As a nerd I am extremely interested in Burning Man because it is one of the largest non commercial technical and logistical collaborations on the planet. If slashdot's collective boner Re: Makerdom, hacking, 3d-printing is an genuine, then there is no fucking way you shouldn't care about Burning Man unless you are coming from a standpoint of ignorance.
Mechanical, civil, software, and probably a dozen other fields of engineering are exercised though the creation of art installations, mutant vehicles, A/V LED displays, pyrotechnics, welding/sclupting etc. Things get made PURLEY FOR THE SAKE OF MAKING SOMETHING THAT SOMEONE MIGHT LIKE TO LOOK AT instead of the tedious bullshit someone pays you to make at the 9 to 5. Makers are out in force at Burning Man and related events, and if you think that this is just some hippy bullshit you are parroting the collective "wisdom" of a handful of internet know it alls, or (and I'm sorry if this is the case) you seriously ran with the wrong crowd. I've gained more meaningful and applied technical experience preparing for events like these than many of my formal technical classes have ever offered. Hell, I got to play with Arduinos, Kinects, and picked up some basic EE for free thanks to art grants.
Yes, there are hippie types. Yes, there are douchebags. Maybe that is true of all events with a population of >40k participants? I am really disappointed at Slashdot's attitude towards events like these because we are using our supposedly vast technical intellect to be dismissive and small towards something that is right up our goddamned alley. We are giving bad advice, plain and simple.
Can anyone answer how this setup prevents a computer science education? They take someone who's not going to college, gives them an incredibly valuable skill and the discipline required of a big person job. They are taught how to work. It puts money in their pocket. They code for 3-5 years, and if they hit a ceiling in the career, they PAY FOR THE CS PROGRAM with the money they saved.
In addition to having grown as a programmer (and finding out firsthand if they have a passion for programming), they are taught the academic theory behind the craft right about the time where they could not advance further without the degree. Not all programs require revolutionary search algorithms. Sometimes a business just needs a website.
To me, this setup makes much more sense than being taught the theory while accumulating debt, then shelving it for 5 years before anyone trusts you to code something outside a framework or a tech lead's supervision. It also makes a lot more sense then teaching someone the ideals of computer science only to slam them into the reality of the working world and burn them out. And hey, the work ethic of a competent programmer makes studying seem like leisure.
Of all the arguments against tattoos, I feel like the "what about when you're 80, 90, etc." argument is COMPLETELY invalid. Allow me to offer the following thought exercise:
Think of your sweet old grandma. Perhaps someone else's sweet old grandma if need be. Image how awesome she is, sitting there knitting a sweater or baking cookies. Maybe she's going to garage sales or agreeing with Fox News, as grandparents often do. Now imagine your stoic ancient matron with an equally ancient, ferocious tattoo. WHAT?! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?
Seriously, the more ridiculous or dated the tattoo, the better it makes this scenario. A prohibition themed ink would be amazing. "We like Ike" would also be pretty great. Are you going to tell nana that her flamin' buy war bonds skull makes her look unprofessional? I DARE YOU.
At the very least, grandpa's 311 tribal takes a lot of steam out of his "what's wrong with kids these days" rant.
Let's make an assumption that the internet will eventually solve any problem you throw at it given enough time...
What if rather than working on the next best CAPTCHA system, sites were to work from a rotating CAPTCHA repository?
Each page load presents a new human interface problem, something simple like a jigsaw puzzle or an image of a tic-tac-toe board with instructions to place an X and an O in a winning/defending position. In addition to each visual directive, there could also be a random text directive inserted to compound the problem (i.e, saying something like "after selecting the item, wait at least X seconds before clicking X button.)"
If your thinking in pseudo-code, the parsing of the text input isn't particularly challenging, and something like the tic-tac-toe is a solvable image problem, given time. However, if the captcha is being drawn from a growing database of imaging problems/verbal directives, then the captcha becomes not only solving the captcha, but identifying what kind of captcha is being presented.
As the captcha count increases a spammer/coder would have less and less time to hit the moving target and distribute their script before the next problem appears. This doesn't solve the problem of 3rd world captcha farming, but at least people might eat as a result of that economy.
This seems to me like a viable solution for the time being, though I'd like to refer to my first assumption for the long-haul.
I'm going to preface this comment with the fact I am not a parent- so maybe this is a lot easier said than done, but just let Gmail do its spam guarding and have a talk with your kids about the type of content one finds in spam (nudies and pills), why people send spam(To try and Make or steal money), and why they should never open file attachments or mail from people they do not know. I would also be clear that you can monitor their email accounts and get rid of unwanted content.
It's pretty fascinating that this generation might need a precursor to "The Talk" given when they start connecting to the internet.
It may be a different company, but there is another male enhancement pill which claims to "increase the size of that certain male organ." I would love to see a class action lawsuit on behalf of 74 customers with extremely engorged Adam's apples.
I apologize if this is slightly off topic, but are any parents out there having issues with their kids when exposing them to new/altered media(CGI, photoshop, etc.)
I'm 24 and have watched CGI go from looking like Dire Strait's "Money For nothing" video to being a major supporting character in films. (Gollum anyone?) With graphics advances in the next 10 years, I'm wondering if our generation's wee-uns are going to have to deal with a blurry(or motion-blurry) line between reality and realistic-looking-fantasy.
Alternately, are we going to be the ones with issues when we hit old age? My grandpa watched my cousins and I play Madden 07' for 20 minutes before he realized that the Bears to not play Green Bay in July...
I recently spent 5 months in India for IT training, and a friend of mine who had been studying abroad in Ireland also found that in places where meat is considered a luxury(or expensive), it is really easy to lose weight.
I went out nearly every other night for dinner usually consisting of chicken or lamb and an appetizer. I ate till wanted to die, but conversely, my lunch every day was a veg or lentil dish. Coupled with a 20-30 minute run every other day, I lost 20 pounds. Switching one meal a day to veg can have a big difference, and it can balance out your diet in terms of variety and nutrients.
A quick recollection of friend's high school stories (and addmittedly personal memories) leads me to believe that putting your family computer in a traversed location does not decrease porn usage in a family, but SHARPLY increases...um.. awkward late night social encounters.
Yeah, there's a lot of email* to check at 3am.
On a positive note it hones the art of secretive silent ninja-baitin' for when you really need it- college.
The last time the following phrase was muttered, the game was send back to the oven and served when done with delicious results. So let me say it loud and proud:
Geeze....Warcraft III in space?
I was having this discussion with my X-Box toting friends a couple weeks ago, and what really stood out from the conversation was the fact that to them, the KB/M is wierd to use when playing FPS games. One of them uses a console keyboard/Mouse setup because he couldn't make the transition to controllers, and he does not have a clear advantage over his thumb-sticking counterparts.
I feel this debate is a lot like arguing over which musical instrument is better. Obviously, its the one you've been playing with for 5+ years.
The universal name for.5 lemonade and.5 iced tea is an Arnold Palmer. So much so that you can pick up a bottled Arnold Palmer at the local 7/11's in my neighborhood. It was the drink of choice of the golf pro, Arnold Palmer.
I think one of the mainstays of true geekdom is that one cannot help being a geek at any given instant. I'm a computer tech major, and at 6:00 on a Saturday I'm sitting in my room coding a sudoku solver while replying to yesterday's topics. In my living room, 3 roommates are watching Episode 3, waiting to play the Battlefield 2 Demo that came with it.
Thinking back to my high school days, tonight would have consisted of a LAN party in my basement, a crave case, and the 2 liter challenge. (First person to drink 2 liters of soda gets a dollar from everyone and first person to pee gives everyone a dollar.) Souls would be calibur'd, stars crafted, and dexterity checks rolled. Girls would be as exotic as Yen and Euros. Come tonight, however, we are going to be raucous college students: partying, drinking, socializing.
It appears to me that geekdom can be defined by a lack of balance and/or concern between establishing a social life and a hobby. The prerequisite of the hobby being it is shared by a minority of people in the world and often involves intellectual pursuits as opposed to athletic. It is also your entire life, as you are a social miscreant.
So am I still a geek? Sometimes. Nothing could make me happier than being alone this afternoon coding. Tonight, I won't even think about recursion. Is it cool to be a geek? Hell no its not. Its also not cool to be booze-swilling frat boy day in and day out either. Is it cool to be multifaceted human capable of both social interaction and intellectual pursuits? Could be.
Slashdot Mirror
Good question!.
As a nerd I am extremely interested in Burning Man because it is one of the largest non commercial technical and logistical collaborations on the planet. If slashdot's collective boner Re: Makerdom, hacking, 3d-printing is an genuine, then there is no fucking way you shouldn't care about Burning Man unless you are coming from a standpoint of ignorance.
Mechanical, civil, software, and probably a dozen other fields of engineering are exercised though the creation of art installations, mutant vehicles, A/V LED displays, pyrotechnics, welding/sclupting etc. Things get made PURLEY FOR THE SAKE OF MAKING SOMETHING THAT SOMEONE MIGHT LIKE TO LOOK AT instead of the tedious bullshit someone pays you to make at the 9 to 5. Makers are out in force at Burning Man and related events, and if you think that this is just some hippy bullshit you are parroting the collective "wisdom" of a handful of internet know it alls, or (and I'm sorry if this is the case) you seriously ran with the wrong crowd. I've gained more meaningful and applied technical experience preparing for events like these than many of my formal technical classes have ever offered. Hell, I got to play with Arduinos, Kinects, and picked up some basic EE for free thanks to art grants.
Yes, there are hippie types. Yes, there are douchebags. Maybe that is true of all events with a population of >40k participants? I am really disappointed at Slashdot's attitude towards events like these because we are using our supposedly vast technical intellect to be dismissive and small towards something that is right up our goddamned alley. We are giving bad advice, plain and simple.
Can anyone answer how this setup prevents a computer science education? They take someone who's not going to college, gives them an incredibly valuable skill and the discipline required of a big person job. They are taught how to work. It puts money in their pocket. They code for 3-5 years, and if they hit a ceiling in the career, they PAY FOR THE CS PROGRAM with the money they saved.
In addition to having grown as a programmer (and finding out firsthand if they have a passion for programming), they are taught the academic theory behind the craft right about the time where they could not advance further without the degree. Not all programs require revolutionary search algorithms. Sometimes a business just needs a website.
To me, this setup makes much more sense than being taught the theory while accumulating debt, then shelving it for 5 years before anyone trusts you to code something outside a framework or a tech lead's supervision. It also makes a lot more sense then teaching someone the ideals of computer science only to slam them into the reality of the working world and burn them out. And hey, the work ethic of a competent programmer makes studying seem like leisure.
Of all the arguments against tattoos, I feel like the "what about when you're 80, 90, etc." argument is COMPLETELY invalid. Allow me to offer the following thought exercise:
Think of your sweet old grandma. Perhaps someone else's sweet old grandma if need be. Image how awesome she is, sitting there knitting a sweater or baking cookies. Maybe she's going to garage sales or agreeing with Fox News, as grandparents often do. Now imagine your stoic ancient matron with an equally ancient, ferocious tattoo. WHAT?! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?
Seriously, the more ridiculous or dated the tattoo, the better it makes this scenario. A prohibition themed ink would be amazing. "We like Ike" would also be pretty great. Are you going to tell nana that her flamin' buy war bonds skull makes her look unprofessional? I DARE YOU.
At the very least, grandpa's 311 tribal takes a lot of steam out of his "what's wrong with kids these days" rant.
Let's make an assumption that the internet will eventually solve any problem you throw at it given enough time...
What if rather than working on the next best CAPTCHA system, sites were to work from a rotating CAPTCHA repository?
Each page load presents a new human interface problem, something simple like a jigsaw puzzle or an image of a tic-tac-toe board with instructions to place an X and an O in a winning/defending position. In addition to each visual directive, there could also be a random text directive inserted to compound the problem (i.e, saying something like "after selecting the item, wait at least X seconds before clicking X button.)"
If your thinking in pseudo-code, the parsing of the text input isn't particularly challenging, and something like the tic-tac-toe is a solvable image problem, given time. However, if the captcha is being drawn from a growing database of imaging problems/verbal directives, then the captcha becomes not only solving the captcha, but identifying what kind of captcha is being presented.
As the captcha count increases a spammer/coder would have less and less time to hit the moving target and distribute their script before the next problem appears. This doesn't solve the problem of 3rd world captcha farming, but at least people might eat as a result of that economy.
This seems to me like a viable solution for the time being, though I'd like to refer to my first assumption for the long-haul.
I'm going to preface this comment with the fact I am not a parent- so maybe this is a lot easier said than done, but just let Gmail do its spam guarding and have a talk with your kids about the type of content one finds in spam (nudies and pills), why people send spam(To try and Make or steal money), and why they should never open file attachments or mail from people they do not know. I would also be clear that you can monitor their email accounts and get rid of unwanted content.
It's pretty fascinating that this generation might need a precursor to "The Talk" given when they start connecting to the internet.
It may be a different company, but there is another male enhancement pill which claims to "increase the size of that certain male organ." I would love to see a class action lawsuit on behalf of 74 customers with extremely engorged Adam's apples.
I apologize if this is slightly off topic, but are any parents out there having issues with their kids when exposing them to new/altered media(CGI, photoshop, etc.)
I'm 24 and have watched CGI go from looking like Dire Strait's "Money For nothing" video to being a major supporting character in films. (Gollum anyone?) With graphics advances in the next 10 years, I'm wondering if our generation's wee-uns are going to have to deal with a blurry(or motion-blurry) line between reality and realistic-looking-fantasy.
Alternately, are we going to be the ones with issues when we hit old age? My grandpa watched my cousins and I play Madden 07' for 20 minutes before he realized that the Bears to not play Green Bay in July...
Hmm...this would explain why I started getting ads for stocks, jewelry, and perfume from Ed@FieryBowels.hell
I recently spent 5 months in India for IT training, and a friend of mine who had been studying abroad in Ireland also found that in places where meat is considered a luxury(or expensive), it is really easy to lose weight.
I went out nearly every other night for dinner usually consisting of chicken or lamb and an appetizer. I ate till wanted to die, but conversely, my lunch every day was a veg or lentil dish. Coupled with a 20-30 minute run every other day, I lost 20 pounds. Switching one meal a day to veg can have a big difference, and it can balance out your diet in terms of variety and nutrients.A quick recollection of friend's high school stories (and addmittedly personal memories) leads me to believe that putting your family computer in a traversed location does not decrease porn usage in a family, but SHARPLY increases...um.. awkward late night social encounters. Yeah, there's a lot of email* to check at 3am. On a positive note it hones the art of secretive silent ninja-baitin' for when you really need it- college.
The last time the following phrase was muttered, the game was send back to the oven and served when done with delicious results. So let me say it loud and proud: Geeze....Warcraft III in space?
I was having this discussion with my X-Box toting friends a couple weeks ago, and what really stood out from the conversation was the fact that to them, the KB/M is wierd to use when playing FPS games. One of them uses a console keyboard/Mouse setup because he couldn't make the transition to controllers, and he does not have a clear advantage over his thumb-sticking counterparts.
I feel this debate is a lot like arguing over which musical instrument is better. Obviously, its the one you've been playing with for 5+ years.
This story made me doubletake my URL to make sure I was on slashdot, and not digg.
After playing Mario 64 for 11 hours I totally empathized with the headache resulting from Mario's brick breaking antics.
The universal name for .5 lemonade and .5 iced tea is an Arnold Palmer. So much so that you can pick up a bottled Arnold Palmer at the local 7/11's in my neighborhood. It was the drink of choice of the golf pro, Arnold Palmer.
This could be some fun marketing in the future.
I can't wait for hardware to come bundled with albums, like the prize in cereal box.
Get your Harry Chapin Hard Drives and Phish Phlash drives.
I think one of the mainstays of true geekdom is that one cannot help being a geek at any given instant. I'm a computer tech major, and at 6:00 on a Saturday I'm sitting in my room coding a sudoku solver while replying to yesterday's topics. In my living room, 3 roommates are watching Episode 3, waiting to play the Battlefield 2 Demo that came with it. Thinking back to my high school days, tonight would have consisted of a LAN party in my basement, a crave case, and the 2 liter challenge. (First person to drink 2 liters of soda gets a dollar from everyone and first person to pee gives everyone a dollar.) Souls would be calibur'd, stars crafted, and dexterity checks rolled. Girls would be as exotic as Yen and Euros. Come tonight, however, we are going to be raucous college students: partying, drinking, socializing. It appears to me that geekdom can be defined by a lack of balance and/or concern between establishing a social life and a hobby. The prerequisite of the hobby being it is shared by a minority of people in the world and often involves intellectual pursuits as opposed to athletic. It is also your entire life, as you are a social miscreant. So am I still a geek? Sometimes. Nothing could make me happier than being alone this afternoon coding. Tonight, I won't even think about recursion. Is it cool to be a geek? Hell no its not. Its also not cool to be booze-swilling frat boy day in and day out either. Is it cool to be multifaceted human capable of both social interaction and intellectual pursuits? Could be.