It's not about raising the bar on average intelligence. It's about raising the bar on 'potential achieved'.
Unfortunately, most people don't draw a distinction and therefore schools are improperly focused on raising IQ, even when no one can properly agree as to what IQ actually means.
I personally believe that everyone (barring mental disorders) has the potential to do more than pump gas. If they want to pump gas, fine. But unless their potential is achieved to go further, they may not have the ability to do anything else. If they don't have the ability, they aren't free to choose another life.
If you want a class of forced menial labor, because they don't have the ability (and therefore freedom) to go further, you wouldn't be the first. But I don't think that's what you're advocating, and that's not the kind of world I want to live in.
What happens to the menial jobs? We become more efficient and create better tools so it takes 1 person to do a job that took 5 before. If we looked at it sanely, it means that we as humans can take less time to do the necessary work for survival. Therefore we have more free time to work towards entertainment or self improvement.
This is why someone can blow a weeks wages on an iPod, instead having to invest that work time into food, shelter, or clothing.
While some people may be missing the 'elephant in the room', you sir, have missed the 'point of the article'.
Unfortunately, half the summary talked about job security giving a false impression. Job security was only a small part of the article, and in that regard, the jobs that were referenced were specialized, intellectual jobs. You will have 'grunt' workers in every profession. You can take anyone off the street and train them in a week for those positions. It could be construction work just as it could be data entry or answering phones.
The people he references in the article are experienced craftsmen who make difficult analysis and decisions based on subtle real world problems. Yet there is a stigma attached to those who do that while working on concrete, real world problems (eg: mechanics) when there is no such stigma on those who do exactly the same thing on less tangible problems (eg: IT professionals).
The main bulk of the article focuses on this stigma, but also covers a wide range including satisfaction by being able to see the direct effects of your labor.
Researchers in the National Information Assurance Research Laboratory of the National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) to develop a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture based on Type Enforcement, a mechanism first developed for the LOCK system. The NSA and SCC developed two Mach-based prototypes of the architecture: DTMach and DTOS. The NSA and SCC then worked with the University of Utah's Flux research group to transfer the architecture to the Fluke research operating system. During this transfer, the architecture was enhanced to provide better support for dynamic security policies. This enhanced architecture was named Flask. The NSA integrated the Flask architecture into the Linux® operating system to transfer the technology to a larger developer and user community. The architecture has been subsequently mainstreamed into Linux and ported to several other systems, including the Solarisâ operating system, the FreeBSD® operating system, and the Darwin kernel, spawning a wide range of related work.
IIRC the more prominent issue for eye strain is focusing on something so close for a long period of time.
I've read that while many people blame the light on computer screens for their eye strain, it could be rectified if they just looked out the window at regular intervals.
Anecdotally, I've looked at computer screens for long periods of times all my life, and many, many people have made comments about how my eyes must hurt. But they never did. I read that article and realised that I look around all the time, usually when I'm thinking. And I've also always set up computers near windows.
I'm not saying light plays no factor. But I think the main issue with HMD is you're looking at something 2cm away from your eye all the time. Since the glasses linked in the question "don't block out the world around you", I'm guessing they'll cause a lot less eye strain, since your eyes could be constantly refocusing on the outside world.
But sometimes, proprietary software companies like Microsoft and Apple break things on purpose with things like DRM or incompatibilities like.docx. This is so they can lock the user into using only the products they want them to use.
Now that a lot of FOSS software is as good or better than proprietary software, people who don't know any better (like my grey-haired parents) will have a lot less headaches and frustration if they learn how to use a FOSS program instead of a proprietary one.
And, if they want to be old fuddy-duddies and continue to use the program 10 years later on their new computer, it's no problem because it's free and open.
Linux embodies and promotes this type of ideal. There was so much frustration, the world over, when Vista came out and many people wanted to downgrade back to XP. XP had limited times it can be registered with the same key, and had many restrictions as to how it could be installed (eg: no USB).
If those same people were used to a FOSS alternative like Ubuntu instead of XP, there would have been no problem reinstalling or going back to Ubuntu.
Freedom is only true freedom if you have the knowledge to make an informed choice. You can offer someone two $100 bills, one counterfeit and the other real. You can say they are free to choose either one. But without the knowledge to tell the difference, they cannot control the outcome. That is not true freedom.
FOSS zealots are often people trying to scream the faults of the counterfeit bill, with the altruistic hope that others will gain the knowledge to be free.
I may be a meat eater, but any species that can run away from ghosts in a virtual maze and knows to chase them after eating power-pellets is off my menu.
I used to play WoW. And seeing all the nicely built avatars sometimes made me think I should be working on my own "real life avatar".
Some Gryphon rides would take so long and surfing the Internet while waiting was getting boring. So eventually I started doing push-ups, sit-ups, etc. The rides averaged about 5 minutes, and sometimes you find yourself going back and forth quite a bit in one day. So it turned out that I often got in a lot of good workout time.
But then I quit WoW and now I have my life back. But at what cost?! Sometimes I think, if I had continued, I could be sitting in my chair in my dimly lit room, cut off from society and the rest of the world, with an awesome body. =P
But seriously. I did do that. And it actually worked pretty well.
I began to write a rather angry email to Square Enix after reading the articles. However, halfway through, I realized where they might be coming from.
They have a DS version of Chrono Trigger that was first released at the end of 2008, and is still fairly "new" around the world. If people download the original ROM in order to hack it, or through CT:Crimson Echoes find out that they can easily play CT for free, the DS version might lose those potential sales.
Personally, I think the value of free advertisement and brand recognition that CT:CE would have given Square Enix would outweigh this. I also believe those people who buy the DS version do so for other reasons, such as portability. But I do see where Square Enix is coming from, and why they chose to stop the project now.
It is not even close to being in public domain now, and won't be for a very long time. There are probably a multitude of aspects of the game that are under copyright and will exist for a very, very long time; including characters, story, music, etc, etc.
If they retained all information at one source it would be more reliable, but more susceptible to corruption by whomever controlled the data. Plus there would be no privacy.
If they had no access to information there'd be complete privacy but it would be near impossible to stop harmful people.
The security services would then have to apply to the ISP or telecoms company to have the data released.
Meaning there's still some power left to the people, and hopefully there will be privacy laws in which the ISPs and/or telecoms can turn down the application if there isn't some form of viable warrant.
It means they had to partially compromise with privacy advocates and give up some accuracy, for the sake of more privacy.
The module that allows outsiders to do this is called the CIP device. I hacks into the governments firewall. Who knew they had just one layer of protection over every bit of US infrastructure, that it's all linked together, and that it could be so easily circumvented by a genius hostage in a matter of hours?
But it's okay. A man by the name of Jack Bauer has been alerted to the situation. And knowing his previous record I'm confident that he will deal with the crisis, because all of the bad people operate within driving distance to him.
Since they benefit the most from society they should pay to support it.
But you're forgetting what money actually is. It's credit, given to someone for having done some sort of work. Either they put something together, dug something out of the earth, grew something, or did another kind of service. If that's not the case, then it's stolen money and there are laws for that.
It gets a hell of a lot more complicated with the fact that we can 'invest' that credit and also pass our credit to whomever we wish.
In a perfect socialized world, each person would do the same amount of work and everyone would think it all had the same value and pay everyone the same thing. There would be no rich or poor, because you'd be paying money at the same rate that you're earning it.
But in the real world, people have put more value on some goods and services and less on others. So the rich are rich, because other people gave them their money. Or they gave their families money, and those families passed it onto their children.
So it's the opposite of your statement. They are rich because society has benefited the most from them. Or people were stupid and paid them too much. Either way, it's society that gave them that money because they thought the service was valuable.
The problems arise when some company takes sole control of a valuable resource and uses that power for extortion. This is called a monopoly, and there are laws against it.
Other problems arise when people are misled into thinking something is valuable when it's not. Again there are laws against this kind of false advertising.
Finally, there are problems when people are just stupid with their priorities and squander their money.
The government taking that money from the rich is essentially saying, "These people were stupid and gave you too much. We're going to give it back to them."
The way we're doing things now the rich are getting the benefits while others pay into the system.
What benefits are you talking about? Roads? Police? Firefighters? Public schools? Parks? The 'industry and banking' that you mentioned is private.
It wants the government to explore new models that 'require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates
Though there are ways to quantify value, in the end it's mostly collective agreement on a subjective amount. What the Guardian (and many other media businesses) haven't come to terms with, is that their 'value' has shrunk massively almost to the point of non-existence with the explosion of the Internet. The only reason they're still afloat (in largely the same form as before) is because the masses haven't realized this yet either.
Value can be thought of in the obvious terms of supply and demand. Between 1821 (when the Guardian was founded) and 1995 (when the Internet really started to take off) there were limited options of where to find your news and read other people's opinions. That amount grew until there were quite a lot in 1995, but it was still possible to explore all of your options, and select the one you liked the most. Now with the Internet, it's impossible to take the time to get to know each and every source of news available to you. Others pop up all the time. The supply has flooded to the point where one human can't sift through it all.
So the supply has effectively become infinite, plummeting the demand to nearly zero, in the span of 14 years.
The other aspect of 'value', quality (which is what they want the government to investigate), is even more subjective. Now we can read blogs from people who live near every event. We get opinions from every culture and from the very people whose lives these events affect. We are bombarded with it, and may have to sift through things to get it, but the quality of content from a mass of thinkers and contributors could be considered to be disproportionately greater than a few people who travel and write well. In fact, a number of people who write well, post on the Internet, on nearly every topic, willingly and for free.
People fear the death of investigative journalism, but there has only been a rise of whistle-blowers and debunking by private, unpaid, reputable sources on the Internet. Yes, there is more garbage to sift through, but the amount and accuracy of the large mass of information available to the general public has increased significantly, once that garbage is sifted.
To sum it up, people are doing their job for free. It's human nature to want to share your findings and your feelings about what you think is important. And some of these people write just as well, and have as much background, as the staff on the Guardian. People still read the Guardian because they like the source, and are familiar with it. But if they were gone tomorrow, there is no shortage of sources for people to turn to.
They are asking for government money, that comes from citizens, to study a subjective value, in hopes to limit the freedoms of another company whom they are currently willingly and freely supplying. And all of this, because the citizens already aren't giving them what they consider to be enough money.
The real world 'investigation' of value is currently underway. What they don't realize yet, is that while their content may be the same, the situation has changed so much, that their value is much lower than they think.
Dr. Maria Montessori, an MD specializing in psychiatry, came to the same realization approximately 100 years ago. However, her results were based on psychological observation, and now they are being backed up by modern science with things like Dr. Munakata's study.
From the article:
What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don't do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face.
The wonderful thing is that this knowledge is already being put into widespread practice today. After "fixing deficient children" and having them score equally to "normal" children on exams, Dr. Montessori was given an opportunity to open a school in a ghetto in Rome. The law at the time would not allow her to work with Elementary aged children because she was not a certified teacher, so she was initially forced to work with children between 3 - 7 yrs. It was there that she came to the same conclusion (and others) about developmental psychology.
The school evolved into an environment where the children of the younger plane (3-6) could use autodidactic materials in order to "trigger this reactive function" and "highlight the conflicts that they were going to face". Even the teachers in the school were instructed on how to become part of this environment, while guiding the children to new challenges. This is in stark contrast to the "teacher-centric" environments that we still have today, in which the teacher tries to control the activities through adult reasoning and psychology.
Towards the end of her life, after working with all ages, she considered that developmental psychology could be looked on as 4 distinct age groups, she called "plains of development": (0 - 6), (6 - 12), (12 - 18), (18 - 24). Each has a number of characteristics and tendencies that strengthen or become marginalized depending on their natural development. These tendencies are strongest in the middle (which is why Dr. Munakata's research worked so well), and blend in between.
Dr. Montessori gave up her career as a doctor to create materials, open schools, train teachers, and put her findings into useful practice. I'd recommend anyone with children to look into it further. As with Dr. Munakata's research, there's much that can be done in both home and school. There's a fairly good, quick overview from Milwaukee Public schools where many public schools were converted into Montessori schools. Most Montessori schools you'll find are private.
But be warned, the name "Montessori" is not copyrighted, and many use it to make money. I'd suggest starting with schools associated with AMI (Association Montessori Internationale [this is the association Dr. Montessori created herself]), NAMTA (North American Montessori Teacher's Association), or AMS (American Montessori Society), as they seem to be the more reputable organizations.
But probably the best thing to do, after a bit of web research, would probably be to visit a school run by AMI or AMS trained teachers and see for yourself.
If you type "I am extremely" into Google, the bottom suggestion from their auto-complete will be: "I am extremely terrified of chinese people" with 303,000 results.
It's interesting to note that places on the internet put a QWERTY keyboardist, Stella Pajunas-Garnand, at 216wpm, but I can't find out how this was recorded, who witnessed, and what parameters were taken into account (eg: accuracy, word base, over what period of time, etc.)
From my own dealings with The Guinness Book of World Records (on a completely different topic) I know they're very careful about having representatives witness the event and recording the conditions.
But that's not what convinced me that Dvorak is faster and less error prone. What convinced me is because I have studied both layouts for myself and know that the fingers have to physically move a much smaller distance with Dvorak. I know that there are less awkward digraphs, etc. I know that the bottom row takes the longest to type from and that's one thing Dvorak avoids.
Even if you disagree with the study above, or you find no sufficient studies exist, find out for yourself. Look up how and why different layouts were/are made. By the way, QWERTY was designed to stop typing jams (by keeping hammers apart), Dvorak was designed specifically with ergonomics in mind.
There are even more ergonomic layouts than Dvorak, as you'll find if you study that 2nd website I linked. They find a full optimisation to be a kind of XBUL layout. Colemak is another very ergonomic layout. And they even test what the worst layout for English could be.
Anyway, if you're really interested, find out for yourself. If not, keep using QWERTY. I still do. It's silly to get emotional over a keyboard layout. But it's interesting to think about optimisation.
There's software available so you can remap your keys to get the \ in the right place (or any key anywhere for that matter).
And depending on the keyboard, you may be able to physically switch the key top to make it look the way you want, after you get it to type the way you want.
I think QWERTY screwed up our typing more than lack of clicking. You and I type about the same (70wpm) but the errors you and I experience would probably be reduced had we learned a layout made with our fingers and language in mind, such as Dvorak.
But from the perspective of a cold boot:
I have WinXP and Ubuntu dual-boot on my 5 year old system. I timed their bootup the other day. WinXP took approx 3 and a half minutes, Ubuntu took approx 1 and a half minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not about raising the bar on average intelligence. It's about raising the bar on 'potential achieved'.
Unfortunately, most people don't draw a distinction and therefore schools are improperly focused on raising IQ, even when no one can properly agree as to what IQ actually means.
I personally believe that everyone (barring mental disorders) has the potential to do more than pump gas. If they want to pump gas, fine. But unless their potential is achieved to go further, they may not have the ability to do anything else. If they don't have the ability, they aren't free to choose another life.
If you want a class of forced menial labor, because they don't have the ability (and therefore freedom) to go further, you wouldn't be the first. But I don't think that's what you're advocating, and that's not the kind of world I want to live in.
What happens to the menial jobs? We become more efficient and create better tools so it takes 1 person to do a job that took 5 before. If we looked at it sanely, it means that we as humans can take less time to do the necessary work for survival. Therefore we have more free time to work towards entertainment or self improvement.
This is why someone can blow a weeks wages on an iPod, instead having to invest that work time into food, shelter, or clothing.
Please read the article.
While some people may be missing the 'elephant in the room', you sir, have missed the 'point of the article'.
Unfortunately, half the summary talked about job security giving a false impression. Job security was only a small part of the article, and in that regard, the jobs that were referenced were specialized, intellectual jobs. You will have 'grunt' workers in every profession. You can take anyone off the street and train them in a week for those positions. It could be construction work just as it could be data entry or answering phones.
The people he references in the article are experienced craftsmen who make difficult analysis and decisions based on subtle real world problems. Yet there is a stigma attached to those who do that while working on concrete, real world problems (eg: mechanics) when there is no such stigma on those who do exactly the same thing on less tangible problems (eg: IT professionals).
The main bulk of the article focuses on this stigma, but also covers a wide range including satisfaction by being able to see the direct effects of your labor.
SELinux Background
Researchers in the National Information Assurance Research Laboratory of the National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) to develop a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture based on Type Enforcement, a mechanism first developed for the LOCK system. The NSA and SCC developed two Mach-based prototypes of the architecture: DTMach and DTOS. The NSA and SCC then worked with the University of Utah's Flux research group to transfer the architecture to the Fluke research operating system. During this transfer, the architecture was enhanced to provide better support for dynamic security policies. This enhanced architecture was named Flask. The NSA integrated the Flask architecture into the Linux® operating system to transfer the technology to a larger developer and user community. The architecture has been subsequently mainstreamed into Linux and ported to several other systems, including the Solarisâ operating system, the FreeBSD® operating system, and the Darwin kernel, spawning a wide range of related work.
They DO use Macs. And Dell. They were shown VERY CLEARLY inside FBI headquarters during season 7 of 24.
IIRC the more prominent issue for eye strain is focusing on something so close for a long period of time.
I've read that while many people blame the light on computer screens for their eye strain, it could be rectified if they just looked out the window at regular intervals.
Anecdotally, I've looked at computer screens for long periods of times all my life, and many, many people have made comments about how my eyes must hurt. But they never did. I read that article and realised that I look around all the time, usually when I'm thinking. And I've also always set up computers near windows.
I'm not saying light plays no factor. But I think the main issue with HMD is you're looking at something 2cm away from your eye all the time. Since the glasses linked in the question "don't block out the world around you", I'm guessing they'll cause a lot less eye strain, since your eyes could be constantly refocusing on the outside world.
All OSes have faults.
.docx. This is so they can lock the user into using only the products they want them to use.
But sometimes, proprietary software companies like Microsoft and Apple break things on purpose with things like DRM or incompatibilities like
Now that a lot of FOSS software is as good or better than proprietary software, people who don't know any better (like my grey-haired parents) will have a lot less headaches and frustration if they learn how to use a FOSS program instead of a proprietary one.
And, if they want to be old fuddy-duddies and continue to use the program 10 years later on their new computer, it's no problem because it's free and open.
Linux embodies and promotes this type of ideal. There was so much frustration, the world over, when Vista came out and many people wanted to downgrade back to XP. XP had limited times it can be registered with the same key, and had many restrictions as to how it could be installed (eg: no USB).
If those same people were used to a FOSS alternative like Ubuntu instead of XP, there would have been no problem reinstalling or going back to Ubuntu.
Freedom is only true freedom if you have the knowledge to make an informed choice. You can offer someone two $100 bills, one counterfeit and the other real. You can say they are free to choose either one. But without the knowledge to tell the difference, they cannot control the outcome. That is not true freedom.
FOSS zealots are often people trying to scream the faults of the counterfeit bill, with the altruistic hope that others will gain the knowledge to be free.
The Bonobo can understand fairly complex English, read & write simple ideograms, and play Pac-man.
I may be a meat eater, but any species that can run away from ghosts in a virtual maze and knows to chase them after eating power-pellets is off my menu.
I used to play WoW. And seeing all the nicely built avatars sometimes made me think I should be working on my own "real life avatar".
Some Gryphon rides would take so long and surfing the Internet while waiting was getting boring. So eventually I started doing push-ups, sit-ups, etc. The rides averaged about 5 minutes, and sometimes you find yourself going back and forth quite a bit in one day. So it turned out that I often got in a lot of good workout time.
But then I quit WoW and now I have my life back. But at what cost?! Sometimes I think, if I had continued, I could be sitting in my chair in my dimly lit room, cut off from society and the rest of the world, with an awesome body. =P
But seriously. I did do that. And it actually worked pretty well.
I began to write a rather angry email to Square Enix after reading the articles. However, halfway through, I realized where they might be coming from.
They have a DS version of Chrono Trigger that was first released at the end of 2008, and is still fairly "new" around the world. If people download the original ROM in order to hack it, or through CT:Crimson Echoes find out that they can easily play CT for free, the DS version might lose those potential sales.
Personally, I think the value of free advertisement and brand recognition that CT:CE would have given Square Enix would outweigh this. I also believe those people who buy the DS version do so for other reasons, such as portability. But I do see where Square Enix is coming from, and why they chose to stop the project now.
It is not even close to being in public domain now, and won't be for a very long time. There are probably a multitude of aspects of the game that are under copyright and will exist for a very, very long time; including characters, story, music, etc, etc.
The wikipedia article on public domain will give you a better understanding.
Ubuntu's at Jaunty Jackalope NOW, but in 8 more releases we'll be at Randy Rabbits!
Only 4 more years until the Linux population explosion.
If they retained all information at one source it would be more reliable, but more susceptible to corruption by whomever controlled the data. Plus there would be no privacy.
If they had no access to information there'd be complete privacy but it would be near impossible to stop harmful people.
The security services would then have to apply to the ISP or telecoms company to have the data released.
Meaning there's still some power left to the people, and hopefully there will be privacy laws in which the ISPs and/or telecoms can turn down the application if there isn't some form of viable warrant.
It means they had to partially compromise with privacy advocates and give up some accuracy, for the sake of more privacy.
The module that allows outsiders to do this is called the CIP device. I hacks into the governments firewall. Who knew they had just one layer of protection over every bit of US infrastructure, that it's all linked together, and that it could be so easily circumvented by a genius hostage in a matter of hours?
But it's okay. A man by the name of Jack Bauer has been alerted to the situation. And knowing his previous record I'm confident that he will deal with the crisis, because all of the bad people operate within driving distance to him.
It would be interesting to know whether there are some practical reasons to want this.
Why do people want to climb mountains? Because they're there.
Now we can figure out what there is to see from the top!
Congratulations Debian team!
I've lived in both NYC and Tokyo.
I don't remember telephone poles in NYC, but they're everywhere in Tokyo.
You can see them clearly in this picture outside of my Tokyo apartment.
But the price difference probably has a lot more to do with what this guy said.
Do they think he is making it up or are they afraid of losing face?
Both sides probably think they're in the right. The stock image place most likely doesn't believe his proof yet.
Since they benefit the most from society they should pay to support it.
But you're forgetting what money actually is. It's credit, given to someone for having done some sort of work. Either they put something together, dug something out of the earth, grew something, or did another kind of service. If that's not the case, then it's stolen money and there are laws for that.
It gets a hell of a lot more complicated with the fact that we can 'invest' that credit and also pass our credit to whomever we wish.
In a perfect socialized world, each person would do the same amount of work and everyone would think it all had the same value and pay everyone the same thing. There would be no rich or poor, because you'd be paying money at the same rate that you're earning it.
But in the real world, people have put more value on some goods and services and less on others. So the rich are rich, because other people gave them their money. Or they gave their families money, and those families passed it onto their children.
So it's the opposite of your statement. They are rich because society has benefited the most from them. Or people were stupid and paid them too much. Either way, it's society that gave them that money because they thought the service was valuable.
The problems arise when some company takes sole control of a valuable resource and uses that power for extortion. This is called a monopoly, and there are laws against it.
Other problems arise when people are misled into thinking something is valuable when it's not. Again there are laws against this kind of false advertising.
Finally, there are problems when people are just stupid with their priorities and squander their money.
The government taking that money from the rich is essentially saying, "These people were stupid and gave you too much. We're going to give it back to them."
The way we're doing things now the rich are getting the benefits while others pay into the system.
What benefits are you talking about? Roads? Police? Firefighters? Public schools? Parks? The 'industry and banking' that you mentioned is private.
It wants the government to explore new models that 'require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates
Though there are ways to quantify value, in the end it's mostly collective agreement on a subjective amount. What the Guardian (and many other media businesses) haven't come to terms with, is that their 'value' has shrunk massively almost to the point of non-existence with the explosion of the Internet. The only reason they're still afloat (in largely the same form as before) is because the masses haven't realized this yet either.
Value can be thought of in the obvious terms of supply and demand. Between 1821 (when the Guardian was founded) and 1995 (when the Internet really started to take off) there were limited options of where to find your news and read other people's opinions. That amount grew until there were quite a lot in 1995, but it was still possible to explore all of your options, and select the one you liked the most. Now with the Internet, it's impossible to take the time to get to know each and every source of news available to you. Others pop up all the time. The supply has flooded to the point where one human can't sift through it all.
So the supply has effectively become infinite, plummeting the demand to nearly zero, in the span of 14 years.
The other aspect of 'value', quality (which is what they want the government to investigate), is even more subjective. Now we can read blogs from people who live near every event. We get opinions from every culture and from the very people whose lives these events affect. We are bombarded with it, and may have to sift through things to get it, but the quality of content from a mass of thinkers and contributors could be considered to be disproportionately greater than a few people who travel and write well. In fact, a number of people who write well, post on the Internet, on nearly every topic, willingly and for free.
People fear the death of investigative journalism, but there has only been a rise of whistle-blowers and debunking by private, unpaid, reputable sources on the Internet. Yes, there is more garbage to sift through, but the amount and accuracy of the large mass of information available to the general public has increased significantly, once that garbage is sifted.
To sum it up, people are doing their job for free. It's human nature to want to share your findings and your feelings about what you think is important. And some of these people write just as well, and have as much background, as the staff on the Guardian. People still read the Guardian because they like the source, and are familiar with it. But if they were gone tomorrow, there is no shortage of sources for people to turn to.
They are asking for government money, that comes from citizens, to study a subjective value, in hopes to limit the freedoms of another company whom they are currently willingly and freely supplying. And all of this, because the citizens already aren't giving them what they consider to be enough money.
The real world 'investigation' of value is currently underway. What they don't realize yet, is that while their content may be the same, the situation has changed so much, that their value is much lower than they think.
It seems to have changed in the last 2 days! (@_@)
It was working 2 days ago (I checked before posting) but now it's not. And it was reported back in early Febuary here, here and here.
Or you can google: "google I am extremely terrified of chinese people" and find many sites talking about it.
From the article:
What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don't do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face.
The wonderful thing is that this knowledge is already being put into widespread practice today. After "fixing deficient children" and having them score equally to "normal" children on exams, Dr. Montessori was given an opportunity to open a school in a ghetto in Rome. The law at the time would not allow her to work with Elementary aged children because she was not a certified teacher, so she was initially forced to work with children between 3 - 7 yrs. It was there that she came to the same conclusion (and others) about developmental psychology.
The school evolved into an environment where the children of the younger plane (3-6) could use autodidactic materials in order to "trigger this reactive function" and "highlight the conflicts that they were going to face". Even the teachers in the school were instructed on how to become part of this environment, while guiding the children to new challenges. This is in stark contrast to the "teacher-centric" environments that we still have today, in which the teacher tries to control the activities through adult reasoning and psychology.
Towards the end of her life, after working with all ages, she considered that developmental psychology could be looked on as 4 distinct age groups, she called "plains of development": (0 - 6), (6 - 12), (12 - 18), (18 - 24). Each has a number of characteristics and tendencies that strengthen or become marginalized depending on their natural development. These tendencies are strongest in the middle (which is why Dr. Munakata's research worked so well), and blend in between.
Dr. Montessori gave up her career as a doctor to create materials, open schools, train teachers, and put her findings into useful practice. I'd recommend anyone with children to look into it further. As with Dr. Munakata's research, there's much that can be done in both home and school. There's a fairly good, quick overview from Milwaukee Public schools where many public schools were converted into Montessori schools. Most Montessori schools you'll find are private.
But be warned, the name "Montessori" is not copyrighted, and many use it to make money. I'd suggest starting with schools associated with AMI (Association Montessori Internationale [this is the association Dr. Montessori created herself]), NAMTA (North American Montessori Teacher's Association), or AMS (American Montessori Society), as they seem to be the more reputable organizations.
The Wikipedia article mainly focuses on (3-6) education, and other aspects are sparse. One book that attempts to explain the approach through modern psychological findings is: "Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius"
But probably the best thing to do, after a bit of web research, would probably be to visit a school run by AMI or AMS trained teachers and see for yourself.
If you type "I am extremely" into Google, the bottom suggestion from their auto-complete will be: "I am extremely terrified of chinese people" with 303,000 results.
Slashdot may need to give out more mod points.
"As of 2005, writer Barbara Blackburn was the fastest English language typist in the world, according to The Guinness Book of World Records." She would only use a Dvorak.
It's interesting to note that places on the internet put a QWERTY keyboardist, Stella Pajunas-Garnand, at 216wpm, but I can't find out how this was recorded, who witnessed, and what parameters were taken into account (eg: accuracy, word base, over what period of time, etc.)
From my own dealings with The Guinness Book of World Records (on a completely different topic) I know they're very careful about having representatives witness the event and recording the conditions.
I only have one non-biased study to show you.
But that's not what convinced me that Dvorak is faster and less error prone. What convinced me is because I have studied both layouts for myself and know that the fingers have to physically move a much smaller distance with Dvorak. I know that there are less awkward digraphs, etc. I know that the bottom row takes the longest to type from and that's one thing Dvorak avoids.
Even if you disagree with the study above, or you find no sufficient studies exist, find out for yourself. Look up how and why different layouts were/are made. By the way, QWERTY was designed to stop typing jams (by keeping hammers apart), Dvorak was designed specifically with ergonomics in mind.
There are even more ergonomic layouts than Dvorak, as you'll find if you study that 2nd website I linked. They find a full optimisation to be a kind of XBUL layout. Colemak is another very ergonomic layout. And they even test what the worst layout for English could be.
Anyway, if you're really interested, find out for yourself. If not, keep using QWERTY. I still do. It's silly to get emotional over a keyboard layout. But it's interesting to think about optimisation.
There's software available so you can remap your keys to get the \ in the right place (or any key anywhere for that matter).
And depending on the keyboard, you may be able to physically switch the key top to make it look the way you want, after you get it to type the way you want.
I think QWERTY screwed up our typing more than lack of clicking. You and I type about the same (70wpm) but the errors you and I experience would probably be reduced had we learned a layout made with our fingers and language in mind, such as Dvorak.
I agree on the hibernation.
But from the perspective of a cold boot:
I have WinXP and Ubuntu dual-boot on my 5 year old system. I timed their bootup the other day. WinXP took approx 3 and a half minutes, Ubuntu took approx 1 and a half minutes.