy to use' or 'good'.
As others have pointed out elsewhere, the Diablo games are no less than rogue like games. If you consider these games RPGs, it is hard to identify what criteria would include them but not Diablo.
Of course, the Diablo games were reasonably 'mainstream', so maybe it fails the 'rpg' test for that reason alone.
Ebay is a horrible place to buy new electronics. I don't think I've every seen a better price on a (new) computing or electronics product than what I could find through pricewatch or pricegrabber. If I saw something for a decent price, on a 'new' product, I would suspicious.
And let me now complain about the proliferation of ebay 'stores' listing hundreds of 'NEW, IN BOX' ITEMS that completely drown out the direct seller-to-buyer listings where they might be actual value.
Absolutely! Actually, it's the same thing with saying 'excuse me' to fellow pedestrians:
- out of my way, you jerk
- hey, you almost made me drop this
- watch out, I'm going to squeeze by you
- I appologize in advance for violating your personal space
- I appologize after the fact for whatever I just did
One of my first noteworthy experiences after moving to NJ was using 'excuse me' for one of the latter meanings -- "I'm about to squeese closer to you than I normally would" and having it interpreted as the first, earning me an angry, sarcasm-ladden reply.
Often when driving (I'm not a perfect driver) I wish I had a " d'oh! " horn, or a 'sorry' horn, so that I could communicate the times I've accidentally cut people off or pulled in front of people that it wasn't my intent.
.. Just like sports betting, where folk put money on their local team regardless of whether they're any good, or back a horse because they like the name. Well... I don't have data to prove this, but I would guess it isn't just like betting. The inherent dorkiness of paying attention to politics (as doing so is perceived in the US) probably limits participation to people who are going to take it seriously. I bet most of the participants are making objective predictions. Whether they are right or not, or based on appropriate data...I was a boyscout, too, though not gay or atheist. I think my troop would have been pretty relaxed about the religion thing too. I don't know how they would have reacted to homosexuality -- there weren't any openly gay men or women in my social circle back then -- but my sense is it would have been unfriendly. None of this would have been because of policy from above. I remember being very surprised by the Dale case.
Speaking as someone who left the academic research track, I can that's because actually doing scientific research is a mathematically intensive, highly detail oriented job. You have to be the sort of person who finds the 30 seconds of enlightenment you feel when you see a graph that confirms your predictions worth the months or years of tedious algebra (if you're a theorist) or number crunching/detailed experiment design work (if your an experimentalist). Or, you have to enjoy math for math's sake, and engineering or engineering's sake, rather than just as means to an end.
I turn out to be one of those people who find the concepts and ideas of science (at least the brand I tried, physics) fascinating, but I don't like doing lots of math, and neither do I like the detail-oriented specialization required to succeed in academia. It turns out the 'really cool' stuff -- physically overlapping matter, momentum coupling, quantum entanglement, cosmological theory, etc. -- is hidden among piles of algebra, malfunctioning computer code, and broken lasers.
That said, I fully support trying to 'blow student's minds'. :-) The problem, though, with using things that are too far beyond comprehension for non-specialists (I'd put a lot of quantum mechanics and cosmology in this category) is it can become a bit nebulous and religious. Look at how many quack-quantum-mechanics-cosmology-applied-to-daily-life books their are. We want to inspire the scientific curiosity, not the unfounded philosophizing. One can lead to the other (that's why many people do science) but one must be careful.
Well, Mr. Troll, I'm sure an unusually talented and dillegent student (see, I flatter you!) can succeed without being forced through high school. However there are also those who:
:-)
1. Don't learn self-discipline until later in life. Required school attendence gives them time to mature before they screw themselves over.
2. Are maybe capable of learning on their own but are aided by formal instruction. If you're not one of those people, that may be hard to imagine, but I really do get more out of the combination of 'lecture+book+practice' than I get from 'book+practice' or 'practice' alone.
3. Really do use the material. I'll grant high school history was pretty much a waste, but the instruction in writing, calculus, and the natural sciences ended up being valuable.
What I will give you is that there should be more opportunities for vocational education during the high school years, and these should be without the stigma they have today. Not everyone wants more than that, not everyone needs more than that, and frankly, not everyone is capable of more than that. Furthermore I doubt, by the time the person is in their teens, that they can be practically 'forced' to do anything.
I can also imagine that some high schools are not 'learning friendly', and maybe having a way out is even more important in those cases. My high school had good teachers, and equally importantly, good students/parents. I hated the experience as much as the next stereotypical slashdot reader, but it was certainly beneficial in the long run. I wouldn't have had the motivation to study as hard as I did without the external motivation the system provided -- I didn't learn self discipline until near the end, but I had 'pride in academic achievement', e.g. grades, to push me until I realized that learning was important for my goals.
Am I a brainless machine? Well, obviously I wouldn't know if I was! I doubt it, though. I may be a machine in that I chose to be an engineer/scientist, which requires a certain analytic mindset, but I doubt I'm brainless, or criminal.
On my Comcast Internet connection, for which I pay almost $60/mo, I have yet to see downloads/torrents much above HALF that number, so I wouldn't exactly be worried about a limit that high.
With due respect to afeinberg, I think his complaint greatly overstates the value of news commentary (anyone's news commentary, not specifically Feinberg's). This is especially true of blogs based on mainstream media sources, stories which are already written for the layman public and don't often benefit from the extra layer of interpretation. That's why I mistook the comment for parody. It's a stereotype, I know, but nothing typifies bloggers in my eyes more than
The news story this discussion concerns confirms that stereotype; unfortunately, Mr. Feinberg's comment does too, so I thought it satirical.
That said, it's just a stereotype. Many blogs are valuable, and some indignation is justified. In this case, though, slashdot worked. Post the news, not the spin.
I don't know if I agree with the rest of your speculation, but I certainly agree with this first part. I use banks primarily because I expect that my money is much safer with them than it would be if I maintained it myself (with coffee cans buried in the cemetery, grey-market loans, whatever). It is the bank's job to protect my money, no matter how unsophisticated (or sophisticatedly malicious) other customers are.
I used to be a stronger advocate of the 'users should be more responsible' mantra but I am starting to doubt that is realistic. The obligatory automobile metaphor would be to require government inspections and mandate liability insurance, and I don't see that going over very well, even if it were feasible. No, my ISP should protect me from spam, DoS attacks, email viruses, and bot nets, and my bank should protect my money. Now, if I were to fall victim to a confidence scam, well, that'd be pretty much my own problem, but even then, I think you could argue that if some third party knew or could reasonably be expected to know a scam was going on, and did nothing to stop it, then that party would share some liability. There's a lot of weight to be shouldered out there, and not by the users.
I am unsure whether this is honest complaint or parody...
As someone who has enough problems with the eye-hand-cooridnation demanded of mousing (let alone mouse gestures! holy frustrating! Nothing like having to try five times just go get your browser to recognize you want to visit the previous page) I hope your vision of intricate whole-body gymnastics never comes to fruition. I guess I can imagine gloves and gestures and the like being useful in some applications (and sure, visual arts might be just those applications), but I think the demand for short learning curves and economy of movement will keep the complexity under control.
Maybe I just suffer from a lack of imagination. There's no reason a position and velocity sensitive interface needs to be as frustrating as mouse gestures are. And I guess, too, from the nutso-praise for mouse gestures I see on slashdot (but do they support ogg-vorbis?) that my experience with them is unusual.
Well, the stated reason was to so they could test an IR tracking system; they needed for the sattelite to warm up. But another possibility that comes up in other weapons tests, at least, is the desire to stay safe and succeed in the mission. If you're not at war, and no one is forcing your hand, it makes no sense to take chances. You run your test in a way that maximizes safety and chance of success.
Who says there was a fire ball? Anyway, one answer could be: if there were a hydrazine explosion, that would not require oxygen. Alternately, maybe by 'fireball' they mean 'cloud of red hot debris', which might also be possible.