Lists US literacy at 99% of all people over the age of 15.
Which seems a bit high to me, and of course there are many different ways to judge literacy. Many of those people's literacy is not as functional as it should be, I certainly personally know plenty of people who can't read critically as fully as they should be able to. But that isn't the same as saying most Americans are too illiterate to handle books or written material at all.
I get to use "Saturday Night Live Syndrome" as a subject line again.
Mostly because the article includes this: "don't fully engage today's classes"
I am 27, and I have heard alarming news about the decline in the literacy, attention span, civic mindedness, etc, of America students since I was in elementary school. Its one of those things that is tossed around, like the declining quality of Saturday Night Live.
Does anyone have any proof, or even evidence that the students of today can't handle books and need constant electronic stimulation?
in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters
Am I the only one who seems to notice that carrying around a lot of expensive electronic bling is not at all a sign of someone being tech savvy? People who actually work with computers and electronics have, A) seen enough products come and go that they know that this year's status symbol is next year's copper bearing material B)have enough endless scanning of data at work to not make it their hobby in their off hours.
Most people with actual technology experience that I know laugh at people who buy a 1500 dollar laptop so they can look cool in coffee shops.
I was giving them, as they say, the benefit of the doubt.
I don't know a lot about Turkey, I know it is a non-totalitarian state that has committed genocide against ethnic minorities in the past, and continues to lie about it. I know they also persecute minorities and dissidents.
But as far as I know, in Turkey, you could go into a bookstore, and find, say, a copy of War and Peace and buy it and read it. Or you could see most Hollywood movies. So the government doesn't censor every aspect of life, like they do in, say, North Korea.
Whenever I read words like "on the Increase" (as well as "corroded", "falling apart", "rapidly dwindling", etc.) I automatically wonder if I am being presented with "Saturday Night Live Syndrome", where people pull out the popular opinion that Saturday Night Live just isn't as good as it used to be.
The report seems to cover 13 countries, none of which are exactly bastions of civil liberties. Only Thailand and Turkey are countries that even have a medium record of civil rights. I think the fact that people in Uzbekistan can't access sites critical of their government is both one of the smaller concerns of both the internet, and of the civil rights of Uzbekistan's citizens.
If more countries that actually had long-standing traditions of free speech, or emerging traditions of free speech, were suffering censorship, that might be a story. But as it is, this hardly seems like dramatic news.
The original list, like so many other lists I have seen naming the "Top 10" etc, seems to be unbalanced. Some things are put in that shouldn't be (Sensible World of Soccer)?!?!!? and there were many exclusions, (Zelda, Super Mario Brothers, Pac-Man, many Microprose games). And we can all argue over what goes where, but what you really need is some sort of rubric to judge games.
For example, how do you compare Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers 3? Obviously Super Mario Brothers 3 was much more polished, but it only owes its success to the originality of the first. How do you compare a game with great graphics, sound and story lines, but whose gameplay is selecting from a menu over and over (like Final Fantasy VII) to a game that is almost pure concept (like Tetris)? How would you compare The Legend of Zelda, a great adventure/RPG game that everyone has played, with a game like Terranigma, a fascinating adventure/RPG game that was never released in the United States? Tomb Raider could be translated into a movie, which Civilization couldn't, do does that make it a better game?
For all of these questions and more, you have to have a rubric, a means of grading, that you can explain your choices. A rubric would include graphics, sound, gameplay concept, originality, cultural impact, popularity, immersiveness, technical achievement, amongst other things, so that we could fairly rate games against each other. Without that, its just tossing out suggestions and haggling.
I really really don't like "evolutionary psychology", but I've already dealt with that in other places.
What I would like to deal with now is the difference between natural and supernatural concepts.
It seems that several natural concepts are hardwired into people as well. I think the simplest concept that people seem to universally believe in is what is called The First Law of Thermodynamics (at least that is the scientific name for it, although the concept I am sure existed before modern science).
When most children are three to six years old, or so, they don't understand conservation. They think that if water is poured from a taller, skinnier container into a shorter, wider one, that water has "disappeared". And then at some point, around 6 or so, children realize that things can't just appear and disappear. (That is the short version of it, people who specialize in cognitive development could probably explain it better). And from then, on, most people know that things can't appear or disappear out of nowhere.
And of course, mammals with simpler nervous systems know the same thing. If a fox sees a mouse run into an decaying log, it knows that it is still in there. It has the idea that an object in persisting, even out of sight. I don't know what level of animal intelligence is needed to figure this out, but I imagine that most carnivores would know it.
And yet, the idea that objects persist seems to be more than just a mammalian instinct. The same idea ultimately tells us that all matter and energy in the universe is conserved. That when an atom decays, the difference in mass now that it has to spend less energy bonding its nucleons together will result in a photon being created out of nowhere, with exactly enough energy to equal the missing weight.
(Although it should be pointed out that some particles that the First Law says must exist, such as the neutrino, only exists to balance the equation, since it is next to unimaginable that there will ever be a society sophisticated enough to design a device for detecting all the neutrinos coming out of a star)
So, the real question is...why can an idea that seems to be hardwired into the mammalian brain to keep track of where prey is hiding, also seem to be universally true across the universe, at all scales? The idea that objects persist is a metaphysical idea, and yet it seems to be true in all experiments.
All of the discussions I've had about Linux vs. Windows were about Linux vs. Pirated (or at least loose use of the EULA) Windows. As long as people can give Windows away to their brother-in-law (which is very hard to do under the EULA), they like it. If they ever couldn't, Linux would look a lot more attractive.
Since Vista seems to be having a lukewarm reception, Microsoft is wisely making it easier to use.
If the bullying is a clear threat, it should be treated like any other threat. Making threats against people is a crime, in any form.
But on the other hand, smart bullies (and most bullies are smart, at least when it comes to hurting others), often bully other ways: through put-downs and cruel comments that are not direct. So if someone posts a comment on the internet that makes an indirect comment about someone's clothing or habits, can anything really be proven? And when is a remark about fashion or hairstyles go from being just an expression of opinion to being a form of persecution?
Bullies often also work through exclusion as much as anything else. How can that be stopped?
So, if the law is just meant to stop threats, that is one thing. But to stop the hydra of bullying, targeting specific expressions is both very hard, and perhaps not right at all.
If you changed this to "ten years ago", your point would be true. 15 years ago and 20 years ago would be stretching it.
But yes, fall of 1998, I got a then top-of-the-line PII 300 MHz with 64 Megs of Ram. And I used it for mp3, web browsing, instant messaging and word processing. Besides for watching videos, there is nothing I do now that I didn't do then.
Black Saturn, the street tough PI that got kicked off the force for refusing to go along with some crooked cops. Now, he dispenses his own brand of street justice, but has a heart of gold that melts all the ladies.
There seems to be some debate on whether this is a true story or not. It may or might not be, but it sounds possible. I don't know if I would quite say that it is probable, but it could be possible.
I have noticed that laptops are marketed heavily for their sex appeal. They seem to be a status symbol for those who equate having a laptop with being a cool, on-the-go guy, urbanely sipping expensive coffee while joining the blogosphere at the local wi-fi hotspot. Not that people don't need laptops, and not that they are somehow responsible when bad things happen to them, but I do believe that people's urge to get laptops because of how nifty they are leads some people into buying something that they don't understand, with unintended consequences. Having a house burn down is more serious than the usual consequences, but I think it all comes from people not knowing what they are getting into.
I urge every geek, when approached by some well-meaning person who thinks it would be cool and nifty to have a laptop, to tell the inquirer that, much like with a puppy, once you have a laptop, there will be responsibilities once the thrill wears off. The most usual hazard of laptop ownership I have seen is that a battery, power supply, screen, keypad or one of many other dozens of little proprietary parts goes bad, leaving the laptop owner in desperate need of a specific part, which is almost always hard to find and very expensive. Other risks of a laptop, such as theft, data theft (which should also be mentioned to people who think wireless is the best thing ever), and of course the many safety/environmental hazards of a laptop should also be addressed.
Besides, of course, when there is government intervention.
Which there is in this case, because of intellectual property. (That is, the government makes it illegal to produce something at its lowest cost) Intellectual property is a complex issue.
But if there is one thing to be said for intellectual property, it is, that, AFAIK, classical economics doesn't really deal with it too much. Adam Smith was dealing with eggs, bolts of cloth and bars of gold. Intellectual property to a great extent exists because the paradigm of scarcity that classical economics assumes has to be forced.
Slashdot Mirror
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos /us.html
Lists US literacy at 99% of all people over the age of 15.
Which seems a bit high to me, and of course there are many different ways to judge literacy. Many of those people's literacy is not as functional as it should be, I certainly personally know plenty of people who can't read critically as fully as they should be able to. But that isn't the same as saying most Americans are too illiterate to handle books or written material at all.
I get to use "Saturday Night Live Syndrome" as a subject line again.
Mostly because the article includes this: "don't fully engage today's classes"
I am 27, and I have heard alarming news about the decline in the literacy, attention span, civic mindedness, etc, of America students since I was in elementary school. Its one of those things that is tossed around, like the declining quality of Saturday Night Live.
Does anyone have any proof, or even evidence that the students of today can't handle books and need constant electronic stimulation?
in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters
Am I the only one who seems to notice that carrying around a lot of expensive electronic bling is not at all a sign of someone being tech savvy? People who actually work with computers and electronics have, A) seen enough products come and go that they know that this year's status symbol is next year's copper bearing material B)have enough endless scanning of data at work to not make it their hobby in their off hours.
Most people with actual technology experience that I know laugh at people who buy a 1500 dollar laptop so they can look cool in coffee shops.
They are being generous, they could have charged a license fee of 750 dollars per bit.
I was giving them, as they say, the benefit of the doubt.
I don't know a lot about Turkey, I know it is a non-totalitarian state that has committed genocide against ethnic minorities in the past, and continues to lie about it. I know they also persecute minorities and dissidents.
But as far as I know, in Turkey, you could go into a bookstore, and find, say, a copy of War and Peace and buy it and read it. Or you could see most Hollywood movies. So the government doesn't censor every aspect of life, like they do in, say, North Korea.
But again, I am not a big expert.
Whenever I read words like "on the Increase" (as well as "corroded", "falling apart", "rapidly dwindling", etc.) I automatically wonder if I am being presented with "Saturday Night Live Syndrome", where people pull out the popular opinion that Saturday Night Live just isn't as good as it used to be.
The report seems to cover 13 countries, none of which are exactly bastions of civil liberties. Only Thailand and Turkey are countries that even have a medium record of civil rights. I think the fact that people in Uzbekistan can't access sites critical of their government is both one of the smaller concerns of both the internet, and of the civil rights of Uzbekistan's citizens.
If more countries that actually had long-standing traditions of free speech, or emerging traditions of free speech, were suffering censorship, that might be a story. But as it is, this hardly seems like dramatic news.
They have gotten a little better, but all proprietary cases are still inferior to the generic "four screws in the back beige box"
It should also be pointed out that the list is of "important" games, not "best" games.
The lists aren't totally the same!
The original list, like so many other lists I have seen naming the "Top 10" etc, seems to be unbalanced. Some things are put in that shouldn't be (Sensible World of Soccer)?!?!!? and there were many exclusions, (Zelda, Super Mario Brothers, Pac-Man, many Microprose games). And we can all argue over what goes where, but what you really need is some sort of rubric to judge games.
For example, how do you compare Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers 3? Obviously Super Mario Brothers 3 was much more polished, but it only owes its success to the originality of the first. How do you compare a game with great graphics, sound and story lines, but whose gameplay is selecting from a menu over and over (like Final Fantasy VII) to a game that is almost pure concept (like Tetris)? How would you compare The Legend of Zelda, a great adventure/RPG game that everyone has played, with a game like Terranigma, a fascinating adventure/RPG game that was never released in the United States? Tomb Raider could be translated into a movie, which Civilization couldn't, do does that make it a better game?
For all of these questions and more, you have to have a rubric, a means of grading, that you can explain your choices. A rubric would include graphics, sound, gameplay concept, originality, cultural impact, popularity, immersiveness, technical achievement, amongst other things, so that we could fairly rate games against each other. Without that, its just tossing out suggestions and haggling.
Let me be the first humorless know-it-all to point out that there are much more than 17 pirates in the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy#Modern_piracy
/. takes me to file:///
Time to replace all your tinfoil helmets with a pair of ear plugs.
Shouldn't that be the Y2K7DST Bug?
Or can we come up with an even more involved name?
I really really don't like "evolutionary psychology", but I've already dealt with that in other places.
What I would like to deal with now is the difference between natural and supernatural concepts.
It seems that several natural concepts are hardwired into people as well. I think the simplest concept that people seem to universally believe in is what is called The First Law of Thermodynamics (at least that is the scientific name for it, although the concept I am sure existed before modern science).
When most children are three to six years old, or so, they don't understand conservation. They think that if water is poured from a taller, skinnier container into a shorter, wider one, that water has "disappeared". And then at some point, around 6 or so, children realize that things can't just appear and disappear. (That is the short version of it, people who specialize in cognitive development could probably explain it better). And from then, on, most people know that things can't appear or disappear out of nowhere.
And of course, mammals with simpler nervous systems know the same thing. If a fox sees a mouse run into an decaying log, it knows that it is still in there. It has the idea that an object in persisting, even out of sight. I don't know what level of animal intelligence is needed to figure this out, but I imagine that most carnivores would know it.
And yet, the idea that objects persist seems to be more than just a mammalian instinct. The same idea ultimately tells us that all matter and energy in the universe is conserved. That when an atom decays, the difference in mass now that it has to spend less energy bonding its nucleons together will result in a photon being created out of nowhere, with exactly enough energy to equal the missing weight.
(Although it should be pointed out that some particles that the First Law says must exist, such as the neutrino, only exists to balance the equation, since it is next to unimaginable that there will ever be a society sophisticated enough to design a device for detecting all the neutrinos coming out of a star)
So, the real question is...why can an idea that seems to be hardwired into the mammalian brain to keep track of where prey is hiding, also seem to be universally true across the universe, at all scales? The idea that objects persist is a metaphysical idea, and yet it seems to be true in all experiments.
Why is that?
All of the discussions I've had about Linux vs. Windows were about Linux vs. Pirated (or at least loose use of the EULA) Windows. As long as people can give Windows away to their brother-in-law (which is very hard to do under the EULA), they like it. If they ever couldn't, Linux would look a lot more attractive.
Since Vista seems to be having a lukewarm reception, Microsoft is wisely making it easier to use.
If the bullying is a clear threat, it should be treated like any other threat. Making threats against people is a crime, in any form.
But on the other hand, smart bullies (and most bullies are smart, at least when it comes to hurting others), often bully other ways: through put-downs and cruel comments that are not direct. So if someone posts a comment on the internet that makes an indirect comment about someone's clothing or habits, can anything really be proven? And when is a remark about fashion or hairstyles go from being just an expression of opinion to being a form of persecution?
Bullies often also work through exclusion as much as anything else. How can that be stopped?
So, if the law is just meant to stop threats, that is one thing. But to stop the hydra of bullying, targeting specific expressions is both very hard, and perhaps not right at all.
If you changed this to "ten years ago", your point would be true. 15 years ago and 20 years ago would be stretching it.
But yes, fall of 1998, I got a then top-of-the-line PII 300 MHz with 64 Megs of Ram. And I used it for mp3, web browsing, instant messaging and word processing. Besides for watching videos, there is nothing I do now that I didn't do then.
What about vans down by the river?
And free candy?
Are we going to get rid of them, too?
Once Canadians get tiny microchips, what could they get next?
They might move out of their igloos!
Black Saturn, the street tough PI that got kicked off the force for refusing to go along with some crooked cops. Now, he dispenses his own brand of street justice, but has a heart of gold that melts all the ladies.
I think my Linux still has them beat for difficulty of gaming.
That is why everyone moves to Portland. Into the central city. Because it is just full of fun things to do.
There seems to be some debate on whether this is a true story or not. It may or might not be, but it sounds possible. I don't know if I would quite say that it is probable, but it could be possible.
I have noticed that laptops are marketed heavily for their sex appeal. They seem to be a status symbol for those who equate having a laptop with being a cool, on-the-go guy, urbanely sipping expensive coffee while joining the blogosphere at the local wi-fi hotspot. Not that people don't need laptops, and not that they are somehow responsible when bad things happen to them, but I do believe that people's urge to get laptops because of how nifty they are leads some people into buying something that they don't understand, with unintended consequences. Having a house burn down is more serious than the usual consequences, but I think it all comes from people not knowing what they are getting into.
I urge every geek, when approached by some well-meaning person who thinks it would be cool and nifty to have a laptop, to tell the inquirer that, much like with a puppy, once you have a laptop, there will be responsibilities once the thrill wears off. The most usual hazard of laptop ownership I have seen is that a battery, power supply, screen, keypad or one of many other dozens of little proprietary parts goes bad, leaving the laptop owner in desperate need of a specific part, which is almost always hard to find and very expensive. Other risks of a laptop, such as theft, data theft (which should also be mentioned to people who think wireless is the best thing ever), and of course the many safety/environmental hazards of a laptop should also be addressed.
I also have gotten tired of "inner city" being used as a codeword for "poverty" and "black/minority".
At least in Portland, poverty seems to be associated with some of the suburbs. Some of the most expensive homes are in the center of the city.
Besides, of course, when there is government intervention.
Which there is in this case, because of intellectual property. (That is, the government makes it illegal to produce something at its lowest cost)
Intellectual property is a complex issue.
But if there is one thing to be said for intellectual property, it is, that, AFAIK, classical economics doesn't really deal with it too much. Adam Smith was dealing with eggs, bolts of cloth and bars of gold. Intellectual property to a great extent exists because the paradigm of scarcity that classical economics assumes has to be forced.