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Comment Re:have basic calculus and vectors? (Score 1) 358

I think better than trying to get there just via Math, take an actual Physics course that teaches General Relativity.

At ASU, I took a 300-level course "Modern Physics" as an elective and it explained it all pretty well. And I agree, the only Math concepts you really need to know would be basic calculus and vectors. Of course the course itself might have the basic first year Physics courses as pre-requisites.

Comment Ignorant American culture (Score 2, Insightful) 242

IMF World Economic Outlook says India's economy was up 7.3% in 2008, up 5.6% in 2009, and predicted to be up 7.7% in 2010. China's economy was up 9.6% in 2008, up 8.7% in 2009, and predicted to be up 10% in 2010. Meanwhile the United States' economy was up 0.4% in 2008, down 2.5% in 2009, and predicted to be up only 2.7% in 2010.

People are keeping a very close eye on emerging market economies like Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, etc. They have been behind, but that means they have a lot of potential to grow, and many of them have been doing a good job at outpacing the United States' economy in recent years.

That all aside, the original comment for this thread was just stupid. In terms of comedic value it was beyond stale. Other than that it's tasteless. I don't think I've ever been on the phone with a tech support rep who was in India. Meanwhile I've been to India twice in the past few years and know that call centers are just about zero percent of their cultural identity. Just because some Americans have some exposure to this one small profession in India, they have extrapolated it into this whole stereotype for an entire country. I guess that's just ignorance.

If there is any stereotype of Americans which is absolutely accurate, it would be that Americans are ignorant.

Comment Does slashdot know what heart monitors look like? (Score 1) 950

What do you think a heart monitor is? Have you ever used any gym equipment? It's pretty standard for a lot of gym equipment to monitor your heart rate if you hold onto some metal contacts... but its also common to have something that plugs into a jack and then clips onto your finger or ear to monitor your pulse. It just gives you feedback about how hard you are exercising and if you need to work harder or if you're over-exerting yourself.

The responses here seem to indicate everyone thinks this is some sort of PDA the kids will be actually wearing like a wireless mic, logging data as they run around and play baseball or something....

I think the person who asked this question should be more worried about her kid being denied insurance because he inherited stupidity and crippling paranoia from his parents. Forget about heart conditions.

Comment BeOS - Zeta - Haiku - BlueEyedOS (Score 2, Informative) 411

I made the same mistake when I read about Haiku, since I stopped following BeOS after Be went out of business.

I used to use BeOS R5 exclusively for awhile, and then I kept it around some time after that with the patches (like the BONE net stack which was in development at Be Inc and which got leaked).

Then there were all these projects that sprouted up... BlueEyedOS, OpenBeOS, YellowTab Zeta... as well as questions about what Palm might do with BeOS. And of course there were a ton of Mac, Linux, and Windows themes to mimic BeOS. At first, I think BlueEyedOS seemed to have the most going for it since it was based on Linux and had a head start.

Years later and I hear about Haiku, and didn't realize this is what used to be OpenBeOS which was not based on Linux at all. I think a lot of people who have been out of the loop for so many years might, like me, be thinking Haiku is based on Linux like BlueEyedOS was.

Comment Re:I'll try to break it down (Score 1) 411

I think this missed what was being asked....

From what I understood of Haiku, since they don't have access to BeOS source, it's based on Linux. So how is Haiku not just another Linux distro with a customized window manager that tries to look like BeOS?

I think they were implementing some of the BeOS libraries, but I'm not sure how it all works in practice... and if that means that old BeOS native programs (remember bebits.com?) will run without modification on Haiku... and if that means Linux programs will work as well. I guess I should give the live disc a try. I actually tried using BeOS R5 as my primary OS for about 6 months when it first came out (I had BeOS, Linux, and Windows in triple-boot using the Be Boot Manager). It was pretty nice for day to day work.

But these days I'm pretty happy with Mac OS X.

Comment Bad CGI and character design - cartoony. (Score 1) 443

I don't care if this movie is in 3-D. I don't even care anymore what the story is about.

Every time I see the trailer, I cringe. The world looks amazing, but those characters look so, so -- there's no other word for it -- STUPID!

Something about those faces just looks incredibly stupid to me. Why did they design the characters to look so stupid?

And then when they move, all I can think about is how these characters are CGI. It's distracting. They don't look lifelike or real in any sense. It's cartoony.

And I like cartoons sometimes, but I don't like stupid cartoons.

Comment Read Dirk Gently if you want more Adam (Score 4, Insightful) 410

Seriously, if you want more Adams humor, and haven't done so already, go read "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and the sequel "The Long, Dark, Tea-time of the Soul". H2G2 isn't the only great series Adams made.

They are great books, and probably way better than anything in this new book.

Comment Re:Let's Not Get Ahead of Ourselves Here (Score 1) 705

I found Children of Men to be torture to watch. I thought it would deal a lot more with the consequences of a world where people aren't able to reproduce... and it did, for maybe the first 2 minutes of the movie. After that it was just an action movie to me, about people trying to escape from someone chasing them down. I was soooooooooo disappointed.

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