I'll second this, that guy (gal, whatever) isn't a troll, he's an author. Regular readers can clearly see the progression of the artists writting style and technique, and the story is darn interesting.
Or at least it was, I haven't checked it out in a few months.
There already is one being sold, its a plug in unit. Might be where this came from... i.e. reverse engineering.
Alright, question here folks;
Do these things really work??? I mean you can buy little handheld ultrasonic bug repellers down at the supermarket for $13 or $14 here in the States, I am wondering if the darn things work at all before I spend some money on them.
I realize this is not conjugating the verb "to shit" but declining the noun - I only get 10 not 25.
Of course different types of words conjugate differently so. . ..
Ick.
I like the more or less universal modifiers that English has.
He was there.
He is There.
He will be there.
or for negative
He was not there.
He is not there.
He will not be there.
Questions.
Of course verbs conjugate completely differently, heh. Rather irregular at times of course, but then again, a lot of languages have irregular conjugations (Latin included), so that is nothing new.
And naturally enough everything can be rewritten in many different ways.:-D
He was where? ---> Where was He?
He is where? ---> Where is He?
He will be where? ---> Where will he be?
and for getting more complicated. ...
Where will he be? ----> Where tis it that he shall lie this night? ---- Where abouts upon this earth shall he be found resting his head? ---- Tis honest to say that both his location and activities beneath tonight's sky are truly a mystery.
If teacher is required to follow a particular curriculum,
Big if, in seattle public schools they are not. There are certian broad 'topics' which they have to cover, but they are allowed to choose how to teach them. There are just some select 'methodologies' that are forbidden to be used.
then every book not on it is not allowed, since the teacher can't choose to include it.
A few seconds later, and it turns out that little voice was correct. "Banned" in this case is being incorrectly used to mean "not included in the curriculum." Big deal. Lots of books weren't included in the curriculum. Those crazy liberals! They ban books but forget to like, try to stop anyone from reading them.
Try "not ALLOWED in curriculum" and you'll be closer to the mark.
That is what pisses me off, teachers can (and do) teach directly from the Veda, but they can't approach anything that even HINTS of Christianity.
Wrong. US (America isn't a country, and my.sig is a quote)
maybe not, but the rest of 'america' is either employed as slave labour making goods for us or is run by some puppet government (mostly) under our control, so does it really matter that much to make the distinction?:-D
[/end black mooded sarcasm]
schools do kick people out. Academic Probation. Fall below academic probation for 2 semesters/terms and see how much they care about funding. There are ways around it, such as having rich relatives donating stadiums and what not, but you still get your ass kicked out quick.
I was speaking more of public schools, 1-12, they put up with damn nearly ANYTHING. They are getting worse every year, I got expelled for violent actions, now days kids are STABBING each other and getting off a-ok. yeesh. One local high school has the mobile police precinct van on permanent assignment outside of it during all school hours. No it is not an 'alternative' school either.
(speaking of 'alternative' schools, the best one in Seattle, McGraw run by Seattle Children's Home, had a nearly 90% success rate for rehabilitating students. The school district decided they where not needed and cut off their funding.... )
Prep schools, and uni's all do it.
Anybody who gets their ass into a prep school or a university and f*cks up deserves something bad. . . . ick. f*cking rich shits. . ..
You make very good points about discrimination though. Public schools are in no way tailored for the minority group.
They want cookie cutter students who all conform nicely. Those who stray from the trail of normality seldom do good, even when those kids may very well be geniuses.
True dat true dat, but I have found that in certian schools the teachers are more then willing to make accommodations, mostly because a lot of them got in there especially for those students who want to learn. I found that once I showed an earnest interest in learning what the teacher was teaching, that the teacher was more then willing to stop in the middle of class and go into an hour long lecture with me often times about some esoteric marginally related topic to what was the subject of study.:-D
Most teacher's love teaching, that is why they are teaching, you just have to give them a chance. Too many of even the brightest students are not willing to hang around after class and ask the teacher questions and assume that if what they want to know is not covered in class when they want to know it, that the teacher is 'crap'.
Of course I have been really lucky in that I have had a lot of really good teachers.
How good?
My middle school mathematics teacher went into vectors, imaginary numbers, 3 dimensional geometry and mathematics, and other fun topics. Suffice to say the next four years after that where pretty much review, heh.
(they have a much better behaved and more intelligent students),
*shmack*
I went to high school with a number of students whose IQ was well above 160, and I have seen many students in private school who where dumber then bricks.
(I also saw MAAANNNY students drop out of private school and go to public school instead because "all of their friends where there" which pissed the living shit out of me, that they would drop out of a private school that damn nearly costs more then my family earned in a year, just to be with some floozies who then would likely never see again after the next few years. . . . grrrr)
I get the impression that English has more baggage.
twenty-fucking-five different ways to conjugate shit.
English does NOT have that. We have these nice universal modifier words and a few suffixes and that is it.
English also degrades REALLY well, you can SERIOUSLY screw up a sentence and still get a point across.
Even with a perfectly formed Latin sentence there is still a chance that something will have to be figured out from context and that there is no other way to make the sentence so as to avoid that.
English also can do some nifty things as far as form goes, because word order has more meaning in English then it does in Latin, the possibility is opened up to use the rearrangement of word order of an English sentence to give greater flexibility in what is being said.
Not to mention that because English has had so many other languages influence it and stems from such a large variety of parent languages, there are TONS of vocabulary words with damn nearly every single possible semantic meaning and context that you could ever dream of.
About the ONLY* thing missing from the English language are degree modifiers for words, instead we are stuck using "very very very very very pretty" or some other such intellectual/emotionally unsatisfying arrangement.
*well that and a gender neutral singular pronoun that does not have insulting overtones. . . .;)
I can see that, in fact it was my first impression of the book as well. I have found that I have enjoyed the book more now that I am older and I have read some of his other books. I see "That Hideous Strength" as an illustration of Lewis' social and political thinking, especially "The Abolition of man" (see my other post above).
well I was 13 or 14 at the time so I likely wasn't too horribly keen to that, but I did have an inkling that something a bit greater then average fare was being discussed.:)
BUT, I feel that especially in elective classes there should be no reason religion can't be taught thoroughly. Understanding what a religion means is one thing, saying "nation under god" (which has very few alternate meanings) is another.
I think it's a bane to our youth to force schools to be devoid of all religious content, people should be exposed to all types of religions. I happened to be raised Christian, so I knew about all the Christian holidays and traditions/meanings, but had I not I would have known christians are some "other people" by the time I graduated HS.
Silly human, religious content is abound in schools, just not CHRISTRIAN religious content. The administration is overcompensating by going about and removing the current 'big target' religious influence (Christianity) while maintaining a very wide diversity of other courses.
Heck in public school I read creation myths from just about every culture on the earth, literature inspired by a wide variety of beliefs, and had classroom debates on a large range of different religious topics (many of which where Christian based).
But actually studying the Christian mythos? Nah, not allowed.
Study of the Christian mythos is considered forcing religion upon students, study of other culture's and religion's mythos is considered diversifying the student's education. . . .
Just the standard fare of middle class idiots being blind to the obvious.:(
"That Hideous Strength" more on a second reading. The whole book is a commentary lampooning & warning against the kind of thinking that goes into such a decision.
Oh I thoroughly enjoyed that first section of the book the first time through.:-D
Just that as a book in a series that was mostly science fiction, the first (few?) hundred pages being long rants did, while originally rather entertaining, get rather boring after awhile.
I mean did that book/ever/ have any actions go on in it? I think it did some place, but the writing got so twisted at that point, I think somebody took the paragraphs in the latter sections of the book and randomly rearranged them before sending it off to the print house.
Look at Korea if you want an idea of what 'privatized' education will get you. . ..
On the plus side, Japan has a rather nice privatized education system, but then again the whole entire cultural incentive towards honor and creating a good name for ones self, and in this instance one's educational institution, is a major part of that, factors which American society lacks in the same quantity that Japanese society has.
It has already been shown that American schools will put up with almost any level of B.S. students in order to keep funding, where as many schools in Japan will kick out disgraceful students in order to keep a good name.
Of course there is a strong downside to that as well, namely that students who could be helped by patience and perseverance will end up being screwed over and just kicked out on the street.
As in the past one of those students whom that would have happened to had such a system been in place, and almost happened to under the current system any ways, I am not a fan of such a system that would discriminate against students with behavioral problems who DO want to improve themselves.
Which reminds me, Lewis is also the one who first showed me that multiple languages used to be an EXPECTED part of a childs education, rather then the "Oh do it in High School" thing that it is now.
Luckily there appears to be some sort of a very small trend to bring back primary school foreign languages, but it is growing very slowly.:(
Inspired my Lewis I took Latin in HS;
and, err, well. Found out that it sucks. I did learn a good deal about tenses and such though, but Latin still sucks, I can definitely see how English is a ton more advanced, heh. Simplified to heck, not nearly so much excess baggage, yaah for English!:-D
Japanese or something in Primary School would kick ass though.;-D
Do they use Greek Mythology as part of school work or assignments? If so, I smell a double standard that may need exploration.
Oh hell yes, heck 3 months was spent on Muslim culture, a good year on Chinese religion and culture, 2 months on Mexican Folklore, and so forth. Very comprehensive education in every area BUT Christianity. (well, not completely true, the Spanish Inquisition and such was covered marvelously, but the entire mythos was ignore)
---People must be reminded that it IS possible to get through schooling without punching and fucking your way from one class to the next.:(---
And reading Lewis will do all that?
In one of his books C. S. Lewis writes about the coming of the "experimental schools" (I forget what the exact term he uses for them is) that are mixed gender instead of segregated. He mentions the increase in problems of violence and harassment that appear within those schools.
Before reading that particular series of passages, I did not even/know/ that western civilization had had gender segregated schools, I had just assumed that the way things are right now (rather shitty) is the way they had always been.
Of course it is to be expected that the current system does not give favorable or even unbiased overviews of past systems that where successful.:(
(yes yes yes I know that gender segregated schools had problems, mainly in the area of the female schools getting less funding, but this is the 21st century, we can legislate equal funding.:-D )
The only time that anybody ever hears of 'girls' or 'boys' schools is in reference to private schools that are considered 'old fashion' and 'outdated' and that 'young people' (they are called KIDS folks, children, NON-ADULTS) do not learn how to 'socialize' (read: screw) properly when attending them.
Feh.
Re:Wrong. Microsoft is incompetant at designing GU
on
GUIs for Everyone
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Other examples of microsoft incompetance include window-in-window MDI,
You mean like in IE, the favorites list appearing in the sideline or such?
multi-row tabs,
Which damn nearly everybody uses, unfortunatly. They ARE good for some uses, but they have to be used/very/ carefuly. Some places like in the IE Internet Options tab they are an absolute blessing compared to the messy and disorintainting system that Netscape likes to use.
and their latest shennanigan, the adaptive menus that constantly change position on a user
You mean like when I right click some wheres the right click menu appears ALL THE WAY on my screen as opposed to appearing half OFF OF my screen? I always considered that a boon myself.:-D
Or do you mean the frequency of use menus that display items depending on how often (or if at all) they are used?
Quite handy actualy, once they have adapted themselves to the user they rarely change at all, and you can set the time out limit for how long you want something to stick around before it is put into the invisible bin. I find them to be very useful, especialy since I tend to have a few hundred tools for a LARGE variety of purposes installed at any one time, and I may need any one of them at any one time, but the overall chance of me going to any particular tool at some instance is actualy veeeery small. So I do not/want/ all of my hundreds of tools listed in my day to day usage, if I want to use one of them then I will tell Windows to give me the full listing of applications and I will dredge through that listing then, but I feel no need to wade through that large list of applications on a day to day basis.
It is customizable, or can be turned off compleatly, but even in its default mode it is quite handy and useful, and I am VEEERY picky about my UI elements, the fact that I have let it stay around at all on my machine is a minor miracle.:-D
Oh, and another example of consistency.
The start menu is itself just a directory full of links and other directories. If you give one of those directories the hidden attribute, it will also disappear from the start menu. Very nice. Rather useless, but still very nice.:-D
Oh, and the Interface Hall of Shame is, err, run by somebody who does not realize that the ability to do anything from anywheres is VERY powerful.
An application uses the common Open File dialog simply to allow you to specify the file to be worked on. Why is it then, that the Open File dialog allows you to rename files, delete files, create new folders, send files to the printer, send a fax, save a file to a floppy disk, try to convert a bitmap file to an Excel spreadsheet, edit a file with a different application, create an e-mail message. and so on, all while the calling application is waiting for the name of the file you want it to work on? This is bizarre!
I use that feature ALL the time, if I made a typo when saving a file (the common save file dialog box has the exact same properties) I can just go to the save as menu again, right click on the file and rename it.
Which is a TON more convienent that having to open an explorer window, navigate to the directory, find the file, and THEN rename it, and then close the explorer window and return to my application. w00t. Especialy since the save as dialog automaticaly goes to the directory that a file was last saved to from that program. Yaah.
One particularly bad design feature of the common file dialogs is that they require the use of a pointing device to access certain functions.
Now that I will agree with, they are HORRID for screen reader users and users are only using the keyboard, ick.
Word's open and save boxs are worse though.:( Opening a file in word withoug a mouse is torture, ick!
Great series of books, I read The Magicians Nephew and The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe in second grade, excellent series. C.S. Lewis's science fiction books are also rather nice, though he has a rather nasty habit of starting a series well and then having each successive book get worse and worse (lucky if you can read through the third one. . ..) but it was years ago that I last read C. S. Lewis so my opinions may change should I read those books again.
Narnia has been banned from my local school district do to 'religious' content. Pisses me off, had it not been for Narnia there is a good chance that I would never have developed my love of reading. Liberals/can/ go to far at times.:
And what the hell is wrong with/books/ with religious content? Hell it is OK to read every body elses religiously derived fiction but just not Christian religiously derived fiction? It seems to me that if church and state are to be separate, then the state should not work their asses of concentrating on just isolating out any one particular religion! As it is the removal of Narnia was an obvious attempt at "see we are't being biased, look here, we are removing Christian inspired literature! Yeeesh. That IS called bias folks!!!
(By banned I mean it was banned from being read in the classroom as part of school work or assignments, students can still check them out from the Library of course, I mean they/are/ damn nearly classics and all.:-D )
I do think that some of C. S. Lewis's works should be mandatory reading though if just to show students that things do NOT have to be the way that they are. My word, people cannot even IMAGINE that schools used to not have as much fighting or sex in them!.... Ugh! People must be reminded that it IS possible to get through schooling without punching and fucking your way from one class to the next.:(
Almost none of my hardware is on their compatability list!
Then again it isn't on the Windows 2000 compatability list either.:-D
There little software section there should/really/ be expaned. Not to mention that if MS ever even/tried/ to setup such a system people would freak out (err, yaaah, complete knowledge of every program installed on computer? Yaaaah riiiiiight! heh. There would be a/. freakout.:D )
For comparison, I was amazed that installing a scanner on XP required me to plug the USB port and... that's all no drivers required, not even a single click necessary and it was available in Photoshop straight away.
Mind you installing a SCSI scanner (or card for that matter) is not nearly so easy. . ..
Nor is installing a TV tuner card (which can take well over 5 "new hardware device detected" cycles in WinXP), which while not difficult, is not exactly something that somebody who has never done it before would have any clue as on how to do. (right click on INF file, select install, notice that that does not work, add device manualy, select different INF file depending on which part of the TV Tuner card is being installed at the moment, and so forth)
I used to derive pleasure when using my Apple, Amiga and sgi because they had a unique personality through various touches and tools that made the interface more cognicent of my existence.
Windows completely lacks that interface. It's dumb and arrogant. It's heartless and ultimately disposable
Emphasis mine.
I have to disagree here, the Windows interface DOES have style, and it is continuously evolving. Windows 98 was a large leap ahead in terms of interface design over Windows 95, and Windows 2000 was at least an equally large leap over Windows 98.
It is the little things that count. Unfortunately most of them are not enabled by default.
Being able to open a DOS box to any directory by simply right clicking on it and selecting "Open Prompt Here."
Being able to open any file with any application, and have a list of commonly used applications used to open that particular type of file listed automatically for the user. Sweet.
Almost everybody knows of Alt-Tab to shift through running applications, but did you know of Shift-Alt-Tab to reverse shift through the list of running applications?
Backspace goes back a page in IE, but guess what shift-backspace does? Yup, it goes forward a page. Amused the heck out of me when I realized that somebody at Microsoft had taken the time to make the user interface that consistent. Shift is the universal reverse modifier key in Windows (or at least it is in those applications that follow the UI specs, which unfortunately a good deal of the parts of Office do not. *sighs* Makes MS look bad that, ick. )
Control-Z is undo. Shift-Control-Z is redo. (before shift was made The Big Reverse Key many programs had Control-Y as the redo key. Unfortunately some applications are still hardwired to only support hotkeys consisting of only two keystrokes.)
Control-Tab cycles through the list of view panes in the currently running program, Shift-Control-Tab reverse cycles through the list of view panes in the currently running program.
See, consistency.
In Windows 2000, the Location Bar in the upper portion of Explorer View panes is actually semi-intelligent. It has a REALLLLY nice auto-complete setup that actually first selects the most commonly gone to files and directories, and then if you do not select one of those, it narrows down the list using frequency of access sorting based upon how many times you have entered that item in the Location Bar. Reaaaaly handy and saves me a lot of time, on a properly setup Windows 2000 system is is capable to access any of literally thousands upon thousands of files with just a few keystrokes! Sweet.
You can select which hotkey you want to use for Auto-Complete in DOS boxs, and can even choose at which level the Auto-Complete works at. Files, Directories, Files and Directories, there are even more options but I do not have the complete list of them sitting in front of me right now.:-D
Of course if a person wishes they can completely ditch explorer.exe for their UI and plug in whatever shell that they want too. In fact there is a very healthy and active software market out there for alternative shells for Windows. Heck back in Windows 9x for awhile I even ditched the GUI thing all together and just used command.com. Sweet. I think 4DOS released a 32bit version of their shell, so if you wanted a CLI for Windows that was darn nearly infinitely customizable, there you go.
Microsoft is successful in the UI biz because their UI is consistent all around, easy to use, and does not do unexpected things. Exactly the opposite of the reasons that people hate the Office UI so much, ick.
Of course all this is a rather moot point with XP, which tries way to hard to do shit for the user, even if it can be disabled, I don't even want an OS on my machine that has that sort of crud compiled into it.:(
(which is of course where the advantages of Open Source Software come into play.:-D )
Educational pirates take the software for free, but keep it to themselves just so they can learn how to use it. They wouldn't buy it anyway, but when they get a regular/greater source of income, they may purchase a legitimate copy of the software to make up for it. Result? The company will lose 1 potential customer in the short term but probably gain a customer in the long term, thus increasing its revenues a little.
*raises hand* I fall into that catagory, I do not know how great an assload of money companies have made from me because I pirated their software early on and bought it later.
Slashdot Mirror
BankofAmerica_ATM.
I'll second this, that guy (gal, whatever) isn't a troll, he's an author. Regular readers can clearly see the progression of the artists writting style and technique, and the story is darn interesting.
Or at least it was, I haven't checked it out in a few months.
- There already is one being sold, its a plug in unit. Might be where this came from... i.e. reverse engineering.
Alright, question here folks;Do these things really work??? I mean you can buy little handheld ultrasonic bug repellers down at the supermarket for $13 or $14 here in the States, I am wondering if the darn things work at all before I spend some money on them.
I didn't expect that!
One of my history classes was covered entirly from the perspective of Monty Python Sketchs.
Heh.
Public education can rock.
We also watched Rocky Horror Picture Show in health class, w00t.
I realize this is not conjugating the verb "to shit" but declining the noun - I only get 10 not 25.
.
:-D
..
:-D
Of course different types of words conjugate differently so. . .
Ick.
I like the more or less universal modifiers that English has.
He was there.
He is There.
He will be there.
or for negative
He was not there.
He is not there.
He will not be there.
Questions.
Of course verbs conjugate completely differently, heh. Rather irregular at times of course, but then again, a lot of languages have irregular conjugations (Latin included), so that is nothing new.
And naturally enough everything can be rewritten in many different ways.
He was where? ---> Where was He?
He is where? ---> Where is He?
He will be where? ---> Where will he be?
and for getting more complicated. .
Where will he be? ----> Where tis it that he shall lie this night? ---- Where abouts upon this earth shall he be found resting his head? ---- Tis honest to say that both his location and activities beneath tonight's sky are truly a mystery.
English is fun.
If teacher is required to follow a particular curriculum,
Big if, in seattle public schools they are not. There are certian broad 'topics' which they have to cover, but they are allowed to choose how to teach them. There are just some select 'methodologies' that are forbidden to be used.
then every book not on it is not allowed, since the teacher can't choose to include it.
Which does not apply here.
A few seconds later, and it turns out that little voice was correct. "Banned" in this case is being incorrectly used to mean "not included in the curriculum." Big deal. Lots of books weren't included in the curriculum. Those crazy liberals! They ban books but forget to like, try to stop anyone from reading them.
Try "not ALLOWED in curriculum" and you'll be closer to the mark.
That is what pisses me off, teachers can (and do) teach directly from the Veda, but they can't approach anything that even HINTS of Christianity.
Uh, yah? How else is it supposed to be????
*looks confused*
Wrong. US (America isn't a country, and my .sig is a quote)
:-D
... )
.
:-D
maybe not, but the rest of 'america' is either employed as slave labour making goods for us or is run by some puppet government (mostly) under our control, so does it really matter that much to make the distinction?
[/end black mooded sarcasm]
schools do kick people out. Academic Probation. Fall below academic probation for 2 semesters/terms and see how much they care about funding. There are ways around it, such as having rich relatives donating stadiums and what not, but you still get your ass kicked out quick.
I was speaking more of public schools, 1-12, they put up with damn nearly ANYTHING. They are getting worse every year, I got expelled for violent actions, now days kids are STABBING each other and getting off a-ok. yeesh. One local high school has the mobile police precinct van on permanent assignment outside of it during all school hours. No it is not an 'alternative' school either.
(speaking of 'alternative' schools, the best one in Seattle, McGraw run by Seattle Children's Home, had a nearly 90% success rate for rehabilitating students. The school district decided they where not needed and cut off their funding.
Prep schools, and uni's all do it.
Anybody who gets their ass into a prep school or a university and f*cks up deserves something bad. . . . ick. f*cking rich shits. . .
You make very good points about discrimination though. Public schools are in no way tailored for the minority group.
They want cookie cutter students who all conform nicely. Those who stray from the trail of normality seldom do good, even when those kids may very well be geniuses.
True dat true dat, but I have found that in certian schools the teachers are more then willing to make accommodations, mostly because a lot of them got in there especially for those students who want to learn. I found that once I showed an earnest interest in learning what the teacher was teaching, that the teacher was more then willing to stop in the middle of class and go into an hour long lecture with me often times about some esoteric marginally related topic to what was the subject of study.
Most teacher's love teaching, that is why they are teaching, you just have to give them a chance. Too many of even the brightest students are not willing to hang around after class and ask the teacher questions and assume that if what they want to know is not covered in class when they want to know it, that the teacher is 'crap'.
Of course I have been really lucky in that I have had a lot of really good teachers.
How good?
My middle school mathematics teacher went into vectors, imaginary numbers, 3 dimensional geometry and mathematics, and other fun topics. Suffice to say the next four years after that where pretty much review, heh.
(they have a much better behaved and more intelligent students),
*shmack*
I went to high school with a number of students whose IQ was well above 160, and I have seen many students in private school who where dumber then bricks.
(I also saw MAAANNNY students drop out of private school and go to public school instead because "all of their friends where there" which pissed the living shit out of me, that they would drop out of a private school that damn nearly costs more then my family earned in a year, just to be with some floozies who then would likely never see again after the next few years. . . . grrrr)
I get the impression that English has more baggage.
;)
twenty-fucking-five different ways to conjugate shit.
English does NOT have that. We have these nice universal modifier words and a few suffixes and that is it.
English also degrades REALLY well, you can SERIOUSLY screw up a sentence and still get a point across.
Even with a perfectly formed Latin sentence there is still a chance that something will have to be figured out from context and that there is no other way to make the sentence so as to avoid that.
English also can do some nifty things as far as form goes, because word order has more meaning in English then it does in Latin, the possibility is opened up to use the rearrangement of word order of an English sentence to give greater flexibility in what is being said.
Not to mention that because English has had so many other languages influence it and stems from such a large variety of parent languages, there are TONS of vocabulary words with damn nearly every single possible semantic meaning and context that you could ever dream of.
About the ONLY* thing missing from the English language are degree modifiers for words, instead we are stuck using "very very very very very pretty" or some other such intellectual/emotionally unsatisfying arrangement.
*well that and a gender neutral singular pronoun that does not have insulting overtones. . . .
I can see that, in fact it was my first impression of the book as well. I have found that I have enjoyed the book more now that I am older and I have read some of his other books. I see "That Hideous Strength" as an illustration of Lewis' social and political thinking, especially "The Abolition of man" (see my other post above).
:)
well I was 13 or 14 at the time so I likely wasn't too horribly keen to that, but I did have an inkling that something a bit greater then average fare was being discussed.
BUT, I feel that especially in elective classes there should be no reason religion can't be taught thoroughly. Understanding what a religion means is one thing, saying "nation under god" (which has very few alternate meanings) is another.
I think it's a bane to our youth to force schools to be devoid of all religious content, people should be exposed to all types of religions. I happened to be raised Christian, so I knew about all the Christian holidays and traditions/meanings, but had I not I would have known christians are some "other people" by the time I graduated HS.
Silly human, religious content is abound in schools, just not CHRISTRIAN religious content. The administration is overcompensating by going about and removing the current 'big target' religious influence (Christianity) while maintaining a very wide diversity of other courses.
Heck in public school I read creation myths from just about every culture on the earth, literature inspired by a wide variety of beliefs, and had classroom debates on a large range of different religious topics (many of which where Christian based).
But actually studying the Christian mythos? Nah, not allowed.
Study of the Christian mythos is considered forcing religion upon students, study of other culture's and religion's mythos is considered diversifying the student's education. . . .
Just the standard fare of middle class idiots being blind to the obvious.
Seattle, Washington state (I was told it was banned by an LA teacher)
"That Hideous Strength" more on a second reading. The whole book is a commentary lampooning & warning against the kind of thinking that goes into such a decision.
:-D
/ever/ have any actions go on in it? I think it did some place, but the writing got so twisted at that point, I think somebody took the paragraphs in the latter sections of the book and randomly rearranged them before sending it off to the print house.
Oh I thoroughly enjoyed that first section of the book the first time through.
Just that as a book in a series that was mostly science fiction, the first (few?) hundred pages being long rants did, while originally rather entertaining, get rather boring after awhile.
I mean did that book
Privatize education.
.
yaah, and let all the poor people rot!
Feh.
Look at Korea if you want an idea of what 'privatized' education will get you. . .
On the plus side, Japan has a rather nice privatized education system, but then again the whole entire cultural incentive towards honor and creating a good name for ones self, and in this instance one's educational institution, is a major part of that, factors which American society lacks in the same quantity that Japanese society has.
It has already been shown that American schools will put up with almost any level of B.S. students in order to keep funding, where as many schools in Japan will kick out disgraceful students in order to keep a good name.
Of course there is a strong downside to that as well, namely that students who could be helped by patience and perseverance will end up being screwed over and just kicked out on the street.
As in the past one of those students whom that would have happened to had such a system been in place, and almost happened to under the current system any ways, I am not a fan of such a system that would discriminate against students with behavioral problems who DO want to improve themselves.
Which reminds me, Lewis is also the one who first showed me that multiple languages used to be an EXPECTED part of a childs education, rather then the "Oh do it in High School" thing that it is now.
:(
:-D
;-D
Luckily there appears to be some sort of a very small trend to bring back primary school foreign languages, but it is growing very slowly.
Inspired my Lewis I took Latin in HS;
and, err, well. Found out that it sucks. I did learn a good deal about tenses and such though, but Latin still sucks, I can definitely see how English is a ton more advanced, heh. Simplified to heck, not nearly so much excess baggage, yaah for English!
Japanese or something in Primary School would kick ass though.
Do they use Greek Mythology as part of school work or assignments? If so, I smell a double standard that may need exploration.
Oh hell yes, heck 3 months was spent on Muslim culture, a good year on Chinese religion and culture, 2 months on Mexican Folklore, and so forth. Very comprehensive education in every area BUT Christianity. (well, not completely true, the Spanish Inquisition and such was covered marvelously, but the entire mythos was ignore)
---People must be reminded that it IS possible to get through schooling without punching and fucking your way from one class to the next. :(---
/know/ that western civilization had had gender segregated schools, I had just assumed that the way things are right now (rather shitty) is the way they had always been.
:(
:-D )
And reading Lewis will do all that?
In one of his books C. S. Lewis writes about the coming of the "experimental schools" (I forget what the exact term he uses for them is) that are mixed gender instead of segregated. He mentions the increase in problems of violence and harassment that appear within those schools.
Before reading that particular series of passages, I did not even
Of course it is to be expected that the current system does not give favorable or even unbiased overviews of past systems that where successful.
(yes yes yes I know that gender segregated schools had problems, mainly in the area of the female schools getting less funding, but this is the 21st century, we can legislate equal funding.
The only time that anybody ever hears of 'girls' or 'boys' schools is in reference to private schools that are considered 'old fashion' and 'outdated' and that 'young people' (they are called KIDS folks, children, NON-ADULTS) do not learn how to 'socialize' (read: screw) properly when attending them.
Feh.
You mean like in IE, the favorites list appearing in the sideline or such?
multi-row tabs,
Which damn nearly everybody uses, unfortunatly. They ARE good for some uses, but they have to be used
and their latest shennanigan, the adaptive menus that constantly change position on a user
You mean like when I right click some wheres the right click menu appears ALL THE WAY on my screen as opposed to appearing half OFF OF my screen? I always considered that a boon myself.
Or do you mean the frequency of use menus that display items depending on how often (or if at all) they are used?
Quite handy actualy, once they have adapted themselves to the user they rarely change at all, and you can set the time out limit for how long you want something to stick around before it is put into the invisible bin. I find them to be very useful, especialy since I tend to have a few hundred tools for a LARGE variety of purposes installed at any one time, and I may need any one of them at any one time, but the overall chance of me going to any particular tool at some instance is actualy veeeery small. So I do not
It is customizable, or can be turned off compleatly, but even in its default mode it is quite handy and useful, and I am VEEERY picky about my UI elements, the fact that I have let it stay around at all on my machine is a minor miracle.
Oh, and another example of consistency.
The start menu is itself just a directory full of links and other directories. If you give one of those directories the hidden attribute, it will also disappear from the start menu. Very nice. Rather useless, but still very nice.
Oh, and the Interface Hall of Shame is, err, run by somebody who does not realize that the ability to do anything from anywheres is VERY powerful.
- An application uses the common Open File dialog simply to allow you to specify the file to be worked on. Why is it then, that the Open File dialog allows you to rename files, delete files, create new folders, send files to the printer, send a fax, save a file to a floppy disk, try to convert a bitmap file to an Excel spreadsheet, edit a file with a different application, create an e-mail message. and so on, all while the calling application is waiting for the name of the file you want it to work on? This is bizarre!
I use that feature ALL the time, if I made a typo when saving a file (the common save file dialog box has the exact same properties) I can just go to the save as menu again, right click on the file and rename it.Which is a TON more convienent that having to open an explorer window, navigate to the directory, find the file, and THEN rename it, and then close the explorer window and return to my application. w00t. Especialy since the save as dialog automaticaly goes to the directory that a file was last saved to from that program. Yaah.
- One particularly bad design feature of the common file dialogs is that they require the use of a pointing device to access certain functions.
Now that I will agree with, they are HORRID for screen reader users and users are only using the keyboard, ick.Word's open and save boxs are worse though.
Great series of books, I read The Magicians Nephew and The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe in second grade, excellent series. C.S. Lewis's science fiction books are also rather nice, though he has a rather nasty habit of starting a series well and then having each successive book get worse and worse (lucky if you can read through the third one. . . .) but it was years ago that I last read C. S. Lewis so my opinions may change should I read those books again.
/can/ go to far at times. :
/books/ with religious content? Hell it is OK to read every body elses religiously derived fiction but just not Christian religiously derived fiction? It seems to me that if church and state are to be separate, then the state should not work their asses of concentrating on just isolating out any one particular religion! As it is the removal of Narnia was an obvious attempt at "see we are't being biased, look here, we are removing Christian inspired literature! Yeeesh. That IS called bias folks!!!
/are/ damn nearly classics and all. :-D )
.... Ugh! People must be reminded that it IS possible to get through schooling without punching and fucking your way from one class to the next. :(
Narnia has been banned from my local school district do to 'religious' content. Pisses me off, had it not been for Narnia there is a good chance that I would never have developed my love of reading. Liberals
And what the hell is wrong with
(By banned I mean it was banned from being read in the classroom as part of school work or assignments, students can still check them out from the Library of course, I mean they
I do think that some of C. S. Lewis's works should be mandatory reading though if just to show students that things do NOT have to be the way that they are. My word, people cannot even IMAGINE that schools used to not have as much fighting or sex in them!
Almost none of my hardware is on their compatability list!
:-D
/really/ be expaned. Not to mention that if MS ever even /tried/ to setup such a system people would freak out (err, yaaah, complete knowledge of every program installed on computer? Yaaaah riiiiiight! heh. There would be a /. freakout. :D )
Then again it isn't on the Windows 2000 compatability list either.
There little software section there should
For comparison, I was amazed that installing a scanner on XP required me to plug the USB port and... that's all no drivers required, not even a single click necessary and it was available in Photoshop straight away.
.
Mind you installing a SCSI scanner (or card for that matter) is not nearly so easy. . .
Nor is installing a TV tuner card (which can take well over 5 "new hardware device detected" cycles in WinXP), which while not difficult, is not exactly something that somebody who has never done it before would have any clue as on how to do. (right click on INF file, select install, notice that that does not work, add device manualy, select different INF file depending on which part of the TV Tuner card is being installed at the moment, and so forth)
- I used to derive pleasure when using my Apple, Amiga and sgi because they had a unique personality through various touches and tools that made the interface more cognicent of my existence.
- Windows completely lacks that interface. It's dumb and arrogant. It's heartless and ultimately disposable
Emphasis mine.I have to disagree here, the Windows interface DOES have style, and it is continuously evolving. Windows 98 was a large leap ahead in terms of interface design over Windows 95, and Windows 2000 was at least an equally large leap over Windows 98.
It is the little things that count. Unfortunately most of them are not enabled by default.
Being able to open a DOS box to any directory by simply right clicking on it and selecting "Open Prompt Here."
Being able to open any file with any application, and have a list of commonly used applications used to open that particular type of file listed automatically for the user. Sweet.
Almost everybody knows of Alt-Tab to shift through running applications, but did you know of Shift-Alt-Tab to reverse shift through the list of running applications?
Backspace goes back a page in IE, but guess what shift-backspace does? Yup, it goes forward a page. Amused the heck out of me when I realized that somebody at Microsoft had taken the time to make the user interface that consistent. Shift is the universal reverse modifier key in Windows (or at least it is in those applications that follow the UI specs, which unfortunately a good deal of the parts of Office do not. *sighs* Makes MS look bad that, ick. )
Control-Z is undo. Shift-Control-Z is redo. (before shift was made The Big Reverse Key many programs had Control-Y as the redo key. Unfortunately some applications are still hardwired to only support hotkeys consisting of only two keystrokes.)
Control-Tab cycles through the list of view panes in the currently running program, Shift-Control-Tab reverse cycles through the list of view panes in the currently running program.
See, consistency.
In Windows 2000, the Location Bar in the upper portion of Explorer View panes is actually semi-intelligent. It has a REALLLLY nice auto-complete setup that actually first selects the most commonly gone to files and directories, and then if you do not select one of those, it narrows down the list using frequency of access sorting based upon how many times you have entered that item in the Location Bar. Reaaaaly handy and saves me a lot of time, on a properly setup Windows 2000 system is is capable to access any of literally thousands upon thousands of files with just a few keystrokes! Sweet.
You can select which hotkey you want to use for Auto-Complete in DOS boxs, and can even choose at which level the Auto-Complete works at. Files, Directories, Files and Directories, there are even more options but I do not have the complete list of them sitting in front of me right now.
Of course if a person wishes they can completely
ditch explorer.exe for their UI and plug in whatever shell that they want too. In fact there is a very healthy and active software market out there for alternative shells for Windows. Heck back in Windows 9x for awhile I even ditched the GUI thing all together and just used command.com. Sweet. I think 4DOS released a 32bit version of their shell, so if you wanted a CLI for Windows that was darn nearly infinitely customizable, there you go.
Microsoft is successful in the UI biz because their UI is consistent all around, easy to use, and does not do unexpected things. Exactly the opposite of the reasons that people hate the Office UI so much, ick.
Of course all this is a rather moot point with XP, which tries way to hard to do shit for the user, even if it can be disabled, I don't even want an OS on my machine that has that sort of crud compiled into it.
(which is of course where the advantages of Open Source Software come into play.
Educational pirates take the software for free, but keep it to themselves just so they can learn how to use it. They wouldn't buy it anyway, but when they get a regular/greater source of income, they may purchase a legitimate copy of the software to make up for it. Result? The company will lose 1 potential customer in the short term but probably gain a customer in the long term, thus increasing its revenues a little.
:-D
*raises hand* I fall into that catagory, I do not know how great an assload of money companies have made from me because I pirated their software early on and bought it later.
And encouraged my friends to buy it.
And other people online to buy it.
Hell I am damn nearly viral in nature.
I hate this news just as much as anyone else [com.com], but your example is fairly poor in light of their company profile.
The K7 line is getting rather antiquitated, and right now tons of hardware venders are seeing revenues shoot down.