Whenever I hear about something good I check it out, but it just seems like shit to me. Game of thrones? Lord of the rings with tits.
I've had absolutely no desire whatsoever to watch Game of Thrones. Then you had to come here and describe it as the single most awesome concept ever. Can you really think of anything better than Lord of the Rings with tits??
I collected unemployment for two years (separated by a decade), because I decided it was better to be paid $600 a week downloading & watching college lectures/books/movies, rather than $1000 a week doing actual work that I found boring.
Thank you bleeding-heart communo-socialists; you paid me to encourage sloth. Fools.:-)
That's valid, and all. The system allows you to do that.
Here's my question to you, though. Do you consider yourself ethical?
I am 100% in favor of unemployment benefits. I think people can get in situations where they truly can't find another job, and don't have any money saved up. I believe as a society we should help those people. That's the purpose I see for the program, though. So when I was temporarily unemployed, I found myself in a situation where I could legitimately claim unemployment checks. However, I also had money saved for a rainy day, so I didn't claim it, and instead lived on my own money until I could find another job (turned out to be two weeks before I could find an unskilled job that paid me less than unemployment would have been, and I found a job in my actual field in another month). I did this because I knew I was lucky enough to survive on my own, and I didn't want to take help if I didn't truly need it.
It doesn't make me angry that you did what you did. However, here you are implying 'bleeding-heart communo-socialists' are encouraging sloth. So I need to ask you: if you think giving you that money was wrong, why did you take it? Who is truly at fault here? The people who want to help those who are unfortunate or the ones who see the opportunity to take advantage of a program in a way that it wasn't meant to be used?
The way I see it, I want the benefits available out there for those that truly need it. I know that people who abuse the system are costing me money. I'd rather pay that cost than decide to not help the hard-working unfortunate ones. It's a bit like my decision to pay for an alarm system at my house. It costs me money every month because unethical people exist that are willing to break into my home and steal my property. So I pay the costs and blame the decision of those unethical people, I don't decide, "hey, if I didn't own anything, nobody would be able to steal it!". If unemployment benefits are being wasted, I blame the people who waste it, I don't say, "if we didn't have those benefits, nobody would be able to steal them!"
Would you care to repeat that anything making closed-source anything harder... is fantastic, when all video cards won't work with anything but a VESA text driver?
First, is that hypothetical scenario based on reality at all? Because the way I see it, AMD and Intel open-source drivers work great.
Second, even assuming your comment was true, the answer would be yes. If you're going to use an open source operating system, then you believe in open source. What's stopping you from using Windows or Mac OS X if all you care about is that things work?
Every time the kernel changes, the video driver must be updated.
I see that as a problem with the kernel developers, not the video driver developers.
I've read elsewhere that developers from Nvidia are frustrated over the volatility of the Linux kernel interface to the graphics subsystem. It changes frequently and often with little advanced notification. You don't hear that complaint about Windows, MacOS or FreeBSD.
Perhaps your ire is aimed at the wrong group.
As far as I'm concerned, that's a feature not a bug. Anything that makes closed-source anything harder to work on linux than an open-source alternative is fantastic.
I have an iPad 3. Nice device, solid, great for couch surfing youtube and browsing some websites (non-flash). But everything ends up back at the PC. Want to copy some pics from the camera? Need a usb port. Need to load some stuff onto a USB key? need as usb port. Flash website? Need to go back to the laptop. Want to type a lengthy email? Need to use the 3rd party bluetooth keyboard. And why do all my paid applications need to update every day, and spam me with in-program advertisements? Why can't i load my own applications onto the.... oh yeah, itunes/istore or nothing.
I agree completely. And in addition to saying 'me too', I'm posting to undo a mistaken moderation. There should be a confirm button or something.
>>>confidence interval of 0.05 meant you were 95% sure. On the exam, the question asked about a confidence interval of 0.5, which I answered as 50% sure. The professor marked it wrong, and said that since we'd only covered 0.05 in class, it was a typo >>> So she expected you to answer 0.5 == 95% sure, even though it was clearly wrong?!?!? What a dumb bitch. Was this really a professor or a TA?
A friend of mine, while working to get her Ph.D., taught a 101 course. The first time teaching it, she found that the students had significant problems with basic math. So, on her second semester teaching it, she decided to give them a basic math quiz on the first day of class (didn't count towards their grade) to determine the extent of their problems. Turns out they had problems finding a points on a graph, adding fractions, solving for x given a single linear equation...one of the students couldn't figure out the answer to -3 + 2, although it was later determined that she was paradoxically able to answer it if it was phrased as 2 - 3.
These were college students.
The professor or TA in the story by the GP was clearly in the wrong. However, I think I know how she became that misguided. After encountering so many students of the caliber I described above, she reasoned that this guy, who answered 50% for a confidence interval of 0.5, would have answered 50% for 0.05 and got the answer fundamentally wrong, but was trying to weasel a better grade for himself once he found out the typo was in his favor. Teach enough students of the caliber I described above, and you get jaded and assume everyone is an idiot. That's not an excuse, and she shouldn't have even argued the point, but I bet it's the reason why she did.
Its almost like Microsoft has given up on traditional desktop applications and want to encourage more "web-like" app designs exclusively for the Metro overlay.
Almost, but out of date. "Web-like" was Windows 98, when some idiot decided to make the file browser be the web browser. In 2012, it's "tablet-like," where some idiot decided that a UI designed to work well with a touch-screen tablet should be the same design for a computer that comes equipped with a keyboard and mouse.
That's the best part. A large conglomerate is about to start a nasty internal lawyer fight. Can't wait to see how that is going to pan out.
I broke down and read the article. The people requesting the subpoenas Comcast is fighting are all in the porn industry. So, not RIAA/MPAA. Some high-level executive is probably on the subpoena list:)
Finally. This is the only way that the RIAA/MPAA will change its ways: when other massive corporations start to fight back in court. Triple bonus to Comcast for calling this what it is: a shakedown organized through the legal system. I normally hate Comcast with a passion, but I will cheer them on in this fight. Bring out the popcorn!
But...this is Comcast. As in Comcast / NBC / Universal, member of the RIAA/MPAA.
I am so confused I read the summary three times. I might need to break down and read the article.
unless you're a digital hoarder who feels the need to keep more music and TV/movies than any reasonable person can watch in a lifetime hard drives are large enough. worst case i can buy an external drive to archive photos/videos of my kids.
most people don't have mental/OCD issues where they will have to see some photo from years ago right away
Translation: "I don't have a need for more space, therefore nobody else does."
I work writing software that is cross platform. My laptop has Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux installed. In addition, I have multiple VMs of those operating systems, for the cases where what I'm doing doesn't require testing outside the VM. I will take the largest hard drives I can reasonably afford, please.
How many user replaceable parts has your TV got? What's that you say? A little louder. None! So does that make you a fool too?
The fool is the person that didn't realise that computers will go the same way as every other technology. More advanced, more integrated, more miniaturised, less user serviceable.
How many parts of my TV are things which I would conceivably want to upgrade? Zero. How many parts on my TV are things that have significant wear within the lifetime of the TV? 1. And yes, it is user-replaceable (the DLP backlight). It tells you right in the manual how to replace it, and it's a fairly easy procedure with an easily accessible compartment on the back of the TV. Everything else on the TV is expected to last pretty much indefinitely, so if it breaks, it's a repair job, not expected to be user-serviceable.
How many parts on a laptop are things which I would want to upgrade? RAM, hard drive, battery (for a future model that is more energy dense, maybe). I expect these things to be user replaceable. How many parts on the laptop are expected to have wear out with time? The battery. To even consider buying a device with a battery that is not user replaceable is madness. Now, I'm not going to stop you from doing so, because it's your money, but you can't convince me to spend my money on such a product.
Second, if I remember right the leader of the OPERA experiment was forced to resign, not something that happens often in climate science.
That indicates that climate science is more trustworthy.
It annoys the hell out of me that Ereditato was apparently pressured into resigning. He did everything right. In science, when you get results that don't match your expectations, you double-check your work. When you do that and still can't find the problem, you publish it. Maybe it turns out you've found something new, more likely it turns out you've made a mistake with your methodology, and other people point it out. That's great, it means other people helped fix your experiment.
Ereditato and his team didn't come out and say, "we've found faster than light neutrinos, Einstein was wrong!" He said, "we're getting a result we can't explain that shouldn't be right, but we can't find our error. We'd like to ask others to help us figure out how to improve the experiment and point out anything that could be causing the discrepancy." If we punish that behavior, we're encouraging scientists to never publish anything that doesn't agree with currently accepted theories. We're asking them to put dogma over observation and measurements, and there lies blind religion. We should never be afraid to publish data. The data is what it is. If we've done something incorrectly that skewed our results, that's what experiment replication is for. Somebody else tries the experiment, their data doesn't agree with yours, they publish their results and methodology.
Now, if anyone is found faking their data, that's when you force them out in disgrace.
I have nothing against homeschooling in principle. I think public schools have serious deficiencies and that well-prepared parents can undoubtedly do a better job. It appears you were lucky enough to have parents that did it right.
The keywords there were "well-prepared parents." That means educated, organized, and willing and able to devote the considerable time required to the task. If you're missing any one of those attributes, and it appears the parents in question are, then the kid is better off in public school. Not because public school is perfect, not because public school is better than homeschooling, but because public school can give a better education than unprepared parents can.
I also have a lesser comment on this, which I don't consider as important, but is worth saying nevertheless:
Sheltered? Who is more sheltered, a kid that interacts with adults every day learning in the real world, or one that simply lives to avoid attack by the pack of adolescents they are forced into?
The kid interacting with adults every day is the more sheltered. Learning to stand up to bullies and solve that problem is a very important part of growing up. Maybe your sense of self-esteem and willpower elsewhere, but I got mine after years of bullying when I finally stood up for myself and learned I could take control of the situation and make it stop. I also developed a thick skin, and learned that words can't hurt me. When you don't learn that (and it's absolutely possible to not learn that even while in school, if your parents don't support you), then you run the risk of being one of these kids who commit suicide when they are bullied in facebook.
I am not trying to troll here and somewhat see you're point, but what would you suggest is the correct way to protest against money grabbing bankers and a government that bails them out?
Like I said, I think they had all the right in the world to be there peacefully protesting for the whole day just like they were, then go home at night, and come back the next morning. It's the setting up tents and just living there that's a problem.
And people peacefully protesting without breaking laws are often harassed by the police. Under those situations, I'll side with the protesters every time. The occupy movement really did give the police a legitimate reason to remove them, however. There really are real health and safety issues.
That power includes arresting protesters for simply protesting. This is what we saw happen last fall from NY to Oakland...Think of it this way, if Mubarak had tried to forcibly clear Tahrir square with the excuse of "health and safety"...
Look, I'm all for the right to protest, and I'm all for civil disobedience that might get you arrested to bring attention to an injustice. The Occupy protests were still stupid, and the police was in their right to remove them.
Here's how you make the determination. If it's illegal to do something (like putting up tents and sleeping in an area where this is generally not allowed), it doesn't suddenly become legal because it's part of a protest. That doesn't mean you don't do it, like I said, I'm in favor of civil disobedience as a form of protest. What you are protesting must be related to the laws your are disrespecting however.
Case in point, when Rosa Parks refused to get up to allow the white passengers to sit, she broke a law. That was, however, the law she was protesting against. The law itself was unjust. The only way that the civil disobedience of the Occupy protesters would have been valid would be if they were protesting laws against trespassing or the health codes that prevented them from being there. If they are in favor of those laws being enforced for people who are not protesting, then it is not legitimate for them to disobey them in a protest.
Just about every location gave them the right to protest, just not sleep there. They could go home and come back the next day, just not set up tents. They just felt it was more dramatic to put up tents and not move. Well, it's also more dramatic to set buildings on fire, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to do it to make their point. Unless they think arson laws are unjust, that is.
Fahrenheit 451 wasn't about censorship. I know 100 people who know nothing else about the book except cliff notes or what they got off wikipedia are about to make that comment. So I'll save you the trouble. It was about TV and the mental wasteland that he thought it represented.
Actually, Fahrenheit 451 was most certainly about censorship. Ray Bradbury may not have thought so, but that honestly doesn't matter. The article you're linking refers to a story where UCLA students were telling Bradbury he was wrong, and that the story was about censorship. This apparently angered him, but the students were right. They were right because the author's intentions aren't a valid or even interesting concern about a work of literature. What matters is what the readers get out of it. If they get something meaningful, but completely different than what the author intended, that's what the story was about to them.
In the case of Fahrenheit 451, just about everyone gets the censorship message. It's really not relevant whether Bradbury intended to send that message or not.
The [Big Bang] theory was offered by a Roman Catholic priest. Some of the leading scientists of the day dismissed this theory merely because it was developed by a priest, they dismissed it as "smelling of creationism".
Not because it came from a priest, but because the church was specifically trying to frame it as proof of creation. Lamaitre had to write the pope telling him the science implied no such thing and asking him to please stop saying it did.
Basically, even while being a priest, Lamaitre was wise enough to keep religion out of his science.
I hope not. I'm hoping Linux users are more anti-DRM than that, and that Steam crashes and burns.
So, what, indie developers can go back to being forced to add far, far worse DRM onto their games and sign deals with Ubisoft/EA/Activision to get their games published at all, and have zero games on Linux at all? Because that is the alternative to Steam, you know. You may not have thought this through.
I'd rather have no software than DRMed software, yes. The vast amounts of DRM-free software available, including games (such as the ones on the Humble Bundle), indicate that I don't have to worry about that, though.
A lot of combat vehicle engineering trades safety away for effectiveness. Combat aircraft were the first to depend on fly-by-wire automation to overcome relaxed dynamic stability; for instance, without computer control, an F-16 is always on the verge of flying itself out of control and tumbling into pieces, but because the airframe isn't inherently keeping itself stable, it also doesn't resist maneuvers and consequently had the highest G onset rate of any warplane in history (i.e., most responsive and maneuverable).
I always thought the "wingtip" placement of the engines of the B5 Starfury precisely analogous: a risky engineering decision made in order to enhance maneuverability and combat responsiveness.
I wouldn't even call it that risky. You're making your ship a bigger target, but it's not uniformly bigger. The wings are thin as compared to the body, and there's a lot of empty space if you try aiming for them, especially when you take the extra maneuverability into account. If they do manage to take out an engine, it's unlikely to take out multiple engines on the same shot, and you're still functional with less than 4 engines, if less maneuvable. Furthermore, if the enemy is targeting your engines, they presumably want to disable you (since targeting the pilot cabin is easier and will also result in getting you out of the fight). With the engines far from the pilot cabin, that makes it more likely the pilot will survive such an attack.
Part of the problem is that it is actually illegal in some areas for schools to allow access to Wikipedia.
That is indeed a problem. A problem we need to fix with our puritanical society.
I'm sure kids stumble across stuff there.
From what I've been able to tell, it's not exactly about "stumbling" as it is, "this is relevant to the topic of the page." If you're searching for topics on anatomy, for example, pictures are appropriate. The fact that a picture of say, an eye, is appropriate and pictures of genitals are not is a problem with our culture, not wikipedia. It's all just normal human anatomy.
Same goes for other topics that are not considered appropriate. If you're old enough to know to search for it, you're old enough to find out about it. If your parents didn't prepare you for it by the time that you're curious about it, they've fucked up. Talk to your kids early and often, or they're going to find the information before you've had a chance to give them your moral views on the topic at hand.
Except for Bundle in a Box, every one of those bundles seem to involve steam, and I won't support DRM (even so called "permissive DRM").
Bundle in a Box did say DRM-free, but I also noticed a few of the games in the bundle had the 'steam' icon. They also had the 'download' icon, so I assume that's optional, which would make it acceptable. Still, they're not doing the cross-platform emphasis that the Humble Bundle has, so I would still give preference to Humble.
Going from zero girlfriends to one imaginary girlfriend could, I suppose, be counted as an improvement. Going from one real girlfriend to one imaginary girlfriend... not so much, although, mathematically speaking, all girlfriends are partially imaginary.
I assume that by "partially imaginary" you mean they are all complex.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever I hear about something good I check it out, but it just seems like shit to me. Game of thrones? Lord of the rings with tits.
I've had absolutely no desire whatsoever to watch Game of Thrones. Then you had to come here and describe it as the single most awesome concept ever. Can you really think of anything better than Lord of the Rings with tits??
Now I have to check it out.
You realize lots of organizations already do this right?
Scheduling arrivals of service people and deliveries pretty much requires tracking them.
No, it requires tracking the position of company cars. Which is acceptable.
I collected unemployment for two years (separated by a decade), because I decided it was better to be paid $600 a week downloading & watching college lectures/books/movies, rather than $1000 a week doing actual work that I found boring.
Thank you bleeding-heart communo-socialists; you paid me to encourage sloth. Fools. :-)
That's valid, and all. The system allows you to do that.
Here's my question to you, though. Do you consider yourself ethical?
I am 100% in favor of unemployment benefits. I think people can get in situations where they truly can't find another job, and don't have any money saved up. I believe as a society we should help those people. That's the purpose I see for the program, though. So when I was temporarily unemployed, I found myself in a situation where I could legitimately claim unemployment checks. However, I also had money saved for a rainy day, so I didn't claim it, and instead lived on my own money until I could find another job (turned out to be two weeks before I could find an unskilled job that paid me less than unemployment would have been, and I found a job in my actual field in another month). I did this because I knew I was lucky enough to survive on my own, and I didn't want to take help if I didn't truly need it.
It doesn't make me angry that you did what you did. However, here you are implying 'bleeding-heart communo-socialists' are encouraging sloth. So I need to ask you: if you think giving you that money was wrong, why did you take it? Who is truly at fault here? The people who want to help those who are unfortunate or the ones who see the opportunity to take advantage of a program in a way that it wasn't meant to be used?
The way I see it, I want the benefits available out there for those that truly need it. I know that people who abuse the system are costing me money. I'd rather pay that cost than decide to not help the hard-working unfortunate ones. It's a bit like my decision to pay for an alarm system at my house. It costs me money every month because unethical people exist that are willing to break into my home and steal my property. So I pay the costs and blame the decision of those unethical people, I don't decide, "hey, if I didn't own anything, nobody would be able to steal it!". If unemployment benefits are being wasted, I blame the people who waste it, I don't say, "if we didn't have those benefits, nobody would be able to steal them!"
Then you can bathe in your self-righteousness with Nouveau on Linux while I enjoy Nvidia's latest binary blob over on FreeBSD.
No, thanks. I bathe in my self-righteousness by buying AMD and running the open source drivers created as a result of them releasing the specs.
Would you care to repeat that anything making closed-source anything harder ... is fantastic, when all video cards won't work with anything but a VESA text driver?
First, is that hypothetical scenario based on reality at all? Because the way I see it, AMD and Intel open-source drivers work great.
Second, even assuming your comment was true, the answer would be yes. If you're going to use an open source operating system, then you believe in open source. What's stopping you from using Windows or Mac OS X if all you care about is that things work?
Every time the kernel changes, the video driver must be updated.
I see that as a problem with the kernel developers, not the video driver developers.
I've read elsewhere that developers from Nvidia are frustrated over the volatility of the Linux kernel interface to the graphics subsystem. It changes frequently and often with little advanced notification. You don't hear that complaint about Windows, MacOS or FreeBSD.
Perhaps your ire is aimed at the wrong group.
As far as I'm concerned, that's a feature not a bug. Anything that makes closed-source anything harder to work on linux than an open-source alternative is fantastic.
I have an iPad 3. Nice device, solid, great for couch surfing youtube and browsing some websites (non-flash). But everything ends up back at the PC. Want to copy some pics from the camera? Need a usb port. Need to load some stuff onto a USB key? need as usb port. Flash website? Need to go back to the laptop. Want to type a lengthy email? Need to use the 3rd party bluetooth keyboard. And why do all my paid applications need to update every day, and spam me with in-program advertisements? Why can't i load my own applications onto the .... oh yeah, itunes/istore or nothing.
I agree completely. And in addition to saying 'me too', I'm posting to undo a mistaken moderation. There should be a confirm button or something.
>>>confidence interval of 0.05 meant you were 95% sure. On the exam, the question asked about a confidence interval of 0.5, which I answered as 50% sure. The professor marked it wrong, and said that since we'd only covered 0.05 in class, it was a typo
>>>
So she expected you to answer 0.5 == 95% sure, even though it was clearly wrong?!?!?
What a dumb bitch.
Was this really a professor or a TA?
A friend of mine, while working to get her Ph.D., taught a 101 course. The first time teaching it, she found that the students had significant problems with basic math. So, on her second semester teaching it, she decided to give them a basic math quiz on the first day of class (didn't count towards their grade) to determine the extent of their problems. Turns out they had problems finding a points on a graph, adding fractions, solving for x given a single linear equation...one of the students couldn't figure out the answer to -3 + 2, although it was later determined that she was paradoxically able to answer it if it was phrased as 2 - 3.
These were college students.
The professor or TA in the story by the GP was clearly in the wrong. However, I think I know how she became that misguided. After encountering so many students of the caliber I described above, she reasoned that this guy, who answered 50% for a confidence interval of 0.5, would have answered 50% for 0.05 and got the answer fundamentally wrong, but was trying to weasel a better grade for himself once he found out the typo was in his favor. Teach enough students of the caliber I described above, and you get jaded and assume everyone is an idiot. That's not an excuse, and she shouldn't have even argued the point, but I bet it's the reason why she did.
Its almost like Microsoft has given up on traditional desktop applications and want to encourage more "web-like" app designs exclusively for the Metro overlay.
Almost, but out of date. "Web-like" was Windows 98, when some idiot decided to make the file browser be the web browser. In 2012, it's "tablet-like," where some idiot decided that a UI designed to work well with a touch-screen tablet should be the same design for a computer that comes equipped with a keyboard and mouse.
That's the best part. A large conglomerate is about to start a nasty internal lawyer fight. Can't wait to see how that is going to pan out.
I broke down and read the article. The people requesting the subpoenas Comcast is fighting are all in the porn industry. So, not RIAA/MPAA. Some high-level executive is probably on the subpoena list :)
Either way, setting the precedent is good.
Finally. This is the only way that the RIAA/MPAA will change its ways: when other massive corporations start to fight back in court. Triple bonus to Comcast for calling this what it is: a shakedown organized through the legal system. I normally hate Comcast with a passion, but I will cheer them on in this fight. Bring out the popcorn!
But...this is Comcast. As in Comcast / NBC / Universal, member of the RIAA/MPAA.
I am so confused I read the summary three times. I might need to break down and read the article.
unless you're a digital hoarder who feels the need to keep more music and TV/movies than any reasonable person can watch in a lifetime hard drives are large enough. worst case i can buy an external drive to archive photos/videos of my kids.
most people don't have mental/OCD issues where they will have to see some photo from years ago right away
Translation: "I don't have a need for more space, therefore nobody else does."
I work writing software that is cross platform. My laptop has Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux installed. In addition, I have multiple VMs of those operating systems, for the cases where what I'm doing doesn't require testing outside the VM. I will take the largest hard drives I can reasonably afford, please.
How many user replaceable parts has your TV got?
What's that you say? A little louder. None!
So does that make you a fool too?
The fool is the person that didn't realise that computers will go the same way as every other technology. More advanced, more integrated, more miniaturised, less user serviceable.
How many parts of my TV are things which I would conceivably want to upgrade? Zero. How many parts on my TV are things that have significant wear within the lifetime of the TV? 1. And yes, it is user-replaceable (the DLP backlight). It tells you right in the manual how to replace it, and it's a fairly easy procedure with an easily accessible compartment on the back of the TV. Everything else on the TV is expected to last pretty much indefinitely, so if it breaks, it's a repair job, not expected to be user-serviceable.
How many parts on a laptop are things which I would want to upgrade? RAM, hard drive, battery (for a future model that is more energy dense, maybe). I expect these things to be user replaceable. How many parts on the laptop are expected to have wear out with time? The battery. To even consider buying a device with a battery that is not user replaceable is madness. Now, I'm not going to stop you from doing so, because it's your money, but you can't convince me to spend my money on such a product.
Second, if I remember right the leader of the OPERA experiment was forced to resign, not something that happens often in climate science.
That indicates that climate science is more trustworthy.
It annoys the hell out of me that Ereditato was apparently pressured into resigning. He did everything right. In science, when you get results that don't match your expectations, you double-check your work. When you do that and still can't find the problem, you publish it. Maybe it turns out you've found something new, more likely it turns out you've made a mistake with your methodology, and other people point it out. That's great, it means other people helped fix your experiment.
Ereditato and his team didn't come out and say, "we've found faster than light neutrinos, Einstein was wrong!" He said, "we're getting a result we can't explain that shouldn't be right, but we can't find our error. We'd like to ask others to help us figure out how to improve the experiment and point out anything that could be causing the discrepancy." If we punish that behavior, we're encouraging scientists to never publish anything that doesn't agree with currently accepted theories. We're asking them to put dogma over observation and measurements, and there lies blind religion. We should never be afraid to publish data. The data is what it is. If we've done something incorrectly that skewed our results, that's what experiment replication is for. Somebody else tries the experiment, their data doesn't agree with yours, they publish their results and methodology.
Now, if anyone is found faking their data, that's when you force them out in disgrace.
I have nothing against homeschooling in principle. I think public schools have serious deficiencies and that well-prepared parents can undoubtedly do a better job. It appears you were lucky enough to have parents that did it right.
The keywords there were "well-prepared parents." That means educated, organized, and willing and able to devote the considerable time required to the task. If you're missing any one of those attributes, and it appears the parents in question are, then the kid is better off in public school. Not because public school is perfect, not because public school is better than homeschooling, but because public school can give a better education than unprepared parents can.
I also have a lesser comment on this, which I don't consider as important, but is worth saying nevertheless:
Sheltered? Who is more sheltered, a kid that interacts with adults every day learning in the real world, or one that simply lives to avoid attack by the pack of adolescents they are forced into?
The kid interacting with adults every day is the more sheltered. Learning to stand up to bullies and solve that problem is a very important part of growing up. Maybe your sense of self-esteem and willpower elsewhere, but I got mine after years of bullying when I finally stood up for myself and learned I could take control of the situation and make it stop. I also developed a thick skin, and learned that words can't hurt me. When you don't learn that (and it's absolutely possible to not learn that even while in school, if your parents don't support you), then you run the risk of being one of these kids who commit suicide when they are bullied in facebook.
I am not trying to troll here and somewhat see you're point, but what would you suggest is the correct way to protest against money grabbing bankers and a government that bails them out?
Like I said, I think they had all the right in the world to be there peacefully protesting for the whole day just like they were, then go home at night, and come back the next morning. It's the setting up tents and just living there that's a problem.
And people peacefully protesting without breaking laws are often harassed by the police. Under those situations, I'll side with the protesters every time. The occupy movement really did give the police a legitimate reason to remove them, however. There really are real health and safety issues.
That power includes arresting protesters for simply protesting. This is what we saw happen last fall from NY to Oakland...Think of it this way, if Mubarak had tried to forcibly clear Tahrir square with the excuse of "health and safety"...
Look, I'm all for the right to protest, and I'm all for civil disobedience that might get you arrested to bring attention to an injustice. The Occupy protests were still stupid, and the police was in their right to remove them.
Here's how you make the determination. If it's illegal to do something (like putting up tents and sleeping in an area where this is generally not allowed), it doesn't suddenly become legal because it's part of a protest. That doesn't mean you don't do it, like I said, I'm in favor of civil disobedience as a form of protest. What you are protesting must be related to the laws your are disrespecting however.
Case in point, when Rosa Parks refused to get up to allow the white passengers to sit, she broke a law. That was, however, the law she was protesting against. The law itself was unjust. The only way that the civil disobedience of the Occupy protesters would have been valid would be if they were protesting laws against trespassing or the health codes that prevented them from being there. If they are in favor of those laws being enforced for people who are not protesting, then it is not legitimate for them to disobey them in a protest.
Just about every location gave them the right to protest, just not sleep there. They could go home and come back the next day, just not set up tents. They just felt it was more dramatic to put up tents and not move. Well, it's also more dramatic to set buildings on fire, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to do it to make their point. Unless they think arson laws are unjust, that is.
Fahrenheit 451 wasn't about censorship. I know 100 people who know nothing else about the book except cliff notes or what they got off wikipedia are about to make that comment. So I'll save you the trouble. It was about TV and the mental wasteland that he thought it represented.
Actually, Fahrenheit 451 was most certainly about censorship. Ray Bradbury may not have thought so, but that honestly doesn't matter. The article you're linking refers to a story where UCLA students were telling Bradbury he was wrong, and that the story was about censorship. This apparently angered him, but the students were right. They were right because the author's intentions aren't a valid or even interesting concern about a work of literature. What matters is what the readers get out of it. If they get something meaningful, but completely different than what the author intended, that's what the story was about to them.
In the case of Fahrenheit 451, just about everyone gets the censorship message. It's really not relevant whether Bradbury intended to send that message or not.
The [Big Bang] theory was offered by a Roman Catholic priest. Some of the leading scientists of the day dismissed this theory merely because it was developed by a priest, they dismissed it as "smelling of creationism".
Not because it came from a priest, but because the church was specifically trying to frame it as proof of creation. Lamaitre had to write the pope telling him the science implied no such thing and asking him to please stop saying it did.
Basically, even while being a priest, Lamaitre was wise enough to keep religion out of his science.
Yes. Steam already has the market.
I hope not. I'm hoping Linux users are more anti-DRM than that, and that Steam crashes and burns.
So, what, indie developers can go back to being forced to add far, far worse DRM onto their games and sign deals with Ubisoft/EA/Activision to get their games published at all, and have zero games on Linux at all? Because that is the alternative to Steam, you know. You may not have thought this through.
I'd rather have no software than DRMed software, yes. The vast amounts of DRM-free software available, including games (such as the ones on the Humble Bundle), indicate that I don't have to worry about that, though.
Yes. Steam already has the market.
I hope not. I'm hoping Linux users are more anti-DRM than that, and that Steam crashes and burns.
A lot of combat vehicle engineering trades safety away for effectiveness. Combat aircraft were the first to depend on fly-by-wire automation to overcome relaxed dynamic stability; for instance, without computer control, an F-16 is always on the verge of flying itself out of control and tumbling into pieces, but because the airframe isn't inherently keeping itself stable, it also doesn't resist maneuvers and consequently had the highest G onset rate of any warplane in history (i.e., most responsive and maneuverable).
I always thought the "wingtip" placement of the engines of the B5 Starfury precisely analogous: a risky engineering decision made in order to enhance maneuverability and combat responsiveness.
I wouldn't even call it that risky. You're making your ship a bigger target, but it's not uniformly bigger. The wings are thin as compared to the body, and there's a lot of empty space if you try aiming for them, especially when you take the extra maneuverability into account. If they do manage to take out an engine, it's unlikely to take out multiple engines on the same shot, and you're still functional with less than 4 engines, if less maneuvable. Furthermore, if the enemy is targeting your engines, they presumably want to disable you (since targeting the pilot cabin is easier and will also result in getting you out of the fight). With the engines far from the pilot cabin, that makes it more likely the pilot will survive such an attack.
Part of the problem is that it is actually illegal in some areas for schools to allow access to Wikipedia.
That is indeed a problem. A problem we need to fix with our puritanical society.
I'm sure kids stumble across stuff there.
From what I've been able to tell, it's not exactly about "stumbling" as it is, "this is relevant to the topic of the page." If you're searching for topics on anatomy, for example, pictures are appropriate. The fact that a picture of say, an eye, is appropriate and pictures of genitals are not is a problem with our culture, not wikipedia. It's all just normal human anatomy.
Same goes for other topics that are not considered appropriate. If you're old enough to know to search for it, you're old enough to find out about it. If your parents didn't prepare you for it by the time that you're curious about it, they've fucked up. Talk to your kids early and often, or they're going to find the information before you've had a chance to give them your moral views on the topic at hand.
If you're into indie game bundles. There are currently several other active bundles:
Groupees Build a Bundle
Indie Gala
Indie Royale Graduation Bundle
Bundle in a Box
Except for Bundle in a Box, every one of those bundles seem to involve steam, and I won't support DRM (even so called "permissive DRM").
Bundle in a Box did say DRM-free, but I also noticed a few of the games in the bundle had the 'steam' icon. They also had the 'download' icon, so I assume that's optional, which would make it acceptable. Still, they're not doing the cross-platform emphasis that the Humble Bundle has, so I would still give preference to Humble.
Going from zero girlfriends to one imaginary girlfriend could, I suppose, be counted as an improvement. Going from one real girlfriend to one imaginary girlfriend... not so much, although, mathematically speaking, all girlfriends are partially imaginary.
I assume that by "partially imaginary" you mean they are all complex.
You would then be right.