Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Balance is the key (Score 1) 397

Good points. Another thing to remember is that a lot of this push towards STEM is in the middle and high schools. It's sorely needed there, and emphasizing it won't hurt humanities at all. For example. Not many years ago, the high school where I taught English was not very STEM friendly or humanities friendly. We were down to one real elective in English, a very popular mythology course. The others failed to "make" becasue not enough students signed up for them. Of course that was because most students were put in a "mandatory elective" writing class so they could pass a state writing test. They didn't have the room in their schedule for a real humanities elective. In the meantime, our "Career and Technical Education" department was going strong because students had to take a certain number of those classes. One of their more popular classes was "Sports Marketing." They had three or four sections of that. Now, these courses are changing a bit. They have fewer courses focusing on Jerry Maguire and more on robotics and coding.This is a good thing.

Comment There was a focus group for this. (Score 2) 101

"Now I want you all to imagine the perfect DARPA robot. What would it be like?"

"It should be soft and cuddly."

"Yeah, with lots of firepower."

"Its eyes should be telescopes! No, periscopes! No, microscopes! Can you come back to me?"

"It should be full of surprises."

"It should never stop dancing."

"It should need accessories."

Comment Sounds familiar (Score 3, Interesting) 222

I'm having the same situation. AT&T swears up and down that they can give me U-verse service . . . until the tech gets there and finds out that the nearest box is miles away. They then tell me that they can probably get me DSL. But when I talk to the call center folks, they say they can't process a DSL order while the system says U-Verse is available. Don't worry, they say, as soon as the maps are updated, we can order your DSL. Almost a year later, the maps aren't updated. It's almost like they vigorously don't want my business.

Comment Re:Ugly Solution (Score 1) 197

Ok fine. The proportions are off. So let's do some guesstimates based on the total energy. According to this http://www.geologyinmotion.com... the 2011 Japan tsumani had somewhere between 31 and 3100 KILOTONS of energy. That's equivalent to the energy in 1 to 100 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. So I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out how to power a line of giant squirt guns that deliver the equivalent of between 1-100 Hiroshima nuclear bombs of energy as a directed stream of water.

While you're at it, I think the military might be interested in your nuclear water cannon.

Comment Re:Ugly Solution (Score 1) 197

Why don't you try a mythbusters style experiment? Scale everything down. To simulate the tsunami wave, you will go to the beach and find a nice 4 foot wave. To simulate your massive high pressure water pump you will use a squirt gun. Use one of those "monster cannon" squirt guns. Wait for wave. Aim squirt gun. Fire. Record how you totally dissipated the wave's evergy, or not. I'm sure Japan is eager to see your results.

Comment Re:Get a T1 (Score 1) 536

Yea, if most people put a traffic shaping rule on their router that limited them to T1 speed they'd go insane these days. Websites have grown huge, PDFs are commonly gigantic, and images are enormous. Oh, and don't even try to do anything with video.

Google fiber is the equivalent of an OC-20 (which doesn't exist per se).

Comment Re:What guarantees of longevity? (Score 1) 48

BTW, what would you guys suggest to wean non-technical friends off FB chat, given that IRC might be a little too much hassle with all the servers and keeping their computer on all the time?

Google Hangouts does chat and video chat and snapchat image type stuff.

It is multiplatform, unlike Factime or SMS messaging. Not sure if Whatsapp has a PC/Mac client.

I have had messaged delayed for some unknown reason on occasion. But overall, it is very solid.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid." - Martin Mull

Working...