Comment Very Tall Waves (Score 1) 235
Do rogue waves bring down airplanes as well?
Sony Demo'ing 360 Degree 3-D Tabletop Display 102
JoshuaInNippon writes "Sony announced via a Japanese press release that they will be showing off a prototype of a tabletop 360 degree 3-D display that can be seen in any direction without special glasses at the Digital Content Expo 2009 in Tokyo, from October 22-25. The device is quite small, at just over 10 inches tall and 5 inches in diameter. The display, using LEDs, currently supports an image that is 96 pixels wide by 128 pixels tall, with 24-bit full color. Sony also says it could have a number of applications, such as a digital sign, a digital frame, a medical display, or a virtual pet. Looking at the product image, who else wants to bet on the latter?)"
Stone Tool 1.83M Years Old Discovered In Malaysia 200
goran72 writes with news out of Malaysia that archaeologists have announced the discovery of stone tools more than 1.8 million years old — the earliest evidence of human ancestors in South-east Asia. Researchers believe the tools were made by members of the early human ancestor species Homo erectus. The tools actually date as slightly older than the earliest H. erectus fossils, which came from Georgia and China. No bones of that antiquity have so far been found in Malaysia. "The stone hand-axes were discovered last year in the historical site of Lenggong in northern Perak state, embedded in a type of rock formed by meteorites which was sent to a Japanese lab to be dated."
Comment Simple is best (Score 1) 1117
Put no security restrictions at all on the laptop, except that no personal files should be stored on it. That way, it can be reimaged on a regular basis to remove unwanted or potentially dangerous software. This reimaging can be done over the network or in an emergency by physically swapping the hard drives.
Do not assume that you need to protect children from the Internet. This is a false assumption that simply creates headaches for parents, teachers, and administrators. Instead approach the computer the same way you would approach a piece of sports equipment or a musical instrument that is on loan to a student. Just as you wouldn't allow a student to use a school owned trumpet as a baseball bat, you can make rules about how the computer is to be used and you can enforce them without the need for software locks and censorship.
Step 1: Clearly define the rules. This is best done by a committee of parents, teachers, and IT experts. Resist all calls for censorship during this process, just make rules that the students should follow. Also define the guidelines for dealing with inappropriate use.
Step 2: Educate laptop recipients about the proper use of the equipment. Also offer education for parents and school personnel on how to deal with inappropriate uses.
Step 3: Monitor but do not censor Computer and Internet use. When inappropriate use is detected, and it will be, follow the guidelines.
Step 4: Maintain the laptops by regularly reimaging them. Hardware issues aside, they will run forever if managed this way.
This is the responsible and sophisticated way to run a laptop loaner program. Any other approach involving software locks and Internet censorship is just a challenge to students to try to route around the damage.
Many years ago, I ran a Wintel based computer lab for students using exactly this methodology and no PC was broken for more than about 10 minutes. All infractions of the rules were dealt with individually, so we punished the guilty instead of punishing everybody.
Comment Distributed Generation and Conservation (Score 1) 1563
Electricity can most efficiently be generated as close to where it is consumed as possible. Energy is only going to get more expensive over time.
What we need to look at is massive investment in small scale generation. Every house in the world should have grid connected photovoltaics on the roof. If you are fortunate enough to live in a good location, you should have grid connected wind, hydro, or geothermal generating capacity as well. Net metering of power should be required by law, with a requirement that power companies pay fair market value for energy purchased from small producers. Tax credits and government backed financing should make the cost of system installation and maintenance reasonable for any homeowner.
This coupled with conservation will allow us to continue to run our economy on our current infrastructure. The power companies may find they have such a windfall of power during daylight hours that they have to invest in pumped storage hydro, flywheel, or other energy storage systems. While they can take the fossil plants offline permanently.
What we need to look at is massive investment in small scale generation. Every house in the world should have grid connected photovoltaics on the roof. If you are fortunate enough to live in a good location, you should have grid connected wind, hydro, or geothermal generating capacity as well. Net metering of power should be required by law, with a requirement that power companies pay fair market value for energy purchased from small producers. Tax credits and government backed financing should make the cost of system installation and maintenance reasonable for any homeowner.
This coupled with conservation will allow us to continue to run our economy on our current infrastructure. The power companies may find they have such a windfall of power during daylight hours that they have to invest in pumped storage hydro, flywheel, or other energy storage systems. While they can take the fossil plants offline permanently.
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"When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail." -- Abraham Maslow
