First negative opinion?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Call me a hater, but I thought that the Dark Knight was amongst the most disappointing movies of the year. Here are my reasons (I know I'll get lynched for this):
1) Heath Ledger is NOT ALL THAT GOOD! If you disallow the cloud of his untimely demise to hover over your judgment, I think you can see how he has done every scene in the same way. If you've seen the trailer, there's not much more of his acting to see
2) EVERYBODY and I mean EVERYBODY knows the identity of Batman. That sucks majorly.
3) Too many James Bond ripoffs. The whole using an airplane with a forked structure to pull away a balloon with two human attached to it was done in Thunderball. James Bond receiving his gadgets and then doing silly stuff with it and followed by a snappy remark from Q was done in, well, almost all the 007 movies.
4) The batmobile and batcycle were horrible. Given today's technology, I would have liked to see something that didn't look so unrefined and go kart like. Neither looked stable and neither looked like they were the product of a lot of spending. The Batmobile looked like it was designed for Statham in that prisoner racing movie rather than for crime fighting.
5) Maggie Gyllenhall is UGLY! I threw up a little when Bale kissed her.
6) Bale is kinda dull as Wayne in this movie and he speaks like Shelley Marsh when he's Batman.
On the positive side, Eckhart acted really well. I like Gary Oldman and was a little disappointed that his role didn't give him much to work with. Morgan Freeman's character was fun in a cheesy kind of way.
All in all, I wouldn't say it's not worth going to, but at the same time, you almost have to go since it is the biggest movie of the year.
Here's hoping I do not get modded down for not heaping praise on Heath Ledger due to his death. I am sure he'd appreciate my candor.RIP.
Google for pound and ye shal know that it is equal to a specific number of grams. Force is traditionally measured in lbf in engineering circles and lb is understood to mean lbm.
What I meant when I said being on Jupiter makes no difference is that a 1lb laptop is a 1lb laptop on earth, moon, jupiter...everywhere. Maybe if he had said "unless you are writing at close to the speed of light", he would have been correct
Seeing as the 269lb 904 is in a bigger chassis, I would gladly pay 329lbs for the 901 since it is a lot more portable. The early adopters were possible paying for mobile computing. In fact, the 901 is still priced 30lbs higher than the 901 which means its price has gone down only 30lbs which is an acceptable premium to pay for early adoption.
I am not sure why people put technology to higher standards than humans. TFA (yes! I read it!) says this:
Led by Professor Harry Collins and Dr Robert Evans, the team argues that such devices could cause viewers to overestimate the ability of any technological devices to resolve disagreement among humans. It also suggests that a more detailed understanding of how the device works could play a vital role in public education the benefits of which could spread to all technological decision making in the public domain.
I am not sure Hawkeye CAUSES people to think machines are infallible, but it's rather backwards where HAwkeye is assumed to be infallible BECAUSE people expect computers and machines to be correct 100% of the time. The potential for error by a computer is alien to most people (not least because people like my idiot CS teacher in school keep telling you that computers are 100% accurate and that they never tire). For some reason, there is reluctance to accept automated systems that are not 100% perfect.
If you were to invent a self manoeuvring vehicle which reduced the no. of accidents every year to 50% of current values, that would still not be implemented (in today's society) since every single on of us 'KNOWS' we drive better than the cars. I am not saying we should trust machines implicitly - I am just saying technology should not necessarily be held to superhuman standards.
I am not sure how many cameras are used in Tennis, but I am guessing they use at least 6 of them to triangulate which I believe produces an accuracy better than that a human can produce.
IIRC, Hawkeye was introduced in cricket to judge LBWs (Think of it as the ball hitting the batsman on it's way to the stumps). Now the rules say that any doubt must go in favour of the batsman, but obviously common sense prevails and umpires make a subjective decision on whether or not the ball is going on to hit the stumps. Hawkeye actually predicts the motion of the ball for about 1.5 meters after it has travelled about 20m in these decisions and makes a call (without concern for an 'error volume'). I would say that Hawkeye for most part is extremely accurate in the tracking with cameras placed >60m away with the ball typically moving at ~50 - ~100mph and moving in the air and after bouncing and usually better than the human umpires at predicting the path of the ball. The reasons it cannot quite work in cricket to make decisions is that LBW decisions involve things that hawkeye can determine (like where the ball pitches and where the ball is headed) and things like batsman's intent and whether he was attempting to play a shot that it cannot.
With them extending this technology to tennis, I cannot imagine that it would be any less accurate than a human being. Since tennis does not specify any direction of benefit of doubt, I think what the system could display is a 'Probability of being in/out' based on the error volume calculations and then decisions could be made depending on that (maybe original call stands if either of the probabilities is 0.25 or something).
I understand that an open phone cannot be CDMa for obvious reasons, but HSDPA and/or UMTS? C'mon ppl...wait.. I'll just go to their website and add a 3G/3.5G/WiMax module and then DDoS all objectors...heheheh...you're welcome!
Ever tried to get people INTERESTED in succeeding in your subject?
Of course, that is the first step. But I can only try in so many ways. When all the ways I can imagine (and all the ways my colleagues can imagine) produce no results, what am I to do?
Ever wondered why some people hate Chemistry while others hate Math and yet others hate CS? I think you have the answer. If I am not good at a certain subject and am disinterested in it and the teacher ignores me because of that, I will hate the subject. Yes. But if you show just some will to learn, I will not abandon you. (Well, at least a certain amount of will. If your level of ambition is to spend all term solving a maths problem that would take the average student 5-10 minutes, I think it would be fair of me to reassign the time I would have spent on you otherwise.)
I don't agree at all. Unless you are in the class room you cannot possibly hope to tell me how to spend my time. You can draw up guide lines, rules, draft laws and pass regulation. But when it comes down to it, only the people in the class room can decide what to do. Obviously, I will follow rules, laws and so on as well as possible, but the situations in classrooms are not always as clear as one thinks when writing rules and laws. Although my primary function in a classroom is to make sure the pupils learn my subject, I must also function as a referee/policeman, adult other than the pupil's parents, part-time friend and more. I understand the enormous responsibility that lies on a teacher's shoulders. Having been a teacher (albeit in college), I do however feel that teachers do not decide who is worthy and who is not. At the end of the day, if you can say that you did your best with every student, that is what is required. Taking time away from the disinterested and distributing it amongst the smart ones is not on. The smart ones can figure things out for themselves at a later point, but the school system is there to provide all of society a basic competence in certain subjects which society thinks is necessary. I had a waitress who complained that she could not split a $53 check 5 ways because "53 can't be divided by 5". I'd rather have everyone be able to do basic math than have 12 yr old math geniuses. The geniuses can wait to blossom in college or in the industry.
ever wonder why it always seems like you're being victimized? it's because you're always looking to blame others for your failings and are not willing to accept personal responsibility. there's a saying about leading a horse to water but not being able to make it drink which is entirely appropriate here. if you are not interested in learning then there is fuck all a teacher is going to be able to do for you.
it's moronic thinking like yours that created the NCLB bullshit in the first place. I bet you want the government to ban violent video games too I was speaking as a teacher and not as a student. I am all in favour of segregating smart kids from dumb kids and then teaching the mall equally. What I am NOT in favour of is teachers giving up on students because they are not being paid to do that.
I have worked as a teacher, and am currently studying to become a qualified teacher. My position is that as long as the pupil is trying in my subject, he/she will get his/her fair share of my time. But when the student shows no ambition at all (or simply too little) I will take that fair share of time and distribute it among those students who actually _want_ to succeed in my subject. Ever tried to get people INTERESTED in succeeding in your subject?
This action is probably illegal, and most parents would object strongly if they realised what I consider is justified. But it boils down to a simple fact: you cannot teach someone who doesn't want to learn. If the student doesn't want to learn my subject, I am wasting my time on him/her, and could spend it better on those in the class who want to learn my subject. Ever wondered why some people hate Chemistry while others hate Math and yet others hate CS? I think you have the answer. If I am not good at a certain subject and am disinterested in it and the teacher ignores me because of that, I will hate the subject.
Doing this does not bother me at all, and I will do it whenever I feel a student does not merit my time. You don't decide what merits your time. The people who pay you do. As wonderful as it sounds, you aren't the architects of children's minds or anything fancy like that which puts you in a position to decide who is worthy of your time. You have a job where you get paid to teach people what you know. For all you cool talk about 'YOUR' time and how you decide to spend 'YOUR' time, screw you! The taxpayers or the parents are paying for your time and they decide how YOU spend that time.
This might be offensive, but let me assure you that if they paid teachers decent wages, with this attitude, you or the OP would definitely not have jobs as teachers.
this is why, as a teacher, I only focus on the top students in the class.
I'm sorry, but if you aren't going to try your best, then I would be a fool to waste my time trying to reach you. bugger off. Go and fail in life. I hope you are not serious about this. The top students are not necessarily the hardest working (I was a complete academic slacker since I was involved in a boatload of activities that got me out of class and I still did pretty well in school). The best students don't try their best because at the high school level, the top students are already a little bit more capable than you are AT YOUR SUBJECT. Deal with it. You are implying a horribly non-existent correlation between top students and students who work hard.
I'm a teacher, I'm in charge of teaching. The 'learning' part is your job. I agree. However, you really need to re-evaluate your teaching style every class based on student response. There is a reason why you have effective teachers and then the others.
If you are making an effort, I will do everything I can to help and support you. But you still suck after getting extra help, I'm not going to sugar coat things or give you an 'A for effort'. Some kids are just dim. parents need to learn to deal with it. Grades do not have anything to do with how much effort YOU PUT INTO a student. If you give students extra help, that does not make them more or less deserving of a certain grade.
I'm sorry for sounding so grumpy and uncaring in this post. It's been a long 2 weeks of solid speaking/listening tests, and I just failed 75% of my 1154 students, because they can speak absolutely zero English, even after 7 years of Education. Perhaps your attitude towards the weaker students is a problem? You want to focus only on the top students because it is easier. Go get your hands dirty and work with the weakest students. If they do not try hard enough, MAKE them try. MAKE them work harder. That is also something that I have seen teachers inspire in students.
Then I was told to make my questions easier, because if a student gets less than 40 points, they have to repeat the year, and the school administration doesn't want to deal with that, so we prevent them from failing by lowering standards. When a class as a whole performs badly under one teacher than under others, that points to the fact that the teacher is either harsh with grading, bad at teaching or usually a combination of the two. The way the world should work is that bad teachers grade easy and good teachers grade hard. At the end of the day, the ability of the students does not vary greatly from year to year or teacher to teacher.
It's easy to blame the students. The best teachers I have worked with adapt to the students' attitude.
It goes into a parking garage as a red roadster and comes out as a green pickup truck. It goes in a GINA and comes out a GINA. Wait... that's just wrong!
Apologies for the double post... but this irked me as well:
I also wouldn't have a hardware/mechanical engineer designing a software system. Are you sure? Lockheed Martin has mechanical/aeronautical engineers designing the software systems for their military aircraft.
Programming and software development is not something that is the exclusive domain of 'software engineers'. You really think software engineers can develop a CAD system on their own? Mechanical engineers have done that BTW. Ever heard of MATLAB or Simulink?
Sure, software engineers design software. It is juvenile to boost your ego by claiming that no one else can do it. Software engineering is relatively new. New enough that people in other domains have mastered it through necessity.
I wouldn't have a mechanical engineer design a chip either Mechanical engineers design chips all the time. We concern ourselves with issues like structural/thermal stability and solder joint reliability and the like. We do not do it all by ourselves, but neither can a hardware or a software engineer.
Cheers! -- Vig
Re:This is how economics is supposed to work!
on
The SUV Is Dethroned
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Always asking why I gots a penguin air-brushed on my fuel tank. And then you explain it to them and they swoon and give you their AIM s/n and you go home and cyber!
1) get enemy's AIM s/n and post it on a public chat room with a cute profile picture. 2) Soon enough all of enemy's supercomputers will be flooded with trillian windows with "a/s/l" and "wanna cyber?" messages 3) ??? 4) Profit!!!
In the US it appears you have to be Christian to run for high office, oh and some token Jews are occasionally allowed too. Is my outsiders interpretation correct? Yes. "Being Christian" is something that voters in the US want in a candidate more often than not. Sure you have the occasional county that votes for one of those goddamn atheists, but being Christian or 'atleast Jewish' is considered to be a sign of high moral and family values. The populace treats you well enough if you believe in a religion and there is mild distrust if you are an atheist, but the political system has always been a bit behind the society. A black man is finally a serious contender for President and a woman almost was. In about 50 years, you'll have an atheist in office.
P.S. I think the opening lines of The Communist Manifesto may have an effect along these lines: "Communists think that religion is a drug and they condemn in. We need to be high on it all the time if we are NOT Communists"
Slashdot Mirror
Call me a hater, but I thought that the Dark Knight was amongst the most disappointing movies of the year. Here are my reasons (I know I'll get lynched for this):
1) Heath Ledger is NOT ALL THAT GOOD! If you disallow the cloud of his untimely demise to hover over your judgment, I think you can see how he has done every scene in the same way. If you've seen the trailer, there's not much more of his acting to see
2) EVERYBODY and I mean EVERYBODY knows the identity of Batman. That sucks majorly.
3) Too many James Bond ripoffs. The whole using an airplane with a forked structure to pull away a balloon with two human attached to it was done in Thunderball. James Bond receiving his gadgets and then doing silly stuff with it and followed by a snappy remark from Q was done in, well, almost all the 007 movies.
4) The batmobile and batcycle were horrible. Given today's technology, I would have liked to see something that didn't look so unrefined and go kart like. Neither looked stable and neither looked like they were the product of a lot of spending. The Batmobile looked like it was designed for Statham in that prisoner racing movie rather than for crime fighting.
5) Maggie Gyllenhall is UGLY! I threw up a little when Bale kissed her.
6) Bale is kinda dull as Wayne in this movie and he speaks like Shelley Marsh when he's Batman.
On the positive side, Eckhart acted really well. I like Gary Oldman and was a little disappointed that his role didn't give him much to work with. Morgan Freeman's character was fun in a cheesy kind of way.
All in all, I wouldn't say it's not worth going to, but at the same time, you almost have to go since it is the biggest movie of the year.
Here's hoping I do not get modded down for not heaping praise on Heath Ledger due to his death. I am sure he'd appreciate my candor.RIP.
higher living standards.
And that requires Numb3rs.
Friday nights at 10:00 on CBS...
Cheers!
Desktop love...
Why exactly would this NOT work on a desktop? Or a UMPC? Or a ULCPC?
Cheers!
Google for pound and ye shal know that it is equal to a specific number of grams. Force is traditionally measured in lbf in engineering circles and lb is understood to mean lbm.
Cheers!
What I meant when I said being on Jupiter makes no difference is that a 1lb laptop is a 1lb laptop on earth, moon, jupiter...everywhere. Maybe if he had said "unless you are writing at close to the speed of light", he would have been correct
1. Calculate the 1.36kg weight of eeePC 904 as being 3.215kg on Jupiter
kg is a unit of mass and so is lb
2. Win the acclaim of nerds everywhere.
Nope
3. Profit!
Profit FAIL!
Cheers!
Obviously, I am talking about pounds. I was just randomly using lbs instead of the pound sign.
And oh! being on the surface of Jupiter makes no difference.
Seeing as the 269lb 904 is in a bigger chassis, I would gladly pay 329lbs for the 901 since it is a lot more portable. The early adopters were possible paying for mobile computing. In fact, the 901 is still priced 30lbs higher than the 901 which means its price has gone down only 30lbs which is an acceptable premium to pay for early adoption.
Cheers!
Well, I can't translate C++ to C until after it is DECLASSIFIED...
*rimshot*
Cheers!
I am not sure why people put technology to higher standards than humans. TFA (yes! I read it!) says this:
Led by Professor Harry Collins and Dr Robert Evans, the team argues that such devices could cause viewers to overestimate the ability of any technological devices to resolve disagreement among humans. It also suggests that a more detailed understanding of how the device works could play a vital role in public education the benefits of which could spread to all technological decision making in the public domain.
I am not sure Hawkeye CAUSES people to think machines are infallible, but it's rather backwards where HAwkeye is assumed to be infallible BECAUSE people expect computers and machines to be correct 100% of the time. The potential for error by a computer is alien to most people (not least because people like my idiot CS teacher in school keep telling you that computers are 100% accurate and that they never tire). For some reason, there is reluctance to accept automated systems that are not 100% perfect.
If you were to invent a self manoeuvring vehicle which reduced the no. of accidents every year to 50% of current values, that would still not be implemented (in today's society) since every single on of us 'KNOWS' we drive better than the cars. I am not saying we should trust machines implicitly - I am just saying technology should not necessarily be held to superhuman standards.
Cheers!
I am not sure how many cameras are used in Tennis, but I am guessing they use at least 6 of them to triangulate which I believe produces an accuracy better than that a human can produce.
IIRC, Hawkeye was introduced in cricket to judge LBWs (Think of it as the ball hitting the batsman on it's way to the stumps). Now the rules say that any doubt must go in favour of the batsman, but obviously common sense prevails and umpires make a subjective decision on whether or not the ball is going on to hit the stumps. Hawkeye actually predicts the motion of the ball for about 1.5 meters after it has travelled about 20m in these decisions and makes a call (without concern for an 'error volume'). I would say that Hawkeye for most part is extremely accurate in the tracking with cameras placed >60m away with the ball typically moving at ~50 - ~100mph and moving in the air and after bouncing and usually better than the human umpires at predicting the path of the ball. The reasons it cannot quite work in cricket to make decisions is that LBW decisions involve things that hawkeye can determine (like where the ball pitches and where the ball is headed) and things like batsman's intent and whether he was attempting to play a shot that it cannot.
With them extending this technology to tennis, I cannot imagine that it would be any less accurate than a human being. Since tennis does not specify any direction of benefit of doubt, I think what the system could display is a 'Probability of being in/out' based on the error volume calculations and then decisions could be made depending on that (maybe original call stands if either of the probabilities is 0.25 or something).
Cheers!
I understand that an open phone cannot be CDMa for obvious reasons, but HSDPA and/or UMTS? C'mon ppl...wait.. I'll just go to their website and add a 3G/3.5G/WiMax module and then DDoS all objectors...heheheh...you're welcome!
Cue the cuneiforms of cute girls with no acumen queuing up to watch Cusack's cucumber
Cheers!
--
Vig
Let's all go look at pictures on fb from 12 noon EST to 12:05 EST. That ought to show them...
I 3 Myspace hunni!
Cheers!
Of course, that is the first step. But I can only try in so many ways. When all the ways I can imagine (and all the ways my colleagues can imagine) produce no results, what am I to do?
Ever wondered why some people hate Chemistry while others hate Math and yet others hate CS? I think you have the answer. If I am not good at a certain subject and am disinterested in it and the teacher ignores me because of that, I will hate the subject.
Yes. But if you show just some will to learn, I will not abandon you. (Well, at least a certain amount of will. If your level of ambition is to spend all term solving a maths problem that would take the average student 5-10 minutes, I think it would be fair of me to reassign the time I would have spent on you otherwise.) I don't agree at all. Unless you are in the class room you cannot possibly hope to tell me how to spend my time. You can draw up guide lines, rules, draft laws and pass regulation. But when it comes down to it, only the people in the class room can decide what to do. Obviously, I will follow rules, laws and so on as well as possible, but the situations in classrooms are not always as clear as one thinks when writing rules and laws. Although my primary function in a classroom is to make sure the pupils learn my subject, I must also function as a referee/policeman, adult other than the pupil's parents, part-time friend and more. I understand the enormous responsibility that lies on a teacher's shoulders. Having been a teacher (albeit in college), I do however feel that teachers do not decide who is worthy and who is not. At the end of the day, if you can say that you did your best with every student, that is what is required. Taking time away from the disinterested and distributing it amongst the smart ones is not on. The smart ones can figure things out for themselves at a later point, but the school system is there to provide all of society a basic competence in certain subjects which society thinks is necessary. I had a waitress who complained that she could not split a $53 check 5 ways because "53 can't be divided by 5". I'd rather have everyone be able to do basic math than have 12 yr old math geniuses. The geniuses can wait to blossom in college or in the industry.
it's moronic thinking like yours that created the NCLB bullshit in the first place. I bet you want the government to ban violent video games too I was speaking as a teacher and not as a student. I am all in favour of segregating smart kids from dumb kids and then teaching the mall equally. What I am NOT in favour of is teachers giving up on students because they are not being paid to do that.
Cheers!
--
Vig
This might be offensive, but let me assure you that if they paid teachers decent wages, with this attitude, you or the OP would definitely not have jobs as teachers.
Cheers!
--
Vig
I'm sorry, but if you aren't going to try your best, then I would be a fool to waste my time trying to reach you. bugger off. Go and fail in life. I hope you are not serious about this. The top students are not necessarily the hardest working (I was a complete academic slacker since I was involved in a boatload of activities that got me out of class and I still did pretty well in school). The best students don't try their best because at the high school level, the top students are already a little bit more capable than you are AT YOUR SUBJECT. Deal with it. You are implying a horribly non-existent correlation between top students and students who work hard. I'm a teacher, I'm in charge of teaching. The 'learning' part is your job. I agree. However, you really need to re-evaluate your teaching style every class based on student response. There is a reason why you have effective teachers and then the others. If you are making an effort, I will do everything I can to help and support you. But you still suck after getting extra help, I'm not going to sugar coat things or give you an 'A for effort'. Some kids are just dim. parents need to learn to deal with it. Grades do not have anything to do with how much effort YOU PUT INTO a student. If you give students extra help, that does not make them more or less deserving of a certain grade. I'm sorry for sounding so grumpy and uncaring in this post. It's been a long 2 weeks of solid speaking/listening tests, and I just failed 75% of my 1154 students, because they can speak absolutely zero English, even after 7 years of Education. Perhaps your attitude towards the weaker students is a problem? You want to focus only on the top students because it is easier. Go get your hands dirty and work with the weakest students. If they do not try hard enough, MAKE them try. MAKE them work harder. That is also something that I have seen teachers inspire in students. Then I was told to make my questions easier, because if a student gets less than 40 points, they have to repeat the year, and the school administration doesn't want to deal with that, so we prevent them from failing by lowering standards. When a class as a whole performs badly under one teacher than under others, that points to the fact that the teacher is either harsh with grading, bad at teaching or usually a combination of the two. The way the world should work is that bad teachers grade easy and good teachers grade hard. At the end of the day, the ability of the students does not vary greatly from year to year or teacher to teacher.
It's easy to blame the students. The best teachers I have worked with adapt to the students' attitude.
Cheers!
--
Vig
Cheers!
Programming and software development is not something that is the exclusive domain of 'software engineers'. You really think software engineers can develop a CAD system on their own? Mechanical engineers have done that BTW. Ever heard of MATLAB or Simulink?
Sure, software engineers design software. It is juvenile to boost your ego by claiming that no one else can do it. Software engineering is relatively new. New enough that people in other domains have mastered it through necessity.
Cheers!
Cheers!
--
Vig
Cheers!
The fundamental cyber attack:
1) get enemy's AIM s/n and post it on a public chat room with a cute profile picture.
2) Soon enough all of enemy's supercomputers will be flooded with trillian windows with "a/s/l" and "wanna cyber?" messages
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
Cheers!
P.S. I think the opening lines of The Communist Manifesto may have an effect along these lines: "Communists think that religion is a drug and they condemn in. We need to be high on it all the time if we are NOT Communists"
Cheers!
Make the Prince have an uncanny resemblance to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Guide him towards making a fresh start as threat levels world over drop to green!
Cheers!