profBill - Slashdot User

Comment: Sending my children to college (Score 1) 651

by profBill on Tuesday February 14, @03:15PM (#39036921) Attached to: Last year, I spent the most on ...

I committed when I had my children that my responsibility would be to put them through college. I am a college professor and I see student after student go through college and come out the other end with an enormous, really crippling, debt. It was different in my day. I paid for more than half of my college, but I could make that kind of money when I was a kid working (very hard) during the summers. I know people work their asses off to pay for college, and some do it despite the difficulty, but it is a Herculean effort. I felt that when I had them it was my responsibility to get them through college and so I have.

Anyway, that meant that this year was around $35K (two in this year). I have a small, crappy house and really old cars, but I'm close to being finished (as are they) and I am looking forward to getting some of that money (for travel, for a decent car, to enjoy life a little).

Comment: Re:What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? (Score 1) 260

by profBill on Friday May 07 2010, @10:52AM (#32127952) Attached to: Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why they call it the theory of *relativity*

>>bill

Comment: Re:What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? (Score 5, Informative) 260

by profBill on Friday May 07 2010, @09:50AM (#32126808) Attached to: Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues

The relativity calculator at http://www.1728.com/reltivty.htm gives a relativity factor of 1.0000000016077795 for a speed of 17km/sec. If you multiply that all out for the approximate 33 years of travel (back of the envelope style, 33*525600*60), you get about a 1.67 second difference.

Of course, with the aliens towing in the spaceship, that might be off a bit :-)

>>>bill

Amazon Reviewers Take on the Classics 272

Posted by samzenpus on Monday April 05 2010, @11:47AM
from the eye-of-the-beholder dept.

Not everyone is a fan of great literature. In particular, reviewers on Amazon can be quite critical of some of the best loved classics. Jeanette DeMain takes a look at some of the most hated famous books according to some short tempered reviewers. One of my favorites is the review of Charlotte's Web which reads in part, "Absolutely pointless book to read. I felt no feelings towards any of the characters. I really didn't care that Wilbur won first prize. And how in the world does a pig and a spider become friends? It's beyond me. The back of a cereal box has more excitement than this book. I was forced to read it at least five times and have found it grueling. Even as a child I found the plot very far-fetched. It is because of this horrid book that I eat sausage every morning and tell my dad to kill every spider I see ..."

SolarPHP 1.0 Released 125

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 11 2010, @05:18PM
from the something-new-under-the-sun dept.

HvitRavn writes "SolarPHP 1.0 stable was released by Paul M. Jones today. SolarPHP is an application framework and library, and is a serious contender alongside Zend Framework, Symphony, and similar frameworks. SolarPHP has in the recent years been the cause of heated debate in the PHP community due to provocative benchmark results posted on Paul M. Jones' blog."

Comment: Because its premise is flawed (Score 1) 490

by profBill on Friday February 26 2010, @08:32AM (#31284088) Attached to: The Sad History and (Possibly) Bright Future of TiVo

TiVo, in my humble opinion, is based on a fairly flimsy premise: that television is so important to watch that you are willing to spend time and money to make sure you get to watch all of some part of it. Really? Seriously, what is on television that you couldn't miss? Frankly, very little. I'm not trying to be a hater, I watch TV all the time. I just don't care if I miss something. Because whatever I miss I can find later, and if I can't I didn't miss much. It's mind candy, mostly, and we could all do with losing a little "weight".

Comment: Ashes used to make something (Score 1) 793

by profBill on Sunday February 21 2010, @09:57AM (#31218450) Attached to: When I die, I want my body to be ...

After donating what useful items might be left, I want my ashes to be mixed with something like concrete, to make something: a garden wall that hosts beautiful flowers, a bench for people to sit on and relax, a walkway that people use to stroll on. Having a useless headstone in some remote cemetery, or a stupid urn that collects dust somewhere is wasteful, worse hubristic.

Becoming something useful, whether someone else knows that I'm "in there" doesn't really matter. At least what's left is still part of the world.

Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting 390

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 24 2010, @11:26PM
from the one-man's-readable dept.

An anonymous reader writes "For years, Microsoft has allowed Visual Studio users to define arbitrary tab widths, often to the dismay of those viewing the resultant code in other editors. With VS 2010, it appears that they have taken the next step of forcing tab width to be the same as the indent size in code. Two-space tabs anyone?"

Best computer for med school 0

Submitted by profBill on Tuesday December 22 2009, @09:00AM

profBill writes "My son is applying for med school and his venerable Thinkpad T43 is getting a little flaky. He needs a new machine for his upcoming studies. The question is, what is the best, one computer to get someone for professional school where programming is not a big issue? His understanding is that what he needs is a machine that will allow him to watch lectures online (I guess med students can't get to all their classes regularly), write papers, do spreadsheets, read slides, do email. Pretty basic stuff. My inclination is to get the new Asus 1201n . Very portable, good battery life and enough power to do the basics. However, they are underpowered compared to a Macbook or the like. Assuming you aren't trying to do lots of games (and med students mostly aren't), what would you suggest? Real laptop, beefy netbook, even a desktop?"

SPAM: The Good, Bad, and Ugly OSes of the Decade 0

Submitted by itwbennett on Tuesday December 22 2009, @08:59AM

itwbennett writes "Hundreds of Operating Systems were released during the past decade, finding their way into microdevices, watches, refrigerators, mobile phones, cars, motorcycles, jets, even the International Space Station. Some worked; some even worked well. Others, sadly, didn't. And some were just ahead of their time. Blogger Tom Henderson takes a look back at the best and worst OSes of the decade. Among the worst? Vista, as you'd suspect, along with WinME. But what about GNU Hurd? And some of the best? Solaris/OpenSolaris 10, MacOS X, And newcomer Google Android."