Slashdot Mirror

Yet, some teachers (not necessarily you) insist on giving large amounts of busy work, just to make sure that the students have hours of work after school to accomplish

Meanwhile, other teachers advice their students not to do their homework.

I just hope they block overseas views so our taxes don't pay for that bandwidth. Just like the the BBC does with it's feeds.

You do realize that nearly four million Americans live overseas, don't you?

-Grey

Um, if you're that good at math, why would you settle for a B, and why wouldn't you deserve at least that high of a grade anyway, in recognition of your talent?

Because you value your time more? My experience (as a teacher) is that effort doubles between grades. So a D is twice as much effort to get as an F and a C is four times as much effort. I don't have a problem with some students recognizing that they don't want to spend lots of time on everything and making some cost/benefit decisions.

-Grey

Chicken Grease Salt

In the reverse order.

-Grey

I'm very glad for China, but at the same time depressed. When I was younger, I used to think of the US as being a place that made THE FUTURE happen. I wanted the Internet come into being and if that wasn't THE FUTURE I didn't know what was. Now it seems feels like the US it focused on stasis. I can only hope now that the Chinese let us have some table scraps from their engineering marvels.

-Grey

Engineering marvels?

You mean this engineering marvel?

Or how about this one?

Though, I'll give them credit where it's due, the Olympic venues of the birds nest and water cube were pretty awesome.

I'm very glad for China, but at the same time depressed. When I was younger, I used to think of the US as being a place that made THE FUTURE happen. I wanted the Internet come into being and if that wasn't THE FUTURE I didn't know what was. Now it seems feels like the US it focused on stasis. I can only hope now that the Chinese let us have some table scraps from their engineering marvels.

-Grey

What if the rest of the world bypassed and then disconnected the United States from the Internet.

Most Americans wouldn't notice.

-Grey

It's got the atomic symbol W and a strange story around that symbol.

Well, what's the story. My wedding ring is Tungsten as well (I also highly recommend it) and would like to know. -Grey

Tungsten was originally known as Wolfram, hence the W, Wolfram because it came from wolframite ore. Wolfram meaning "wolf's foam," so called because the mineral consumed a large amount of tin in its extraction.

It's got the atomic symbol W and a strange story around that symbol.

Well, what's the story. My wedding ring is Tungsten as well (I also highly recommend it) and would like to know.

-Grey

New York estimates that the provision will generate $50 million in revenue for the state in the fiscal year. Tax experts look to other cash-strapped states to adopt similar measures if the New York law holds up in court.

Boy, I wish I could raise $50 million without providing any additional benefits to anyone. Is there anyway to donate to Amazon/Newegg's legal defense team? : )

-Grey

For those interested, the prices in USD are:

The Bang for the buck: Less than 864USD

Extreme Performance on a Budget: 864USD to 1,728USD

Perfection in Silicon Form: More than 1,728USD

-Grey

East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps).

The states with the slowest median download speeds primarily are located in the Midwestern or Western regions of the United States, including Idaho (1.3Mbps), Wyoming (1.3Mbps), Montana (1.3Mbps) and North Dakota (1.2Mbps); Alaska had the slowest download speed (0.8Mbps). I

Is anyone surprised that small, densely populated states have higher download speeds than large, sparsely populated ones? It's the same argument that comes up every time worldwide broadband speeds are discussed: small and dense = easier to wire.

-Grey

And I remind myself when I think I'm smarter than them: I may know physics of motion and can do the math required, but people who play sports know that exact same formulas intuitively.

A tree squirrel also knows those formulas 'intuitively', yet I doubt they will be making much more progress with that intuitive knowledge than the sports men you speak of.

-Grey

if I could get my gf to pay a little more attention to numbers like this, I swear I'd have infinity dollars by now...

Let me give you some advice right now: it's easier to switch girlfriends than to get one who doesn't care about budgets to care about them.

Just a thought,

-Grey

ask yourself the same question whenever the USA does anything you don't like

Errr... most people can't easily move out of the USA due to immigration laws. It's pretty easy to switch states, however.

-Grey

He's younger than Obama, equally not white, and has actually done a thing or two that are worth while.

I can't speak for maths, but I'm a physics teacher in a London school and am disgusted with what the exams have become. The government introduced some changes last year that have made the subject into a touchy-feely environmental subject. There's also almost no math. No math! Who heard of a physics class without calculations? If you're interested, I wrote an article about the downfall last year.

-Grey

While it may look bad, it's still only 1/5th of a metric Britain.

-Grey

For many, getting married seems to add a the pouch and love handles.

why you Brits have such laws. Further why aren't you outraged that such laws exist and why you aren't actively trying to overturn them? This isn't a flame but a serious question,

I can see it now - someone will come out with a driver for people like yourselves that insist on having more noise in their environment. I'll then be tortured by sounds of car engines taking off, "That's my hard drive sound driver - cool huh?", birds tweating and for the joker in the crowd, a huge burp or fart sound as the drive spins up.

Calm down, dude. How did you jump from my appreciation of slight clicking noises on my computer to 'insisting' on noise to torture you?

-Grey

It sounds like a guinea pig got trapped inside, particularly during the start-up phase. Vzoooot. Cronk, cronk, cronk. Zip, zip. (Pause.) Gurlagurlagurla...zweeee

I like the hard drive noises. Lets be honest here, they are soft clicks and chirps, not chainsaw noises. It gives me a non-visual feel of what the computer's up to.

-Grey

Optimists cite plunging fertility rates in some countries as evidence that Earth's human passenger list will not reach 9 billion. Pessimists see a chance of zooming well past that mark, and they add that with all the signs of strained resources (what's the price of oil today?), this trajectory will lead to some hard knocks. Some say we've already shot over the edge of the cliff and, like Wile E. Coyote in the old cartoons, simply haven't noticed.

Looks to me like the optimists actually have some evidence behind them. The more crowded the world gets, the more expensive it will be to have many children, and the fewer people will have.

-Grey

During more than two hours of testimony, scientists and religious representatives argued over whether teaching that humans evolved from a single-celled species over hundreds of millions of years should be taken as gospel.

How odd. The google result for "overhand coil" lists your post at #2 mere hours after you posted it. The overhand coil must not be a popular method.

-Grey

Think of the Adolescents!

-Grey

I would recommend everyone take a serious look at the idea of leaving the US. Figure out what it would take to leave, and how fast you could do it in. There may be a time soon when you have to put that plan into action.

Electrodes have been implanted in the brain of Eric Ramsay, who has been "locked in" - conscious but paralysed - since a car crash eight years ago.

What do you do for eight years as a locked in? Wouldn't that drive a normal person insane or dull the mind beyond all recognition? Does anyone know about the mental state of these people?

-Grey

Honestly this looks like a bunch of hooey to me, but I figured others would be better suited to say.

Honestly this looks like a bunch of hooey to me, but I posted it on the front page anyway.

There. Fixed it.

-Grey

They just want to feed the machine!

-Grey

But the other day, we got an urgent request from our support team to come up with a decent fix in 48 hours. I think they're a tiny bit unrealistic.

Well, we really can't answer that question with knowing how big the problem is. If it's an embarrassing typo on a dialog box, then 48 hours is reasonable. If it's a windows vista security patch, then 48 days would be unrealistic.

-Grey

For some reason though we need to have live coverage as the polls close to find out who wins. It really doesn't matter all that much.

"Colossus marked the beginning of the modern age of computing, a heritage that we are planning to preserve by raising £6m to establish a world-class facility at Bletchley Park," said Tony Sale, co-founder of the National Museum of Computing.

Watch out! Don't connect that thing to the internet -- your 40 year old version of Norton won't be any good. Wouldn't want to turn six million pounds into just another botnet zombie :)

-Grey

In the question and answer period following the screening, an Iraq veteran said he had pledged to protect his country "from all enemies foreign and domestic" and viewed the issues of voting machines as a domestic threat to voters across the country.

It's very nice to hear of a soldier truly understanding the role of patriotism and protection in America these days. Well done, Sir.

-Grey

I try to be a fan of as few things as possible, and instead buy on the technical merit.

From the article: One of the first microprocessors on the market, the Intel 4004 introduced in 1971, featured 4-bit computing, a 750KHz clock, completed 75,000 instructions per second, held 4KB of ROM and 640 bytes of RAM.

"By today's standards, this is totally unremarkable," said Tim McNerney

Unremarkable is a 5-year old processor. But when things are the first of their kind, they will always be remarkable by any standard.

-Grey

What does it matter if you get the message right away? Doesn't change your father's medical condition any.