Comment Re:First Post! (Score 2) 79
I must have turned on the computer an hour earlier than you that day.
Comment Re:Common Core math textbook and curriculum (Score 1) 132
Common Core is the problem. We went from teaching math using traditional proven methods to doing things like "how do you feel about this equation?" and "write it all out like a sentence" instead of simply "7 x 8 = 56".
I've seen a lot of young teachers who felt compelled to leave their mark on education, proposed things just "to disrupt", and then left education to get law degrees. Seriously. In my limited sphere, I can name 3 or 4, and I'm not in education.
Comment My typical response as a mosquito magnet (Score 1) 65
I've known that mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide (CO2) for years - I mean, that's what those mosquito traps are doing.
So when I talk to people who don't know about the CO2 thing, I mention that some people emit more CO2 than others, and since we exhale CO2 then it means that I'm just full of hot air.
Comment Re: Unproductive improvement (Score 1) 85
Incidentally, the XBox 360 couldn't mount NTFS volumes, but HFS+ was fine. I always thought that was odd.
I think the HFS+ bit probably has to do with the idea that Microsoft used PowerMac G5 machines to develop the Xbox 360 because of the PowerPC processor. I'd imagine there were some development steps that might have required mounting an HFS+ drive to pull code over to the 360.
Comment Wrong assumption in the article (Score 5, Interesting) 83
I, Steve Wozniak, did not participate in the theft of the BASIC. It was funny to me to see others enjoying doing this. I had never used BASIC myself, at that time, only the more-scientific languages like Fortran, Algol, and PL-1, and several assembly languages. I sniffed the air and sensed that you needed BASIC to sell computers into homes, because of the book 101 Games in BASIC. I loved games and saw games as the key. It was the [MS] BASIC that inspired me to write a BASIC interpreter for my 6502 processor, in order to have a more useful computer.
Comment Integrity (Score 1) 68
It's hard to find people with Tim Berners-Lee's integrity. We should 'own' our own lives. It's a lot deeper than just being watched.
Comment Re:YouTube Computer Chronicles is stolen from arch (Score 2) 19
People mirror things off the Archive all the time. This show is explicitly open-licensed.
Comment Re:That's because all local school funding (Score 1) 144
A better question would be, does the district also contain charter schools? Households can get vouchers to offset the cost of charters, which sounds all wonderful until you realize it is taking funds away from the public school system. Charters are privatized schooling despite how they're advertised. They don't follow state standards, they take away from the public school system's resources, and aren't under any obligation to accept (or keep) your kid into their school. Maybe in some places it works, but in general it is simply taking away from the public education system.
Comment Re:Access (Score 1) 102
For 20 years, plus or minus, personal computers reversed that idea.
Comment Re:Sold his stock (Score 5, Informative) 98
I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.
Comment Re:If you want to print photos (Score 3, Interesting) 92
+1 on the Canon color laser for home use and drug store / Kinkos / Whatever for printing pictures I want to frame.
That said, I've preferred Canon printers because their scanners are better quality than Brother and don't have as much restrictions as HP.
But the big decision is how much you want to spend on laser toner. If you're not particularly fussy about print quality, you can go with cheap 3rd party toners (~$50 for the 4 color set). They'll work, but it is really a crap shoot as to how good a cheap toner is; when one is "bad", it can leave streaks or some random spots on your printout. This is NOT the printer, it is the toner cartridge. If quality is important to you, the manufacturer brands tend to be top notch. For comparison, a 4-color set for my Canon MF644CDw is about $390 on Amazon (054H set) compared to 3rd party which runs $50-70. But the quality is consistent versus the gamble with 3rd party brands.
If it is about your kids printing out 20 pictures of their cat, go 3rd party.
Comment ...Or Can Lead to Alzheimers (Score 3, Funny) 52
Maybe there is a cutoff date, but one of the presumed triggers of Alzheimers is stress and to someone who didn't grow up playing with digital electronics, Smartphones are the worst thing.
I knew someone who was in their early 70s and was talked into going from a semi-smartphone to an iPhone. Couldn't wrap his head around it. Sure, he could make calls and text but it was visibly "work" for him and obviously wasn't intuitive; pocket dials, accidental texts, emails as texts and vise-versa, things like that. Now add in that most everyone and most everything practically requires you to have a smartphone to do anything these days, and you're forcing a level of non-intuitive stress on people like him.
He had some minor surgery that needed to get done which wouldn't have normally been a big deal, but I'm convinced that it combined with the daily stress he was experiencing with having to use a smartphone flipped the switch and he died within two years from complications related to Alzheimers.
So I'm sure it is probably measuring people in the 50-65 range, but the people 70+ weren't "wired that way" and struggle with technology as it is. From the few people I've known who got dementia, it was stress related.
Submission + - Another large Black hole in "our" Galaxy (arxiv.org)
RockDoctor writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports a novel idea about the central regions of "our" galaxy.
Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.
This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)
The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.
This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")
Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.
As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.
Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.
This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)
The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.
This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")
Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.
As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.
Submission + - Surado, formerly Slashdot Japan, is closing at the end of the month. (srad.jp) 1
AmiMoJo writes: Slashdot Japan was launched on May 28, 2001. On 2025/03/31, it will finally close. Since starting the site separated from the main Slashdot one, and eventually rebranded as "Surado", which was it's Japanese nickname.
Last year the site stopped posting new stories, and was subsequently unable to find a buyer. In a final story announcing the end, many users expressed their sadness and gratitude for all the years of service.
Last year the site stopped posting new stories, and was subsequently unable to find a buyer. In a final story announcing the end, many users expressed their sadness and gratitude for all the years of service.
Comment Re:Air Play? (Score 1) 43
So will they retroactively path Airplay to run over Bluetooth even in older vehicles?
It isn't the phone that won't AirPlay, it is the car. Only until the last model year or two of automobiles have we seen wireless AirPlay, as far as I can tell. If you have an older car that only supports wired AirPlay, there are dongles you can plug into the car for ~$35 which will do the trick.
