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User: arb+phd+slp

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  1. Re:Good on Why Special Effects No Longer Impress · · Score: 1

    The hardware on which the Matrix was running was the humans' brains networked together. (Imagine a Beowulf cluster...). The harvested energy part was a terrible case of executive meddling.

    I justify the "thermodynamics" argument as we only hear about the battery thing from Morpheus, who may have gotten bad information, and we never hear from the machines as to what the Matrix is actually for.

  2. Re:Poor Michael Bay on Why Special Effects No Longer Impress · · Score: 1

    I would gladly pay IMAX 3D prices to see a 2-hour Daft Punk video. I'm not even kidding, and I'm looking forward to TRON Legacy next week.

  3. Re:Blind people using a touchscreen? on Microsoft Backtracks On Accessibility In Windows Phone 7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Users who are using Voiceover aren't responding to colored blobs, they are using Voiceover's auditory scanning. It reads aloud what is on the screen, such as the labels on the icons, and the user doubletaps anywhere on the screen to select one. You don't have to see the screen at all.

  4. Re:It won't need to on Backscatter X-Ray Machines Easily Fooled · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A security measure that is not perfect can still be good. Okay it can be circumvented by a limited set of actions.

    A terrorist attack also doesn't have to be perfect to be good. Neither the shoe, underwear, nor toner-cartridge bombs went off and they still cost $billions. Unfortunately, the long-term economics of this don't favor us.

  5. Re:Bonus on US Trials Off Track Over Juror Internet Misconduct · · Score: 1

    Wow. Your district sucks. My jury notice came something like five months in advance for selection and the trial was a good six weeks after that.

  6. Re:Heck on Using the Web To Turn Kids Into Autodidacts · · Score: 1

    Teaching yourself is fine, but very few people are capable of doing it properly without a lot of help.
    But in general, most people lack the framework to make sense of what they're learning.

    I agree with you. I think the solution to this is Problem-Based Learning. That is, allowing a specific problem that the learner faces (or has chosen to confront) to act as the framework that guides him or her into new learning. The outcomes of the learning are judged on the degree to which the learner can do something in the real world with that learning. This is perfect for the autodidacts, since classrooms, while efficient for imparting knowledge, are not very good places to assess it.
      However, an instructor still has a role in PBL to guide the student to think about problems they wouldn't otherwise have been aware of; and diplomas are indicators that the learner has been exposed to a sufficiently broad range of problems.

  7. Re:Wikileaks World! on Wikileaks Competitor In the Works · · Score: 4, Informative

    Which news channel shows films at 11?

    I'm either going to explain a cultural reference to non-Americans, or I'm going to overexplain a joke and get "Whoooshed". (Both, probably, now that I've mentioned it).

    On network TV, during commercial breaks in prime time (8pm-11pm), the evening news, which comes on at 11, will "tease" a story that they're reporting on with a short summary and the promise of some exciting video in order to keep you watching after your show is over. "Fire guts popular downtown restaurant. Film at 11." Taking that common phrase out of context, the meme has become "[Obvious statement]. Film at 11."

  8. Re:so sad on 8-Year-Old Receives Patent · · Score: 1

    Oh, for Pete's sake. Think about this for a minute.

    Money has never been my first priority in life. My brother? It's always been his first priority in life ...

    My brother lost his first tooth to an accident. He fell down stairs and knocked it out. This was long before it would have fallen out naturally (maybe age four?) He went through the usual ritual of putting it under his pillow and the Tooth Fairy left him some money for it just as she had done for me when I lost teeth.
    Our mom came upon him the next day hitting himself in the face with a wooden block trying to break his other teeth out for more money. This sort of approach would never have occurred to me.
    Fortunately, he's not an insufferable prick, just a really (self-destructively at times) hard worker.

  9. Re:When I worked for UPS on Which Shipping Company Is Kindest To Your Packages? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My brother kept bees in high school and he did purchase bees in this way. The packages tend to hum audibly. The carriers actually do handle those boxes rather gingerly.

  10. Re:Transitioning on Have I Lost My Gaming Mojo? · · Score: 1

    Okay, I'm not the biggest C.S. Lewis fan, either, but that was the succinct and pithy quote on this topic. Time for the tl;dr version. Do you have a way to impugn cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner? (pardon the copypasta hyphenation)

    One of the major speculations about primate evolution is that it is based on the progressive selection of a distinctive pattern of immaturity. It is this pattern of progressive selection that has made possible the more flexible adaptation of our species. Too often this pattern is overexplained by noting that human immaturity is less dominated by in- stinct and more governed by learning.

    Because our ultimate concern is with the emer- gence of human adaptation, our first concern must be the most distinctive feature of that adaptation. This feature is man's trait, typical of his species, of "culture using," with all of the intricate set of implications that follow. Man adapts (within lim- its) by changing the environment, by developing not only amplifiers and transformers for his sense organs, muscles, and reckoning powers, as well as banks for his memory, but also by changing literally the properties of his habitat. Man, so the truism goes, lives increasingly in a man-made environment.

    This circumstance places special burdens on human immaturity. For one thing, adaptation to such variable conditions depends heavily on opportuni- ties for learning, in order to achieve knowledge and skills that are not stored in the gene pool. But not all that must be mastered can be learned by direct encounter. Much must be "read out" of the culture pool, things learned and remembered over several generations: knowledge about values and history, skills as varied as an obligatory natural language or an optional mathematical one, as mute as using levers or as articulate as myth telling. Yet, though there is the gene pool, and though there exist direct experience and the culture as means for shaping immaturity, none of these di- rectly prepares for the novelty that results when man alters his environment. That flexibility de- pends on something else.

    Bruner, J.S. (1972) Nature and Uses of Immaturity. American Psychologist, 8, 687-708.

    Play is essential to the advancement of the human species and it does not stop in adulthood. We've been able to assimilate all this new tech into our culture because we play with it. And that becomes increasingly more essential as tech advancement accelerates.

    Don't make me get out the Vygotsky and Tomasello. I'm home for a holiday and there's nothing but parades and football on TV. I can do this all day.

  11. Re:Transitioning on Have I Lost My Gaming Mojo? · · Score: 1

    Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
    --C.S. Lewis

  12. Re:Lifestyle on Spine Implant Helps Paralyzed People Exercise · · Score: 1

    You don't even have to get the walk sequence perfect. A lot of people with partial paralysis walk with walkers or canes. Imperfect, but still better than a chair.

  13. Re:If You're Late to the Party on Did the Windows Phone 7 Bomb In the US? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've seen the ads, but in classic Microsoft fashion they're marketing the operating system with little to no emphasis on what phone you'd buy to get it or what carriers' retail stores will stock it. Say what you want about Apple, but no one was ever confused about what an iPhone was or where to get one.

  14. Re:This explains the political process on The Placebo Effect Not Just On Drugs · · Score: 1

    This got flipped about 30 years ago. Before that the "safe harbor" provision of the tax code said essentially that if your client contracted with you in good faith only you were on the hook for your taxes. The flip was due to lobbying by Ross Perot, owner of EDS, a big computer consulting firm.

    Interesting that EDS also processes the insurance claims for Medicare.

  15. Re:I live in Seattle. on Income Tax Quashed, Ballmer To Cash In Billions · · Score: 1

    I didn't see your name on the ballot.
    People give all sorts of reasons why they don't/won't, but the end result is that they're represented by people less competent than they are.

  16. Re:as the saying goes: on Truthy Project Uncovers Political Astroturfing On Twitter · · Score: 1

    Soap, ballot, jury, cartridge. In that order.

    Your predictable battleplan is your weakness. Mix it up a little the keep The Man on his toes.

  17. Re:Short answer "Yes" on Are Games Getting Easier? · · Score: 1

    Are you trolling? The Wii exists in response to the demographic split you describe, it didn't create it.

  18. Re:For those who are American on Swedes Cast Write-In Votes for SQL Injection, Donald Duck · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, Bern is the capital of Switzerland (which is also famous for the clocks), and Hitler was born in Austria and was the dictator of Germany. It looks like you've got some problems with geography and history.

    That's just, like, your opinion, man.

  19. Re:Highly political subjects? on Peer Review Highly Sensitive To Poor Refereeing · · Score: 1

    My field is like that. We're not actively trying to keep people off our turf (in fact, we need good computer-knowledgable people, please join us). I wish there were dozens of people from diverse educational backgrounds interested in this subject, but there just aren't.
    At this point in my career, anything I submit will, within two or three paragraphs, be met with "Oh, this is that guy who I met at the conference last year." There are literally three people submitting stuff on my topic and each of us has a unique spin on it.

  20. Re:Real sugar soda on High Fructose Corn Syrup To Get a Makeover · · Score: 1

    Wegman's stocks Mexican-bottled Coca-Cola made with real sugar in 12oz glass bottles. It's like I'm ten years old again (the only thing missing is trying unsuccessfully to pull two out simultaneously from a vending machine).

  21. Re:Skeeters control? on Is DIY Algae Farming the Future? · · Score: 1

    Of course we have it. Yanks call it "screen."
    I like the term "fly wire" though. It's very descriptive for what it does.
    We don't, however, have the hats with the corks unless we brought it back from a trip Down Under.

  22. Re:Never read on King's Dark Tower Series To Be Adapted For Film, TV · · Score: 1

    read the first sentence in a bookstore as a kid. It was the large paperback with the color plates. Couldn't leave without it. Spent my allowance on it instead of whatever I'd actually gone in to get.

  23. Re:Achievements... on American Business Embraces 'Gamification' · · Score: 1

    Am I only the one who doesn't need a pat on the back every 5 minutes in order to enjoy something or derive satisfaction from it?

    "Congratulations! You survived a bird looking at you! Achievement unlocked, 10 points!"

    No. For people like you there are highly profitable products that allow you to pat yourself on the back.

  24. Re:Keep children under 3 from all tv on Software (and Appropriate Input Device) For a Toddler? · · Score: 1

    It's important to realize why that recommendation is in place, though. The problem with TV is that it isn't interactive at all, thus there isn't any opportunity to develop any skills. Video games are interactive, but aren't as interactive as physical objects and live humans.
    However, if a grown-up and a child are interacting with one another while using a game/computer as the object of joint attention then it isn't any better or worse than playing together reading a book or manipulating blocks. I don't recommend giving up blocks and books, but the blanket statement "all screens == bad" isn't supported by the research.

  25. Re:Don't on Software (and Appropriate Input Device) For a Toddler? · · Score: 1

    Spot on! I would add that this means that you're the best output device as well. The skill you're developing during lap time on the computer is joint attention. The reason that Baby Einstein doesn't work is not because it's on a screen, but because it lacks authentic human interaction.