"That's fine - when I was a kid the administrators at my elementary school had the same rule. But they didn't try to pretend like they were conforming to some fictional government requirement to restrict candy in the school."
Presumably, the policy wasn't making a stink in the press at the time. I'm sure they'd change their tune to something else if the media started making fun of them, just as they did in this case.
"Agreed. I see no added value to even use a service like Facebook to keep in contact with friends and family. Most of the people I want to keep in contact with have my cell phone number, know my address (or e-mail) and know where I work. Out of those three things, if you want and have the ambition to keep in touch, now you have it."
I mean, honestly, Facebook's core mechanism does what it does extremely well. I just got an account in January, keep my info there very stripped-down, and even with the ill-willed privacy changes, I'm pretty glad I did so.
The ability to push short status updates to all my friends and get a comment thread going is really nice. Likewise, getting status updates from friends I'm not closely in touch with, and thereby seeing what they're up to in life, is very nice. One-to-one communications like phone and email don't do the same thing. Sure, I run my own web and email server, but Facebook fills a different need.
In some sense it always has. One book I recently enjoyed was "Dangerous Nation" by Robert Kagan. It maps out the key expansionist cycle of the U.S. in its role as the first modern, liberal, mercantile-driven nation: (1) Free U.S. private merchants enter neighboring or foreign nation. (2) Merchants get in some kind of dispute with local business, people, or government. (3) U.S. military steps in to control or annex area in name of protecting U.S. citizens and property. From the earliest days this cycle was explicitly noted by both U.S. and European politicians.
"Unless of course you actually are a terrorist, in which case, I hope a camera catches you the same way the one in times square got caught."
You know the guy on camera had nothing to do with the attempted attack, right? He was just some innocent bystander taking his shirt off on a hot day, caught on camera, and thereafter imbroiled in an investigation which was wasting police time and inflaming the public as the actual terrorist almost got away? You know that, right?
But I suppose that's more support for your, "Nothing to worry about; all the cameras are misidentifying suspects" thesis.
No, no, "I can't imagine" doing this without my Orwellian omni-surveillance iPantopticon! "I can't imagine" not being tagged, tracked, and on camera at all time! "I can't imagine" what anyone did to protect leased property prior to 2000AD!
"Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?"
Having worked at two game companies in the past: No. I've never heard of such a thing happening. All the hundreds of people working at a game company are likely bursting with their own game ideas. Ideas are not in short supply.
At best, your analogy for a "demo mp3" is a playable "demo game".
Fuck me, I need to multiply by another 3 sec/check. So 18m * 5 * 2 * 15 * 3 * 3 = 2.43 x 10^10 = 6.75 million class-hours wasted every year just taking attendance for this requirement.
Mod parent up, he's got it. The "date of last attendance" is the one thing I'm required to fill out for every (non-passing) college student at the end of the semester and sign in blood that it's been checked for accuracy.
Quick back-of-envelope calculation: This NSLDC requirement implies that attendance be taken for every student, in every classroom, for every meeting, by every instructor. Assume it takes ~3 seconds per name checked every class. DOE reports about 18 million higher-education students in 2007. Assume students taking 5 classes in each of 2 15-week semesters, meeting 3/week.
Result: 18m * 5 * 2 * 15 * 3 = 8.1 billion seconds = 2.25 million class-hours wasted every year just taking attendance for this requirement.
Man, I hate taking attendance. As far as I'm concerned, attendance should have nothing to do with assessments in college. Moreover, it's a huge waste of time having to do this paper-shuffling stuff at the beginning of each class session.
However, it's just about the ONE thing that the administration of the college I teach at is totally anal about. They require it, they have an awkward official form that must be filled with checks for every student for every class meeting (can't use my own design, or a spreadsheet, or an online summary), it's the one thing they have a big boldface BY SIGNING HERE YOU VERIFY YOU HAVE CHECKED ATTENDANCE RECORDS FOR ACCURACY.
Why? Because it's how they document financial aid. Most of the students attending are on some form of government financial aid, and if they potentially withdraw or don't show up, the college can point to this roster and say, "See? Student attended class. Pay up, state agency." I'm wasting hours of time every semester with this CYA bullshit -- but to the administration, getting paid trumps all else.
I also recently spearheaded an insurgency against an attempt to make attendance a passing requirement in my department's remedial courses. Fortunately (largely because the department chair is a fellow union member and thus responsive -- administration trying to remove that asap), that one did get knocked down.
Re:Ninjas were assassins, not peasants
on
The Laidoff Ninja
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There's a class drill done here: Take a pellet gun (same shape, location as your carry weapon), shut eyes, spin. Protected partner shouts, charges from ~20 feet away, trying to hit you with a padded stick (or, as you say, closer for greater realism and difficulty). First operation usually needs to be stepping away/clearing the attacking weapon before gun can be drawn for close-range shots. You might try it.
"There is a great book called More Guns, Less Crime written by an admitted left-wing liberal Harvard professor who started researching the book to show how owning guns is just plain bad"
Without reading the book, I can see you've got some of your citations incorrect. (1) The author John Lott never attended or taught at Harvard. (Research positions at: U. Maryland, U. Chicago, Yale, Wharton, U. Penn). (2) John Lott advocates a wide array of conservative issues (including gun ownership, women's voting bad for government spending, anti-environmental regulations, anti-affirmative action, anti-abortion, validity of 2000 election, etc.)
Have to call "not so" on the "admitted left-wing liberal Harvard professor" bit.
Re:Ninjas were assassins, not peasants
on
The Laidoff Ninja
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I'd like address your signature in a spirit of open discussion.
"Why do criminals use guns since someone could just take it and use it against them? Or police? Or Marines?"
My response would be something like this: Because all those types are usually using the gun in an aggressive, offensive manner. It would be very different from a civilian intending to use one in a reactionary, defensive manner, anticipating an attack, and making a judgment about when lethal force is justified. Here's some notes from the book to the self-defense class that I attend:
A recent study of cop killers showed that violent career criminals, with their disregard for the conventional fundamentals of shooting (e.g., sight alignment, stance), their aggressive mindset (i.e., no compunction against killing), their use of surprise attacks, and their more frequent practice with firearms (average once per month versus a police officer's practice twice per year), often achieve a far higher level of real-world effectiveness with firearms than do conventionally trained police officers...
One of the biggest missing links in most armed citizens' and police officers' preparations in the ability to access, present, and use the carry gun while under attack. It seems that many students and even trainers assume they'll see any attack coming from far away, or perhaps that the violent criminal will announce his intentions from a distant, stationary position, allowing time for the victim to execute his practiced stationary draw from concealment into a perfect shooting stance and obtain perfect sight alignment. Reality, unfortunately, usually doesn't happen that way. ["Atttack Proof" 2E, p. 242]
"Can you envision any scenario where a republican calling for a fraud investigation related to climate research would not be criticized as "politicizing science"? I agree that's probably what's happening in this particular case..."
Hey Mom, what's this I hear about the greenhouse effect? They say the pollutants we dump in the air are trapping the sun's heat and it's going to melt the polar ice caps! Sure, you'll be gone when it happens, but I won't! Nice planet you're leaving me!
If a newspaper cartoon could get this basically right 20+ years ago, what's your fucking excuse? (Note: Watterson cartoon was erroneous in not expecting global changes soon enough.)
"Look, times are tough for programmers already. Knowing how to do things correctly - like proper floating point math - is one of the ways to separate the true CS professional from the wannabe new graduates. Articles like this just make everyone smarter, and make finding a job that much harder."
Except that the people doing the hiring also need to know the correct answer to this kind of stuff.
I'm pretty much convinced that I lost a job once when, on a written programming test to convert strings to numbers, I wrote down the standard algorithm from my numerical analysis class, and the reviewer (not understanding what it was doing) told me it was working backwards. I did an example code walk-through with him, and yet he was still skeptical.
Man, I'm as anti-Catholic (or any religion) as they come, but the article says almost exactly the opposite of the Slashdot headline. FTA:
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, took his turn at the microphone. "The situation in which we are living is extremely exacting, and we are asked to be absolutely truthful and credible," he said. The last couple of months have been very difficult, he went on, with so many questions being raised about things that happened long ago. But he said, "This is the time for truth, transparency and credibility. Secrecy and discretion are not values that are in fashion at the moment. We must be in a condition of having nothing to hide." The crowd applauded.
Afterwards, the Pope comes out and says some cryptic nonsense about how the Internet has both good and bad sides to it. The complaint by the author of the article is that the Pope failed to clarify the "transparency" theme in either direction:
So where does this Vatican stand on being more transparent about how it has handled priest abuse cases in decades past? Will it respond to the call for greater openness that we have heard from so many Catholics here, in our two brief days so far? It was hard to glimpse the truth from our Vatican encounter Saturday. We can only hope to be able to shed greater light on the question by week's end.
"In this case, the dishonest part was 'we don't have the videos.'"
They did not actually ever say that, and everyone seems to be overlooking the extraordinary cleverness of that fact. FTA:
The department responded: "These recordings are both past our retention period and can no longer be obtained. Please note that the majority of 911 calls and videos are retained for a period of ninety (90) days."
"They just flat out said they didn't have it," said Rachner.
In this case, Rachner is incorrect. Let's consider each of the official statement's claims one-by-one: (1) "The recordings are both past our retention period" -- True, official "retention period" is 90 days. (2) "Can no longer be obtained." -- True, in the sense that our policy is to not give them to you. (3) "The majority of 911 calls and videos are retained for a period of ninety (90) days" -- True, without saying whether this case falls into the majority or not.
Note what they scrupulously avoided saying: "we don't have this video" or "we can't find this video" or "this particular video was erased". Never said any of that stuff, although they dissembled in a Bush-like way to make reasonable people infer that. Have to call that some sinisterly clever lawyering.
Slashdot Mirror
"That's fine - when I was a kid the administrators at my elementary school had the same rule. But they didn't try to pretend like they were conforming to some fictional government requirement to restrict candy in the school."
Presumably, the policy wasn't making a stink in the press at the time. I'm sure they'd change their tune to something else if the media started making fun of them, just as they did in this case.
"Agreed. I see no added value to even use a service like Facebook to keep in contact with friends and family. Most of the people I want to keep in contact with have my cell phone number, know my address (or e-mail) and know where I work. Out of those three things, if you want and have the ambition to keep in touch, now you have it."
I mean, honestly, Facebook's core mechanism does what it does extremely well. I just got an account in January, keep my info there very stripped-down, and even with the ill-willed privacy changes, I'm pretty glad I did so.
The ability to push short status updates to all my friends and get a comment thread going is really nice. Likewise, getting status updates from friends I'm not closely in touch with, and thereby seeing what they're up to in life, is very nice. One-to-one communications like phone and email don't do the same thing. Sure, I run my own web and email server, but Facebook fills a different need.
In some sense it always has. One book I recently enjoyed was "Dangerous Nation" by Robert Kagan. It maps out the key expansionist cycle of the U.S. in its role as the first modern, liberal, mercantile-driven nation: (1) Free U.S. private merchants enter neighboring or foreign nation. (2) Merchants get in some kind of dispute with local business, people, or government. (3) U.S. military steps in to control or annex area in name of protecting U.S. citizens and property. From the earliest days this cycle was explicitly noted by both U.S. and European politicians.
"Unless of course you actually are a terrorist, in which case, I hope a camera catches you the same way the one in times square got caught."
You know the guy on camera had nothing to do with the attempted attack, right? He was just some innocent bystander taking his shirt off on a hot day, caught on camera, and thereafter imbroiled in an investigation which was wasting police time and inflaming the public as the actual terrorist almost got away? You know that, right?
But I suppose that's more support for your, "Nothing to worry about; all the cameras are misidentifying suspects" thesis.
No, no, "I can't imagine" doing this without my Orwellian omni-surveillance iPantopticon! "I can't imagine" not being tagged, tracked, and on camera at all time! "I can't imagine"
what anyone did to protect leased property prior to 2000AD!
I'll be considering that now. I'm not sure I can make it work with my college's procedures, but I appreciate your making the suggestion!
I know that. You'll see in the GP where I distinguished what the OP is asking from a playable "demo game".
"game concept" (OP term) != "proof of concept game" (your term)
"How recent is your experience in universities?"
Yesterday. And I'll be back tomorrow. Here at CUNY in New York City, the largest urban university in the U.S.
"...most colleges have a very detailed CCTV network, and pay people to watch the footage 24/7 so they can send people over."
Total bullshit. Citation, please.
"Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?"
Having worked at two game companies in the past: No. I've never heard of such a thing happening. All the hundreds of people working at a game company are likely bursting with their own game ideas. Ideas are not in short supply.
At best, your analogy for a "demo mp3" is a playable "demo game".
Fuck me, I need to multiply by another 3 sec/check. So 18m * 5 * 2 * 15 * 3 * 3 = 2.43 x 10^10 = 6.75 million class-hours wasted every year just taking attendance for this requirement.
Mod parent up, he's got it. The "date of last attendance" is the one thing I'm required to fill out for every (non-passing) college student at the end of the semester and sign in blood that it's been checked for accuracy.
Quick back-of-envelope calculation: This NSLDC requirement implies that attendance be taken for every student, in every classroom, for every meeting, by every instructor. Assume it takes ~3 seconds per name checked every class. DOE reports about 18 million higher-education students in 2007. Assume students taking 5 classes in each of 2 15-week semesters, meeting 3/week.
Result: 18m * 5 * 2 * 15 * 3 = 8.1 billion seconds = 2.25 million class-hours wasted every year just taking attendance for this requirement.
"Yes, almost every university has a camera facing the door in each classroom."
This is bullshit. No university I've ever seen, attended, taught at, or visited had cameras in any classroom.
Man, I hate taking attendance. As far as I'm concerned, attendance should have nothing to do with assessments in college. Moreover, it's a huge waste of time having to do this paper-shuffling stuff at the beginning of each class session.
However, it's just about the ONE thing that the administration of the college I teach at is totally anal about. They require it, they have an awkward official form that must be filled with checks for every student for every class meeting (can't use my own design, or a spreadsheet, or an online summary), it's the one thing they have a big boldface BY SIGNING HERE YOU VERIFY YOU HAVE CHECKED ATTENDANCE RECORDS FOR ACCURACY.
Why? Because it's how they document financial aid. Most of the students attending are on some form of government financial aid, and if they potentially withdraw or don't show up, the college can point to this roster and say, "See? Student attended class. Pay up, state agency." I'm wasting hours of time every semester with this CYA bullshit -- but to the administration, getting paid trumps all else.
I also recently spearheaded an insurgency against an attempt to make attendance a passing requirement in my department's remedial courses. Fortunately (largely because the department chair is a fellow union member and thus responsive -- administration trying to remove that asap), that one did get knocked down.
There's a class drill done here: Take a pellet gun (same shape, location as your carry weapon), shut eyes, spin. Protected partner shouts, charges from ~20 feet away, trying to hit you with a padded stick (or, as you say, closer for greater realism and difficulty). First operation usually needs to be stepping away/clearing the attacking weapon before gun can be drawn for close-range shots. You might try it.
"There is a great book called More Guns, Less Crime written by an admitted left-wing liberal Harvard professor who started researching the book to show how owning guns is just plain bad"
Without reading the book, I can see you've got some of your citations incorrect. (1) The author John Lott never attended or taught at Harvard. (Research positions at: U. Maryland, U. Chicago, Yale, Wharton, U. Penn). (2) John Lott advocates a wide array of conservative issues (including gun ownership, women's voting bad for government spending, anti-environmental regulations, anti-affirmative action, anti-abortion, validity of 2000 election, etc.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott_%28econometricist%29
Have to call "not so" on the "admitted left-wing liberal Harvard professor" bit.
I'd like address your signature in a spirit of open discussion.
"Why do criminals use guns since someone could just take it and use it against them? Or police? Or Marines?"
My response would be something like this: Because all those types are usually using the gun in an aggressive, offensive manner. It would be very different from a civilian intending to use one in a reactionary, defensive manner, anticipating an attack, and making a judgment about when lethal force is justified. Here's some notes from the book to the self-defense class that I attend:
A recent study of cop killers showed that violent career criminals, with their disregard for the conventional fundamentals of shooting (e.g., sight alignment, stance), their aggressive mindset (i.e., no compunction against killing), their use of surprise attacks, and their more frequent practice with firearms (average once per month versus a police officer's practice twice per year), often achieve a far higher level of real-world effectiveness with firearms than do conventionally trained police officers...
One of the biggest missing links in most armed citizens' and police officers' preparations in the ability to access, present, and use the carry gun while under attack. It seems that many students and even trainers assume they'll see any attack coming from far away, or perhaps that the violent criminal will announce his intentions from a distant, stationary position, allowing time for the victim to execute his practiced stationary draw from concealment into a perfect shooting stance and obtain perfect sight alignment. Reality, unfortunately, usually doesn't happen that way. ["Atttack Proof" 2E, p. 242]
"Can you envision any scenario where a republican calling for a fraud investigation related to climate research would not be criticized as "politicizing science"? I agree that's probably what's happening in this particular case..."
Considering... considering this to be FUD.
"How soon do we forget that 30 years ago scientists were predicting a second ice age."
Bullshit. Here's an example of what was being popularly discussed back in the 80's: By way of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (3rd one down): http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/political-economy-of-calvin-and-hobbes-3.html
Hey Mom, what's this I hear about the greenhouse effect? They say the pollutants we dump in the air are trapping the sun's heat and it's going to melt the polar ice caps! Sure, you'll be gone when it happens, but I won't! Nice planet you're leaving me!
If a newspaper cartoon could get this basically right 20+ years ago, what's your fucking excuse? (Note: Watterson cartoon was erroneous in not expecting global changes soon enough.)
FTA:
"Only 257 algebraic operations, so no hordes of rounding errors."
Say what?
"Look, times are tough for programmers already. Knowing how to do things correctly - like proper floating point math - is one of the ways to separate the true CS professional from the wannabe new graduates. Articles like this just make everyone smarter, and make finding a job that much harder."
Except that the people doing the hiring also need to know the correct answer to this kind of stuff.
I'm pretty much convinced that I lost a job once when, on a written programming test to convert strings to numbers, I wrote down the standard algorithm from my numerical analysis class, and the reviewer (not understanding what it was doing) told me it was working backwards. I did an example code walk-through with him, and yet he was still skeptical.
And, if you mention to a judge that you are personally a proponent of it, you'll be instantly bumped from a jury pool.
I was.
"Being told 'give Bob access' and 'GTFO' very much count as mutually exclusive instructions."
That doesn't make any sense.
10 Give Bob access.
20 GTFO
What's the problem?
FTA:
When you play an RPG, you want to experience a compelling and memorable storyline.
No. Common new-school mistake.
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/
Man, I'm as anti-Catholic (or any religion) as they come, but the article says almost exactly the opposite of the Slashdot headline. FTA:
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, took his turn at the microphone. "The situation in which we are living is extremely exacting, and we are asked to be absolutely truthful and credible," he said. The last couple of months have been very difficult, he went on, with so many questions being raised about things that happened long ago. But he said, "This is the time for truth, transparency and credibility. Secrecy and discretion are not values that are in fashion at the moment. We must be in a condition of having nothing to hide." The crowd applauded.
Afterwards, the Pope comes out and says some cryptic nonsense about how the Internet has both good and bad sides to it. The complaint by the author of the article is that the Pope failed to clarify the "transparency" theme in either direction:
So where does this Vatican stand on being more transparent about how it has handled priest abuse cases in decades past? Will it respond to the call for greater openness that we have heard from so many Catholics here, in our two brief days so far? It was hard to glimpse the truth from our Vatican encounter Saturday. We can only hope to be able to shed greater light on the question by week's end.
Less melanin?
"In this case, the dishonest part was 'we don't have the videos.'"
They did not actually ever say that, and everyone seems to be overlooking the extraordinary cleverness of that fact. FTA:
The department responded: "These recordings are both past our retention period and can no longer be obtained. Please note that the majority of 911 calls and videos are retained for a period of ninety (90) days."
"They just flat out said they didn't have it," said Rachner.
In this case, Rachner is incorrect. Let's consider each of the official statement's claims one-by-one:
(1) "The recordings are both past our retention period" -- True, official "retention period" is 90 days.
(2) "Can no longer be obtained." -- True, in the sense that our policy is to not give them to you.
(3) "The majority of 911 calls and videos are retained for a period of ninety (90) days" -- True, without saying whether this case falls into the majority or not.
Note what they scrupulously avoided saying: "we don't have this video" or "we can't find this video" or "this particular video was erased". Never said any of that stuff, although they dissembled in a Bush-like way to make reasonable people infer that. Have to call that some sinisterly clever lawyering.