Enjoy the lack of tourist traffic on I-4? Reclaim International Drive for the environment and plant wildflowers? Diversify the local economy so we're not all dependent on how many Brazilians and English we can sucker into spending time here in the middle of summer?
I think you should consider what your students have already read and avoid it. Being forced to read Farenheit 451 and The Time Machine from grade school through high school because teachers don't pay attention to each other's syllabi gets really old. Check with the other lit teachers and see what they normally make their kids read before you commit to a curriculum. I think it would be best to try to introduce students to something they haven't already been exposed to. If they're taking a sci fi lit class in high school I'd wager that's what they want from you anyway.
I was thinking more along the lines of "BattleGate Univoyager" not so boldly leaning towards an edgy SG series. I don't know about you but I wasn't impressed by Dr. Gauis Rush, token bad boy Starbuck-esque soldier, Admiral badass, and the sniveling brat with the Harvard degree. Not to mention fatty McGamer Boy our delightfully quirky super genius who remains surprisingly cool in tough situations, and I'm not a real doctor Hottie McNursemaid.
I would have much preferred an entirely new series, something legitimately dark and edgy like Battlestar, not a rehashed and poorly acted SG soap in space.
But there aren't really any other new sci-fi options at the moment. I'll watch until I can't think of any new jokes or snide remarks during the episodes, or something better comes along. And who the hell on slashdot watches commercials anyway? I thought this was a congregation of intelligent people...
When there's at least one "superpower" in charge, things are pretty chill.
I would say when there's an empire with hegemony, things are pretty chill within the core of the empire. The rest of the world doesn't live in peace because Britain or America decides they're the sole power governing the world. Actually, the empire tends to stir the pot by hoarding resources and causing inequities elsewhere, conducting proxy wars against lesser powers, punishing those who do not go along with the will of the empire, etc.
Just because we had the werewithall to call ourselves a "hegemon" doesn't make us any less of an empire, and we certainly haven't been benevolent, in other words things were not and are not "pretty chill" for the majority of the world.
When the "superpower" falls you don't get utopia, you get a warring states period.
Really? I didn't think the wars actually stopped. You must mean wars among countries that matter....spare me the democratic peace research, that only applies to wars between democracies, not democracies and any other government type, and those tend to be quite frequent.
What you will see is the next empire fighting for supremacy, perhaps an actual large scale war, though I doubt it. In this case the winner will be China, followed closely by India, perhaps with another hot/cold war period as those two juggernauts duke it out for international supremacy.
The "superpower" isn't more enlightened, they just know that it is in their best interest (and they have self preservation as one of those interests) to have some restraint and civility. Get into a warring states situation and it's every bastard for themselves in a no-holds-barred deathmatch.
Restraint and civility? Hardly. What you get is an empire/hegemon that takes what it wants, forces it's will on others, and shows very little in the way of restraint or civility, sometimes even to its allies. Unilateralism at its finest. Anyhow, its interesting how you try to bring it back to Hobbes at the end, though I'm not sure he would agree you. He, and most realists, would classify all of time as a no holds barred death match, not just the inter-empire period.
To the point of the article: There isn't much we can do about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. If they've been able to obtain the technology and equipment under heavy sanctions further sanctions are unlikely to have the desired effect. I think it's high time we stop meddling in the internal affairs of other states. We participated heavily in the arms race in the Middle East, I don't see how we have any right to say what they can and cannot acquire, especially after we armed Israel to the teeth.
First of all, ISPs are not operating in a free market. In a free market, customers would optimally want to make a cost/benefit analysis of the competing ISPs, focusing on issues such as quality and technological supremecy, and (gasp) price. However, a large population of people don't actually have a choice of provider when it comes to broadband. ISPs are operating in the broadband market in most areas as an approved monopoly. Since they aren't worried about competition, they can arbitrarily set pricing without even taking quality or customer satisfaction into account. They also have less incentive for innovating and implementing new technologies when they become available.
Interesting results, but I find flaw with the tests. If we're really discussing two different types of absorbtion, purely visual and audio/visual, and the tests are made up of entirely visual questions, aren't the researchers tipping the scales in favor of the purely visual non-multitaskers? From the article: "A survey defined two groups: those who routinely consumed multiple media such as internet, television and mobile phones, and those who did not." The ones not consuming multiple media are consuming what? My guess would be books and newsprint, and if so, are they visual learners? How did they control for intelligence level? If the visual group is on average smarter than the audio/visual group, would that not also skew the results? More information is needed and less conjecture.
I'm glad it works for someone. I've been an MS user since grade school, and as far as layout goes, Word has remained *roughly* the same since. There was nothing wrong with the layout, it wasn't hurting anyone the way it was, and it wasn't really that complicated. On the contrary, I work very quickly off positional memory when I write, so for a long time user, it's pretty fast. When I opened up my thesis on my school's library computer and was forced to use Office 2007, I almost threw the damn PC out of the window. I couldn't find ANYTHING! There is nothing intuitive about the setup, and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out that the logo was a drop down menu. It took me 20 minutes just to save. Now granted, I may not be the most tech saavy person, but neither is the average user, and I'd like to think I'm above average intelligence. If I had a hard time figuring it out, imagine what Joe Sixpack is going to do?? Or my parents? I mean FFS, if you're going to change essential programs so radically, at least make them user friendly. I adapted to open office much faster.
Well the public may be motivated to give what they consider to be a lot of money to fund the challengers. Don't forget that the entrenched interests here, in this case the government and the Telcos, have deeper pockets than a couple hundred thousand dollars. It's a good start, but trying to out donate the competition, when the competition has combined yearly revenues in the billions of dollars, isn't the best strategy.
What's funny, or rather not so funny, about your post, is that is *exactly* what we used to do. Neighbors reporting other neighbors for being Communists, leftists, etc. You know what happened to them? Interrogations, blacklisting, intimidation, arrests, detainment, you name it we did it, all in the name of democracy and freedom. So you know what, even as a joke, no thank you. Spend your time more wisely, call your Reps and your Senators and let them know how you feel.
Or better yet, educate yourself, educate those around you, and maybe we can get a social revolution going. Because if our system is truly broken, and we can't change these policies through our elected representatives or massive public outcry, the only other options are complacency or revolution.
This type of encroachment on civil liberties was commonplace during the Red Scare and through the Vietnam era. There was backlash, some high profile scandals, and we got the FISA. 9/11 was the impetus for changing the balance of power back to the state. Since the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the government has been steadily grabbing at more (unconstitutional) powers to surveille its citizens. Hopefully there will be public backlash, but the power structure of the country is quite a bit different from previous eras. I would argue the US is more corporatist than in any previous era, and now we're fighting on two fronts. Hence the telco immunity provisions. Corporations and the state are getting a bit too cozy for my taste, and capitalism be damned, I don't want to end up in a facsist state.
EFF running story on 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that email and text messages should be considered private, subscribers cannot get the ISPs to release without user consent or a warrant. At least in the U.S. email at work, as long as its 3rd party, cannot be released to your boss. Not entirely on point, but as far as privacy is concerned, this is at least a step in the right direction.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/new-ninth-circuit-case-protects-text-message-priva
Very well said indeed. I absolutely hated testing days, especially the large homogenous tests you're talking about, because it meant I would finish far earlier than everyone else and be forced to sit in some deathly silent room for minutes (or hours!) with no stimulation whatsoever. I'm glad someone else is as bitter as I am.
To make an interesting point: I was also in 'gifted' classes from 1st grade, and went to an IB high school. EVEN in the 'gifted', honors, or advanced classes, there are students who are not given enough attention because they excel at work they're given. Those students are usually forced to read gods know what in the corner while the teacher helps the others understand. Not being given proper attention in school is a problem across the board for more intelligent students, even when the classes are advanced.
Will it even do any good? The school I go to has about 50k students, and there are public terminals all over the place. You can pretty much install anything, download anything, and the computer resets when you restart. If I was at a public terminal, I could install bittorrent, download a bunch of songs in 6 hours, and wipe the computer record (theoretically speaking of course). Now, if a student is really that inclined to use p2p, taking a quiz to get access isn't all that effective.
And you can bet your ass my 'lazy' generation will just use a script, meaning hardly anyone would even see the questions in the first place.
When customs searches your bags for contraband, it is basically the same as when they search your laptop. The problem is that we tend to store much more personal, professional, or confidential information on our computers than we would ever carry around in our luggage (mostly because you know ahead of time someone will see it). I mean when was the last time you took your vibrator with you to a foreign country? It seems so much more invasive simply because of the context. Now, unless you are demanding an end to all searches at the border (which will never happen for obvious reasons) I suggest you move on to how to get around it.
As far as solutions go, I like the idea of dual booting if its your only option, but I have 3 laptops. I can always take one with nothing on it for use on the trip and check my flashdrive with the luggage. Once they start demanding the contents of the flashdrives, it will have to be remote access only.
Slashdot Mirror
Enjoy the lack of tourist traffic on I-4? Reclaim International Drive for the environment and plant wildflowers? Diversify the local economy so we're not all dependent on how many Brazilians and English we can sucker into spending time here in the middle of summer?
Hey, a girl can dream.
I think you should consider what your students have already read and avoid it. Being forced to read Farenheit 451 and The Time Machine from grade school through high school because teachers don't pay attention to each other's syllabi gets really old. Check with the other lit teachers and see what they normally make their kids read before you commit to a curriculum. I think it would be best to try to introduce students to something they haven't already been exposed to. If they're taking a sci fi lit class in high school I'd wager that's what they want from you anyway.
I was thinking more along the lines of "BattleGate Univoyager" not so boldly leaning towards an edgy SG series. I don't know about you but I wasn't impressed by Dr. Gauis Rush, token bad boy Starbuck-esque soldier, Admiral badass, and the sniveling brat with the Harvard degree. Not to mention fatty McGamer Boy our delightfully quirky super genius who remains surprisingly cool in tough situations, and I'm not a real doctor Hottie McNursemaid. I would have much preferred an entirely new series, something legitimately dark and edgy like Battlestar, not a rehashed and poorly acted SG soap in space. But there aren't really any other new sci-fi options at the moment. I'll watch until I can't think of any new jokes or snide remarks during the episodes, or something better comes along. And who the hell on slashdot watches commercials anyway? I thought this was a congregation of intelligent people...
Someone needs to brush up on their history a bit.
When there's at least one "superpower" in charge, things are pretty chill.
I would say when there's an empire with hegemony, things are pretty chill within the core of the empire. The rest of the world doesn't live in peace because Britain or America decides they're the sole power governing the world. Actually, the empire tends to stir the pot by hoarding resources and causing inequities elsewhere, conducting proxy wars against lesser powers, punishing those who do not go along with the will of the empire, etc. Just because we had the werewithall to call ourselves a "hegemon" doesn't make us any less of an empire, and we certainly haven't been benevolent, in other words things were not and are not "pretty chill" for the majority of the world.
When the "superpower" falls you don't get utopia, you get a warring states period.
Really? I didn't think the wars actually stopped. You must mean wars among countries that matter....spare me the democratic peace research, that only applies to wars between democracies, not democracies and any other government type, and those tend to be quite frequent. What you will see is the next empire fighting for supremacy, perhaps an actual large scale war, though I doubt it. In this case the winner will be China, followed closely by India, perhaps with another hot/cold war period as those two juggernauts duke it out for international supremacy.
The "superpower" isn't more enlightened, they just know that it is in their best interest (and they have self preservation as one of those interests) to have some restraint and civility. Get into a warring states situation and it's every bastard for themselves in a no-holds-barred deathmatch.
Restraint and civility? Hardly. What you get is an empire/hegemon that takes what it wants, forces it's will on others, and shows very little in the way of restraint or civility, sometimes even to its allies. Unilateralism at its finest. Anyhow, its interesting how you try to bring it back to Hobbes at the end, though I'm not sure he would agree you. He, and most realists, would classify all of time as a no holds barred death match, not just the inter-empire period. To the point of the article: There isn't much we can do about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. If they've been able to obtain the technology and equipment under heavy sanctions further sanctions are unlikely to have the desired effect. I think it's high time we stop meddling in the internal affairs of other states. We participated heavily in the arms race in the Middle East, I don't see how we have any right to say what they can and cannot acquire, especially after we armed Israel to the teeth.
First of all, ISPs are not operating in a free market. In a free market, customers would optimally want to make a cost/benefit analysis of the competing ISPs, focusing on issues such as quality and technological supremecy, and (gasp) price. However, a large population of people don't actually have a choice of provider when it comes to broadband. ISPs are operating in the broadband market in most areas as an approved monopoly. Since they aren't worried about competition, they can arbitrarily set pricing without even taking quality or customer satisfaction into account. They also have less incentive for innovating and implementing new technologies when they become available.
Interesting results, but I find flaw with the tests. If we're really discussing two different types of absorbtion, purely visual and audio/visual, and the tests are made up of entirely visual questions, aren't the researchers tipping the scales in favor of the purely visual non-multitaskers? From the article: "A survey defined two groups: those who routinely consumed multiple media such as internet, television and mobile phones, and those who did not." The ones not consuming multiple media are consuming what? My guess would be books and newsprint, and if so, are they visual learners? How did they control for intelligence level? If the visual group is on average smarter than the audio/visual group, would that not also skew the results? More information is needed and less conjecture.
I'm glad it works for someone. I've been an MS user since grade school, and as far as layout goes, Word has remained *roughly* the same since. There was nothing wrong with the layout, it wasn't hurting anyone the way it was, and it wasn't really that complicated. On the contrary, I work very quickly off positional memory when I write, so for a long time user, it's pretty fast. When I opened up my thesis on my school's library computer and was forced to use Office 2007, I almost threw the damn PC out of the window. I couldn't find ANYTHING! There is nothing intuitive about the setup, and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out that the logo was a drop down menu. It took me 20 minutes just to save. Now granted, I may not be the most tech saavy person, but neither is the average user, and I'd like to think I'm above average intelligence. If I had a hard time figuring it out, imagine what Joe Sixpack is going to do?? Or my parents? I mean FFS, if you're going to change essential programs so radically, at least make them user friendly. I adapted to open office much faster.
Well the public may be motivated to give what they consider to be a lot of money to fund the challengers. Don't forget that the entrenched interests here, in this case the government and the Telcos, have deeper pockets than a couple hundred thousand dollars. It's a good start, but trying to out donate the competition, when the competition has combined yearly revenues in the billions of dollars, isn't the best strategy.
I'll take Nixon over Bush anyday. At least when Nixon spoke, you could tell there was somebody home.
What's funny, or rather not so funny, about your post, is that is *exactly* what we used to do. Neighbors reporting other neighbors for being Communists, leftists, etc. You know what happened to them? Interrogations, blacklisting, intimidation, arrests, detainment, you name it we did it, all in the name of democracy and freedom. So you know what, even as a joke, no thank you. Spend your time more wisely, call your Reps and your Senators and let them know how you feel.
Or better yet, educate yourself, educate those around you, and maybe we can get a social revolution going. Because if our system is truly broken, and we can't change these policies through our elected representatives or massive public outcry, the only other options are complacency or revolution.
This type of encroachment on civil liberties was commonplace during the Red Scare and through the Vietnam era. There was backlash, some high profile scandals, and we got the FISA. 9/11 was the impetus for changing the balance of power back to the state. Since the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the government has been steadily grabbing at more (unconstitutional) powers to surveille its citizens. Hopefully there will be public backlash, but the power structure of the country is quite a bit different from previous eras. I would argue the US is more corporatist than in any previous era, and now we're fighting on two fronts. Hence the telco immunity provisions. Corporations and the state are getting a bit too cozy for my taste, and capitalism be damned, I don't want to end up in a facsist state.
EFF running story on 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that email and text messages should be considered private, subscribers cannot get the ISPs to release without user consent or a warrant. At least in the U.S. email at work, as long as its 3rd party, cannot be released to your boss. Not entirely on point, but as far as privacy is concerned, this is at least a step in the right direction. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/new-ninth-circuit-case-protects-text-message-priva
Very well said indeed. I absolutely hated testing days, especially the large homogenous tests you're talking about, because it meant I would finish far earlier than everyone else and be forced to sit in some deathly silent room for minutes (or hours!) with no stimulation whatsoever. I'm glad someone else is as bitter as I am.
To make an interesting point: I was also in 'gifted' classes from 1st grade, and went to an IB high school. EVEN in the 'gifted', honors, or advanced classes, there are students who are not given enough attention because they excel at work they're given. Those students are usually forced to read gods know what in the corner while the teacher helps the others understand. Not being given proper attention in school is a problem across the board for more intelligent students, even when the classes are advanced.
Will it even do any good? The school I go to has about 50k students, and there are public terminals all over the place. You can pretty much install anything, download anything, and the computer resets when you restart. If I was at a public terminal, I could install bittorrent, download a bunch of songs in 6 hours, and wipe the computer record (theoretically speaking of course). Now, if a student is really that inclined to use p2p, taking a quiz to get access isn't all that effective. And you can bet your ass my 'lazy' generation will just use a script, meaning hardly anyone would even see the questions in the first place.
The US decided a long time ago that the protection of its borders outweighed the protections of the constitution. See this for a nice summary:
:)
http://law.onecle.com/constitution/amendment-04/18-border-searches.html
When customs searches your bags for contraband, it is basically the same as when they search your laptop. The problem is that we tend to store much more personal, professional, or confidential information on our computers than we would ever carry around in our luggage (mostly because you know ahead of time someone will see it). I mean when was the last time you took your vibrator with you to a foreign country? It seems so much more invasive simply because of the context. Now, unless you are demanding an end to all searches at the border (which will never happen for obvious reasons) I suggest you move on to how to get around it.
As far as solutions go, I like the idea of dual booting if its your only option, but I have 3 laptops. I can always take one with nothing on it for use on the trip and check my flashdrive with the luggage. Once they start demanding the contents of the flashdrives, it will have to be remote access only.
Good luck