Journal Journal: Eyeeeeeammmmoutttaaaheeeere!
Obviously my sense o' humor 'bout "da newz" don't play here. Ciao y'all.
Comment Thank goodness... (Score 1) 441
...we have such a selfless paragon of virtue to set us straight.
Submission + - Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Update: Still Hope for Warp-Drive Fans? (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: The CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva has confirmed Wednesday's report that a loose fiber-optic cable may be behind measurements that seemed to show neutrinos outpacing the speed of light. But the lab also says another glitch could have caused the experiment to underestimate the particles' speed. The other effect concerns an oscillator that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show.
Comment Natives AND Immigrants (Score 3, Interesting) 144
From the article: "It’s time to embrace digital natives and give them something cool, that doesn’t try to imitate existing concepts." Maybe. There's still a huge, wealthy immigrant population that has lots more dough than the natives. Before I set about catering to either group, I need a business model. "Something cool" may be part of it - I won't ignore native sensibilities about "coolness." Something saleable will be a larger part, whether conceptually imitative or not.
Comment Good (exclusive) or effective tactics (Score 1) 208
Good
Punch the idiot in charge in the face every time you get stuck with junk technology.
Effective
This one's trickier. It sounds as though your system's policy structure is ill-understood by your "asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction." On what basis just he justify overriding the placement of responsibility for purchases from IT to your budget controllers? Take the issue to your school board with clear explanations of the wasted monies that result from buying unusable computers. Explain to the board the failure to provide required educational materials. Convince them to clarify and set up or reaffirm the needed policies and establish or approve procedures to maintain oversight and enforcement of the correct practices. If your board seems recalcitrant, take your arguments upstream to the commissioners (or other public officials) who control the board. Finally, the court of last resort is public opinion; get media coverage to expose the waste and failure of the current practices.
If it's too risky to your employment to attempt these things directly, recruit parents to be your public interface and feed them the needed facts.
Comment Good (exclusive) or effective tactics (Score 1) 1
Good
Punch the idiot in charge in the face every time you get stuck with junk technology.
Effective
This one's trickier. It sounds as though your system's policy structure is ill-understood by your "asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction." On what basis just he justify overriding the placement of responsibility for purchases from IT to your budget controllers? Take the issue to your school board with clear explanations of the wasted monies that result from buying unusable computers. Explain to the board the failure to provide required educational materials. Convince them to clarify and set up or reaffirm the needed policies and establish or approve procedures to maintain oversight and enforcement of the correct practices. If your board seems recalcitrant, take your arguments upstream to the commissioners (or other public officials) who control the board. Finally, the court of last resort is public opinion; get media coverage to expose the waste and failure of the current practices.
If it's too risky to your employment to attempt these things directly, recruit parents to be your public interface and feed them the needed facts.
Punch the idiot in charge in the face every time you get stuck with junk technology.
Effective
This one's trickier. It sounds as though your system's policy structure is ill-understood by your "asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction." On what basis just he justify overriding the placement of responsibility for purchases from IT to your budget controllers? Take the issue to your school board with clear explanations of the wasted monies that result from buying unusable computers. Explain to the board the failure to provide required educational materials. Convince them to clarify and set up or reaffirm the needed policies and establish or approve procedures to maintain oversight and enforcement of the correct practices. If your board seems recalcitrant, take your arguments upstream to the commissioners (or other public officials) who control the board. Finally, the court of last resort is public opinion; get media coverage to expose the waste and failure of the current practices.
If it's too risky to your employment to attempt these things directly, recruit parents to be your public interface and feed them the needed facts.
Submission + - Cosmic Buckyball Particle 'Factory' Discovered (discovery.com) 1
astroengine writes: "For the first time, "buckyballs" have been discovered in the cosmos in a solid form. Until now, the only evidence in space for the bizarre little hollow balls of carbon atoms have been in interstellar gases, but with the help of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered buckyballs accumulating and stacking atop one another to form solid particles. "These buckyballs are stacked together to form a solid, like oranges in a crate," said Nye Evans of Keele University in England, lead author of a paper appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "The particles we detected are minuscule, far smaller than the width of a hair, but each one would contain stacks of millions of buckyballs.""
Submission + - Microsoft's Anti-Google Propaganda Campaign (youtube.com) 1
eldavojohn writes: As the presidential race heats up, the smear ads on TV are also increasing. But Microsoft isn't going to site idly by and let the politicians engage in all that song and dance — and Microsoft really does employ both song and dance. Their Youtube channel appears to be slowly transforming from trade show videos and launches into a marketing attack or propaganda campaign that only targets Google (both videos I've watched seemed to have nothing positive about Microsoft in them). Under a month ago, they launched a spoof called GMail man, a creepy guy that flips through all your GMail and serves up super personal ads that are wrong (although they never say if Hotmail engages in targeted marketing). And a few days ago Googlighting shows up to spread fear and uncertainty about Google Docs. Most amusing to this viewer was that I found no such trace of 'Googlighting' on Bing's video service.
Submission + - Adobe to Abandon Flash Player on Linux (adobe.com) 1
ekimd writes: Adobe has anounced their plans to abandon future updates of their Flash player for Linux. Partnering with Google, after the release of 11.2, "the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the 'Pepper' API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe." Viva la HTML 5!
Submission + - UN pushes plan to regulate the Internet, makes SOPA look like a paper cut (wsj.com)
no0b writes: On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.
" Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work;"
" Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work;"
Comment Light and entertaining but of little substance. (Score 1) 1237
Frothy. Need I say more?
Submission + - Have Bad Cars Gone Extinct? 1
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "AP reports that global competition is squeezing lemons out of the market and forcing automakers to improve the quality and reliability of their vehicles so with few exceptions, cars are so close on reliability that it's getting harder for companies to charge a premium. "We don't have total clunkers like we used to," says Dave Sargent, automotive vice president with J.D. Power. In 1998, J.D. Power and Associates found an industry average of 278 problems per 100 vehicles but this year, the number fell to 132. In 1998, the most reliable car had 92 problems per 100 vehicles, while the least reliable had 517, a gap of 425 but this year the gap closed to 284 problems. It wasn't always like this. In the 1990s, Honda and Toyota dominated in quality, especially in the key American market for small and midsize cars. Around 2006, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were heading into financial trouble and shifted research dollars from trucks to cars after years of neglect and spent more on engineering and parts to close the gap. Meanwhile Toyota's reputation was tarnished by a series of safety recalls, and Honda played conservative with new models that looked similar to the old ones. Now it's "very hard to find products that aren't good anymore," says Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of the Edmunds.com automotive website. "In safety, performance and quality, the differences just don't have material impact.""
Comment A Factor (Score 1) 149
Let's try to temper this discovery (not so much new as newly re-emphasized by this work) with the understanding that, it is only one of many contributing factors. Surviving longer allows us to encounter a plethora of new-&-improved woes for old folks. Sure, getting out and soaking up more rays is a good thing when properly managed, but let's not go overboard and attribute to one cause that which is complexly determined.
Memory's the first thing to go. I forget what the second is.
Memory's the first thing to go. I forget what the second is.
Submission + - Aging Eyes Blamed for Seniors' Health Woes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Scientists have looked for explanations as to why certain conditions occur with age, among them memory loss, slower reaction time, insomnia and even depression looking at such suspects as high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and an inactive lifestyle. Now Laurie Tarkan writes that as eyes age, less and less sunlight gets through the lens to reach key cells in the retina that regulate the body’s circadian rhythm, its internal clock that rallies the body to tackle the day’s demands in the morning and slows it down at night, allowing the body to rest and repair. “Evolution has built this beautiful timekeeping mechanism, but the clock is not absolutely perfect and needs to be nudged every day,” says Dr. David Berson, whose lab at Brown University studies how the eye communicates with the brain. Dr. Patricia Turner, an ophthalmologist who with her husband, Dr. Martin Mainster has written extensively about the effects of the aging eye on health, estimate that by age 45, the photoreceptors of the average adult receive just 50 percent of the light needed to fully stimulate the circadian system, by age 55, it dips to 37 percent, and by age 75, to a mere 17 percent and recommend that people should make an effort to expose themselves to bright sunlight or bright indoor lighting when they cannot get outdoors and have installed skylights and extra fluorescent lights in their own offices to help offset the aging of their own eyes. “In modern society, most of the time we live in a controlled environment under artificial lights, which are 1,000 to 10,000 times dimmer than sunlight and the wrong part of the spectrum,” says Turner. “We believe the effect is huge and that it’s just beginning to be recognized as a problem.""
Submission + - Damaged US passport chip strands travelers (kdvr.com)
caseih writes: "Damaging the embedded chip in your passport is now grounds for denying you the ability to travel in at least one airport in the US. Though the airport can slide the passport through the little number reader as easily as they can wave it in front of an RFID reader, they chose to deny a young child access to the flight, in essence denying the who family. The child had accidentally sat on his passport, creasing the cover, and the passport appeared worn. The claim has been made that breaking the chip in the passport shows that you disrespect the privilege of owning a passport, and that the airport was justified in denying this child from using the passport."
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The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what you want. -- D. Cohen
