Exactly! Studies always seem to suggest that every song downloded illegally is a lost sale, which just isn't true. That is why figures of billions of dollars lost is completely bogus. There are many more variables that I think studies are flat out ignoring. Many people would not buy stuff even if it cost a penny. Many people just want exposure to things that they can't get at any store, and paying to take that risk is too much. Sometimes exposure due to illegal methods leads to discovery and increased sales for that area of interest. There is a large, multi-faceted dynamic taking place and I think any study would be hard pressed to take everything into account. Just remember, not everything is simply black and white.
'The technology industry is perhaps the most guilty of all industries when it comes to love of acronyms,'
They should try working at NASA where the acronym comes first, and the meaning is developed later. In a good work-related meeting, you can limit the acronyms to only a couple per sentance. During a particularly punishing meeting you have to break out the aspirin.
Google as a verb (or noun for that matter) is too specific. Its more of a fad than anything. What happens in ten years when another great search engine, say "klink", shows up and we all start saying "did you klink it?"
And "mouse potato"? "Computer/Internet junkie" maybe, but mouse potato is pretty lame...
It also seems to me that a "wave pool" should be something in the encyclopedia and not the dictionary. Same with "avian influenza".
"cybrary" and "cybrarian"? Did they gleen that from a sci-fi novel?
I am currently doing a thesis on building and controlling a bipedal robot. I was supposed to be getting my masters in mechatronics, but somehow it turned into EE controls. Very dissappointed because mechatronics sounds so much better. Anyway... depending upon where your robots focus is, it can contain Controls, AI, Dynamics, even Anatomy and Physiology if you choose that route. You should decide where your robot focus should be. Human-machine cybernetics? Human-machine interaction? Machine Intelligence? Sensory Systems? Locomotion? There are many different areas within robotics. It will take a while to learn them all if you choose to.
From experience I can say this: all of my training in EE, CS, and ME meant nothing until I tried to do something on my own. Thats the only way you can decide what you really like. Its also the only way you can really learn anything. So I say, before you choose a field to study in, put down the books and instead dabble a bit...
Mary Greenberg of Lake Bluff, who has a son at Libertyville High School, argued the district is overstepping its bounds. "I don't think they need to police what students are doing online," she said. "That's my job." Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea rebuffed that criticism. "The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron," he said. "It is called the World Wide Web."
Invasion of Privacy?! Where did that come from? Either the associate superintendent had absolutely no understanding of what the mother was saying (which would be very sad) or there is a whole lot missing out of this article.
I find it funny though, because I have a friend that is a teacher (different school) and she says the last thing that she wants is to become the parent for the kids. I'm sure the instructors that conduct the extracurricular activities will be the ones that have to enforce this, so I wonder how they feel about the board's decision...
If you are looking for improved and not perfect transmission there is one solution that people seem to be missing. Sure room-temp superconductors sound great, but until there is a miracle discovery, we might have to settle with carbon nanotube transmission lines instead. They allow for high current transmission at very low losses and the technology is right around the corner. A quick google came up with this article. Not the best link, but it will get you started...
Before you go 'DUH'ing everything, you have to understand that the hypothesis you explained is a very general and basic one. What this team is hypothesising is that you can determine evolution down to the gene when changing specific variables. This seems like a natural thing to say, but evolution is so complex, that it may not be possible to easily predict an evolutionary step.
Now, its one thing to theorize about something, but its another to actually see it. Conducting an experiment and observing what happens should not be dismissed as a "silly experiment", especially when it is about something as complex as microbiological evolution. There is a wealth of information that can come from such experiments, just like it did with theirs. I bet you would not be able to guess the millions of variations that were produced. So please do not belittle the advantages of actually producing results.
Also the team did NOT say that two experiments were "enough" to come to a conclusion. They DID said that two experiments with similar outcomes "suggests that very few molecular pathways are available for a specific molecular response" (emphasis on 'suggests'). So the experimental results give support for their hypothesis, but that by no means says that it is law. Many more experiments will have to be conducted, and I'm sure they are aware of that.
If your plane has a lot of metallic parts, maybe you could use the body as a single control wire to tie everything together.
thats funny, because I said the same thing to an F-18 mechanic. I said "why don't you use the skin and frame of the aircraft as a giant bus?" He said "we do, its called 'chassis ground'". I felt pretty stupid after that. But I know exactly what you mean. If you could separate the metal parts on the plane for power, gound, and control busses, and if you could reduce the noise on them, then I think using the chassis would be a quick and simple way of manufacturing a plane. Though, it would be difficult to do mods to it...
I believe that NASA has already tried and shown that fly-by-wireless works. You can find spacecraft and shuttle related documents (sorry, got no good links for ya). But obviously it is a human safety risk. Using bluetooth is not necessary and indeed the tools/equipment needed to do fly-by-wireless have been around for a long time. But there is probably a reason you do not see it being used today. Too much can go wrong.
The only reason I could think of doing it is to make maintenance easier since you don't have to track down wires through bulkheads and such. Manufacturing would be quicker too.
Even if it does kill your cd-drive (which, if you do it right, it shouldn't), for about $15 bucks for a cd drive, I think its reasonable to sacrifice one to the job and toss it after it breaks.
Faith is not ``willful ignorance,'' but rather ``willful insanity'' or ``willful idiocy.'' Faith is a thing deserving not praise and respect, but pity and scorn.
I agree with the rest of your comment, but, as frustrating as it is, I think English vocabulary is getting in the way here. If faith is only deserving of pity and scorn then we are all screwed. Any person, non-god-believing included, will be quick to say that even you take things on faith (sat in a chair recently?). Even well established axioms used by science are taken on faith because there is nothing else to base their credibility on. Ever heard of "no such thing as a real mathematical proof"? Yeah, same thing.
Science takes us from axioms to a conclusion. Faith is everything else. I'm sure you don't spend every moment calculating the science of everything... It takes many nights of arguing with god-believing people to realize that they got a point when it comes to the word "faith". But I also understand its hard to come up with other forms of vocabulary to use... eh, maybe there is no winner on this subject...
"About the only thing I can think of that would be consistent with design but not directedness is a message buried deep in DNA saying "God was here". So far no such signature has been found."
Once one of my god-believing friends and I were talking about sub-atomic particles and how it seems nothing gets any simpler the smaller you go. He began laughing and said that it would be funny if we probed down far enough to find a label saying "Made by God". I think this is a great idea! Everyone should look for this label. If its not there then "Oh! not here, no proof yet." If it is there, then who am I to argue? I think this god-test will make both camps pretty happy.
I think the threat of going out of business would be a good thing. Who knows, maybe it will force channels to make quality programming for once.
But before they go out of business, they will probably raise the price on the channel to make up for any loss. Just look at the international channels that you can already purchase a-la-carte, some of them are pretty expensive, but the pricing seems to be (somewhat) justified and seems to work.
Honestly, I think the companies should offer both packages and a la carte, that way the consumer can get the best price possible. But breaking up packages would definitely help some channels like SciFi - I know a lot of college people that want to watch the channel but don't want to pay even basic cable prices...
I see all of this moving to TV on demand over IP, that way small niche channels can have there place and broadcasting costs won't put them under. It seems like only a matter of time...
Gamecube had its problems too, just not publicly. I got the fortune of going "behind the scenes" and seeing the Gamecube some months before release. From what I remember, someone found what IBM called a *major* flaw. Since the final units were in production, there could be no hardware design changes. IBM was hard at work pinpointing, replicating, and finding a fix for it.
Since I did not see any problems with the final product, I'm guessing they found a work-around and, again guessing, the dev kits were updated accordingly. Public disaster avoided...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly! Studies always seem to suggest that every song downloded illegally is a lost sale, which just isn't true. That is why figures of billions of dollars lost is completely bogus. There are many more variables that I think studies are flat out ignoring. Many people would not buy stuff even if it cost a penny. Many people just want exposure to things that they can't get at any store, and paying to take that risk is too much. Sometimes exposure due to illegal methods leads to discovery and increased sales for that area of interest. There is a large, multi-faceted dynamic taking place and I think any study would be hard pressed to take everything into account. Just remember, not everything is simply black and white.
They should try working at NASA where the acronym comes first, and the meaning is developed later. In a good work-related meeting, you can limit the acronyms to only a couple per sentance. During a particularly punishing meeting you have to break out the aspirin.
Quick! Follow up with Farnsworth's smelloscope!
Boss: "I want you to take the first definitive images of the dark spot on Uranus."
Ass-tronomer: "You want me to do what?"
Five minutes later he hands a xerox to his boss...
Ass-tronomer: "Here, but I don't want this to become public..."
Who would've thought that mooning the HST would be news worthy?
I don't think some should be in there...
Google as a verb (or noun for that matter) is too specific. Its more of a fad than anything. What happens in ten years when another great search engine, say "klink", shows up and we all start saying "did you klink it?"
And "mouse potato"? "Computer/Internet junkie" maybe, but mouse potato is pretty lame...
It also seems to me that a "wave pool" should be something in the encyclopedia and not the dictionary. Same with "avian influenza".
"cybrary" and "cybrarian"? Did they gleen that from a sci-fi novel?
I am currently doing a thesis on building and controlling a bipedal robot. I was supposed to be getting my masters in mechatronics, but somehow it turned into EE controls. Very dissappointed because mechatronics sounds so much better. Anyway... depending upon where your robots focus is, it can contain Controls, AI, Dynamics, even Anatomy and Physiology if you choose that route. You should decide where your robot focus should be. Human-machine cybernetics? Human-machine interaction? Machine Intelligence? Sensory Systems? Locomotion? There are many different areas within robotics. It will take a while to learn them all if you choose to.
From experience I can say this: all of my training in EE, CS, and ME meant nothing until I tried to do something on my own. Thats the only way you can decide what you really like. Its also the only way you can really learn anything. So I say, before you choose a field to study in, put down the books and instead dabble a bit...
Stem cells cure(noun) paralyzed(verb) rats
My god! stem cells are worse than we thought!
Stem cells cure(verb) paralyzed(adj) rats
Oh, nevermind...
haven't you heard?! Duke Nukem Forever will be a launch title for Vista!
(ha! delays and all....... eh, nevermind...)
I find it funny though, because I have a friend that is a teacher (different school) and she says the last thing that she wants is to become the parent for the kids. I'm sure the instructors that conduct the extracurricular activities will be the ones that have to enforce this, so I wonder how they feel about the board's decision...
If you are looking for improved and not perfect transmission there is one solution that people seem to be missing. Sure room-temp superconductors sound great, but until there is a miracle discovery, we might have to settle with carbon nanotube transmission lines instead. They allow for high current transmission at very low losses and the technology is right around the corner. A quick google came up with this article. Not the best link, but it will get you started...
Before you go 'DUH'ing everything, you have to understand that the hypothesis you explained is a very general and basic one. What this team is hypothesising is that you can determine evolution down to the gene when changing specific variables. This seems like a natural thing to say, but evolution is so complex, that it may not be possible to easily predict an evolutionary step.
Now, its one thing to theorize about something, but its another to actually see it. Conducting an experiment and observing what happens should not be dismissed as a "silly experiment", especially when it is about something as complex as microbiological evolution. There is a wealth of information that can come from such experiments, just like it did with theirs. I bet you would not be able to guess the millions of variations that were produced. So please do not belittle the advantages of actually producing results.
Also the team did NOT say that two experiments were "enough" to come to a conclusion. They DID said that two experiments with similar outcomes "suggests that very few molecular pathways are available for a specific molecular response" (emphasis on 'suggests'). So the experimental results give support for their hypothesis, but that by no means says that it is law. Many more experiments will have to be conducted, and I'm sure they are aware of that.
I believe that NASA has already tried and shown that fly-by-wireless works. You can find spacecraft and shuttle related documents (sorry, got no good links for ya). But obviously it is a human safety risk. Using bluetooth is not necessary and indeed the tools/equipment needed to do fly-by-wireless have been around for a long time. But there is probably a reason you do not see it being used today. Too much can go wrong.
The only reason I could think of doing it is to make maintenance easier since you don't have to track down wires through bulkheads and such. Manufacturing would be quicker too.
I would gladly trade speed for reliability. Comcast is driving me MAD by dropping every 20 min...
Even if it does kill your cd-drive (which, if you do it right, it shouldn't), for about $15 bucks for a cd drive, I think its reasonable to sacrifice one to the job and toss it after it breaks.
Science takes us from axioms to a conclusion. Faith is everything else. I'm sure you don't spend every moment calculating the science of everything... It takes many nights of arguing with god-believing people to realize that they got a point when it comes to the word "faith". But I also understand its hard to come up with other forms of vocabulary to use... eh, maybe there is no winner on this subject...
I think the threat of going out of business would be a good thing. Who knows, maybe it will force channels to make quality programming for once.
But before they go out of business, they will probably raise the price on the channel to make up for any loss. Just look at the international channels that you can already purchase a-la-carte, some of them are pretty expensive, but the pricing seems to be (somewhat) justified and seems to work.
Honestly, I think the companies should offer both packages and a la carte, that way the consumer can get the best price possible. But breaking up packages would definitely help some channels like SciFi - I know a lot of college people that want to watch the channel but don't want to pay even basic cable prices...
I see all of this moving to TV on demand over IP, that way small niche channels can have there place and broadcasting costs won't put them under. It seems like only a matter of time...
Gamecube had its problems too, just not publicly. I got the fortune of going "behind the scenes" and seeing the Gamecube some months before release. From what I remember, someone found what IBM called a *major* flaw. Since the final units were in production, there could be no hardware design changes. IBM was hard at work pinpointing, replicating, and finding a fix for it. Since I did not see any problems with the final product, I'm guessing they found a work-around and, again guessing, the dev kits were updated accordingly. Public disaster avoided...
My mother used to yell at me for biting them off, but I never listened. Now all my legos have teeth marks... Gives 'em character!