A particularly effective LEGO League coach, when handed a robot by erstwhile middle schoolers, proceeded to pull the robot horizonally. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Horizontal stresses."
If it held together, he nodded, then pulled the robot up and down. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Vertical stresses."
If the robot could handle stress, he asked to see what it could do on the scoring table.
He also made sure that there were cookies, sometimes, and drinks.
A few years back, we would have ridiculed a debate over "computer message" or "electronic mail" instead of email.
Tweet is in the cultural lexicon. It's the commonly used word for "message sent via Twitter."
Don't worry, though....we'll change after Apple buys Twitter. After that, we'll say "I sent him a Bite on my iPad."
I think I would've done nearly anything to get that book when I was 12.
I would've learned everything in it. I was starving to know the mysteries that little machine held, to command its magic for myself and CREATE beautiful, elegant things.
Such books weren't available in the mountains. Now they all have interwebs, and I'm just about ruthless with those who take instant knowledge for granted.
I side with the loyalty crowd. Be it Apple or Microsoft, support the place that's keeping you in interwebs, flat screen TVs, a nice ride, and an occasional vacation.
We generally view the Stone Age tribes still lingering in the world as worthy of monitoring from a distance. Perhaps we occasionally intervening with some sort of sustenance or relief if it won't really mess them up, but all in all, we leave them alone rather than turn their world upside down.
With that in mind, how would a civilization sufficiently advanced to travel here from Alpha Centauri view our civilization?
"Mostly harmless."
"We'll give them a little longer. When they manage to visit the rest of the neighborhood - maybe when they're able to travel to another planet in their little solar system - we'll say hello. As long as we use short words and simple sentences, we might be able to help them understand speed-of-light travel."
"Okay. But if they start shooting those cute little firecrackers at us, I'm throwing a marble [read: black hole] into the middle of their little planet."
I'll hypothesize an answer for the third of four good questions.
Sometimes people leave a discussion when their supported and reasonable opinion is disregarded by those whose opinions are neither supported nor reasonable.
After a few such events, reasonable people might conclude, "I have other things in life that deserve my energy," and end regular efforts in the project.
....is the long-term success of the organization.
If I were on the Wikimedia Foundation, and knew that a Google Ad (or whatever) could raise anything like $600 million a year for the Foundation, I would have a difficult time justifying a non-advertising stance in my vote.
Once the Foundation endowment reached a level where the entire operating budget (plus 10-15% for inflation and growth) could be managed from the interest, I would vote to eliminate advertising in good conscience.
Long-term sustainability of the organization should be the foremost goal of a nonprofit board. With that much potential for endowment growth, I would urge immediate implementation of advertisements.
At least, that's the way I see it today. My opinion reserves the right to outgrow itself.
I remember reading "The Lost World" when I was a under-read, newly minted college graduate. One of the characters, Sarah Harding, had a sequence where she talked about George Schaller reading everything that had ever been written about a subject before he began field studies - and that once he got to the field, he discovered that almost everything he had read was wrong.
The two ideas - of mastering a subject and of discovering new things about that subject - intrigue me to this day.
I will miss his work.
I back up my gmail and gcalendar in exactly that manner. I only use GDocs for simple publishing/sharing for just that reason - it could all go away, poof! and with no recourse or backup available.
Of course, an electromagnetic pulse could achieve the same result on my home computer, I suppose. Life would probably go on, albeit with challenges.
I find the racial humor in the posting inappropriate and the humor out of place among educated adults - or educated middle school students, for that matter.
Perhaps the author of the original post will eventually gain sufficient perspective and experience to realize that such statements, even when purportedly intended as a jest, only maintain division and sow further hatred.
I was even thinking of nanobots that would crawl to a point and reconstruct themselves into a larger robot. We're not there yet, but we might be someday.
What's coming will be much, much more important than the article indicates. A robot could take structural measurements that would help rescuers tunnel to the victims, possibly conduct remote engineering (e.g. deploy an airbag as a temporary shoring device), deliver food/water to the hungry/thirsty, monitor vital signs, and even act as a remote defibrulator (sp?).
This intervention will be bigger and bigger as nanotechnology improves and evolves into self-constructing robots that can crawl through virtually any crevice.
Privacy issues related to this are a whole other story.
Many, many, many of our technological breakthroughs are the direct result of military R & D. The mainstream consumer might be about 10-20 years behind that curve.
If that's the case, touch technologies are now outdated enough to allow the average consumer to purchase them for daily use.:-)
An IQ of 159 means that out of a random sample of 100,000 people, you have 8 people who share your intelligence, and maybe 4 or 5 who exceed you.
I've taught about 20 students with similar IQ levels. To you, and them, this article probably doesn't apply. Your minds are making unbelievably fast connections with little effort - so what to you is really just fast processing and quick changes is a neurobiological impossibility to others.
I always ask my students, "What will you do with the abilities and opportunities you are given?"
Good point. Lesson learned: don't trust a keyboard that someone else owns. Or anything else that someone else owns.
While at work, my keystrokes are my employer's property. Fortunately, my employer doesn't mind if I watch woot.com during a woot-off, or browse some headlines at Drudge or CNN or slashdot, or whatever else I do as long as I do my job.
FYI - if my employer did mind such things, I'd soon find a new employer.
........that aliens see things the same way we do. What if they "hear" on the same spectrum that we "see"? We could what-if this to death, but it's important to remember that listening might be just as important as looking, and not just for SETI.
Mod parent up. The idea of choice - real choice, not simulated choice, will be the key to forcing MS to put its phenomenal resources into developing an utterly stable OS. Of course, once this happens, we won't be able to talk about how bad windoze runs....which could result in the end of the world. Or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said. Between my nook, iBooks, and Kindle apps, I think I have around 30 books on my iPad, not to mention the PDFs I carry around in GoodReader.
A particularly effective LEGO League coach, when handed a robot by erstwhile middle schoolers, proceeded to pull the robot horizonally. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Horizontal stresses."
If it held together, he nodded, then pulled the robot up and down. If it came apart, he handed the 'bot back to the team with two words: "Vertical stresses."
If the robot could handle stress, he asked to see what it could do on the scoring table.
He also made sure that there were cookies, sometimes, and drinks.
Good times, those.
Sanctions first!
A few years back, we would have ridiculed a debate over "computer message" or "electronic mail" instead of email. Tweet is in the cultural lexicon. It's the commonly used word for "message sent via Twitter." Don't worry, though....we'll change after Apple buys Twitter. After that, we'll say "I sent him a Bite on my iPad."
So what you're saying....is that he really IS a Jedi?
If the player will work without being slow, then it's a welcome addition. Just a thought - what if it grows up to be faster in later editions?
I think I would've done nearly anything to get that book when I was 12.
I would've learned everything in it. I was starving to know the mysteries that little machine held, to command its magic for myself and CREATE beautiful, elegant things.
Such books weren't available in the mountains. Now they all have interwebs, and I'm just about ruthless with those who take instant knowledge for granted.
I side with the loyalty crowd. Be it Apple or Microsoft, support the place that's keeping you in interwebs, flat screen TVs, a nice ride, and an occasional vacation.
We generally view the Stone Age tribes still lingering in the world as worthy of monitoring from a distance. Perhaps we occasionally intervening with some sort of sustenance or relief if it won't really mess them up, but all in all, we leave them alone rather than turn their world upside down.
With that in mind, how would a civilization sufficiently advanced to travel here from Alpha Centauri view our civilization?
"Mostly harmless."
"We'll give them a little longer. When they manage to visit the rest of the neighborhood - maybe when they're able to travel to another planet in their little solar system - we'll say hello. As long as we use short words and simple sentences, we might be able to help them understand speed-of-light travel."
"Okay. But if they start shooting those cute little firecrackers at us, I'm throwing a marble [read: black hole] into the middle of their little planet."
Marshall Goldsmith nailed this in "What Got You Here Won't Get You There."
In many (most?) business structures, expertise only gets us so far - after that, it's all about how we deal with people.
If you want to have a part in the problem-solving drama called "Your Employing Company," you have to get along well enough to be allowed at the table.
There's not much justice or fairness in this - just some hard reality along with enough exceptions to make the rule fuzzy.
This is not the Google you are looking for.
You can go about your business.
Move along.
We had to listen to the news on the crystal radios we built ourselves...and we liked it.
I'll hypothesize an answer for the third of four good questions.
Sometimes people leave a discussion when their supported and reasonable opinion is disregarded by those whose opinions are neither supported nor reasonable.
After a few such events, reasonable people might conclude, "I have other things in life that deserve my energy," and end regular efforts in the project.
....is the long-term success of the organization. If I were on the Wikimedia Foundation, and knew that a Google Ad (or whatever) could raise anything like $600 million a year for the Foundation, I would have a difficult time justifying a non-advertising stance in my vote.
Once the Foundation endowment reached a level where the entire operating budget (plus 10-15% for inflation and growth) could be managed from the interest, I would vote to eliminate advertising in good conscience.
Long-term sustainability of the organization should be the foremost goal of a nonprofit board. With that much potential for endowment growth, I would urge immediate implementation of advertisements.
At least, that's the way I see it today. My opinion reserves the right to outgrow itself.
I remember reading "The Lost World" when I was a under-read, newly minted college graduate. One of the characters, Sarah Harding, had a sequence where she talked about George Schaller reading everything that had ever been written about a subject before he began field studies - and that once he got to the field, he discovered that almost everything he had read was wrong. The two ideas - of mastering a subject and of discovering new things about that subject - intrigue me to this day. I will miss his work.
I back up my gmail and gcalendar in exactly that manner. I only use GDocs for simple publishing/sharing for just that reason - it could all go away, poof! and with no recourse or backup available.
Of course, an electromagnetic pulse could achieve the same result on my home computer, I suppose. Life would probably go on, albeit with challenges.
I find the racial humor in the posting inappropriate and the humor out of place among educated adults - or educated middle school students, for that matter.
Perhaps the author of the original post will eventually gain sufficient perspective and experience to realize that such statements, even when purportedly intended as a jest, only maintain division and sow further hatred.
I was even thinking of nanobots that would crawl to a point and reconstruct themselves into a larger robot. We're not there yet, but we might be someday.
What's coming will be much, much more important than the article indicates. A robot could take structural measurements that would help rescuers tunnel to the victims, possibly conduct remote engineering (e.g. deploy an airbag as a temporary shoring device), deliver food/water to the hungry/thirsty, monitor vital signs, and even act as a remote defibrulator (sp?).
This intervention will be bigger and bigger as nanotechnology improves and evolves into self-constructing robots that can crawl through virtually any crevice.
Privacy issues related to this are a whole other story.
Many, many, many of our technological breakthroughs are the direct result of military R & D. The mainstream consumer might be about 10-20 years behind that curve.
:-)
If that's the case, touch technologies are now outdated enough to allow the average consumer to purchase them for daily use.
An IQ of 159 means that out of a random sample of 100,000 people, you have 8 people who share your intelligence, and maybe 4 or 5 who exceed you.
I've taught about 20 students with similar IQ levels. To you, and them, this article probably doesn't apply. Your minds are making unbelievably fast connections with little effort - so what to you is really just fast processing and quick changes is a neurobiological impossibility to others.
I always ask my students, "What will you do with the abilities and opportunities you are given?"
Good point. Lesson learned: don't trust a keyboard that someone else owns. Or anything else that someone else owns.
While at work, my keystrokes are my employer's property. Fortunately, my employer doesn't mind if I watch woot.com during a woot-off, or browse some headlines at Drudge or CNN or slashdot, or whatever else I do as long as I do my job.
FYI - if my employer did mind such things, I'd soon find a new employer.
........that aliens see things the same way we do. What if they "hear" on the same spectrum that we "see"? We could what-if this to death, but it's important to remember that listening might be just as important as looking, and not just for SETI.
Mod parent up. The idea of choice - real choice, not simulated choice, will be the key to forcing MS to put its phenomenal resources into developing an utterly stable OS. Of course, once this happens, we won't be able to talk about how bad windoze runs....which could result in the end of the world. Or not.
As of time of post, parent hit the #1 spot on Reddit. I've never seen a /. comment appear in that spot before - congratulations!