>>They set up a family area away from the shouting for people with children and the elderly to join in. They made some good points. Care to debate them?
I bet the elderly were just there because they couldn't run their AC due to the nuclear plant shutdowns.:p
Nuclear activists are generally a few batteries short of a full charge anyway.
>>If the courts issue an order for arrest of TSA officials and Eric Holder refuses to enact the order, he is in violation of his core job (execute the law), and he can be impeached and removed by the Congress.
This would be the same Eric Holder that was found guilty of Contempt of Congress and ignored it, right?
I burned out on TD games a long time ago, but Orcs Must Die 1 restored my faith in the genre. It's really well done, and bypasses a lot of the annoying things about the genre, while still being enough of a challenge to be interesting. Finale... grr.
>She may have been taught more background before algebra than you did, despite having it at a younger age.
Well, I learned algebra in elementary school as well, but point taken.
Yeah, the way she describes it is that elementary school at her private school in Hong Kong was a lot less "hand painting" and a lot more serious business. Kids have to apply to get into the good primary schools there, and they don't mess around when it comes to an accelerated curriculum. Even their arts program was pretty intensive - my wife won a local radio story contest, and their choir director was like a Mary Poppins from hell.
>>"the establishment"? The establishment has always been and still is 100% denialist.
Except for Fox, the media is very much alarmist, blaming every episode of weather on global warming, not even educated enough to know you can't do that.
>Yeah, since they put a "skeptic" in charge of it. Bad luck for them he actually looked at the facts and changed his mind.
To a certain extent. He still (rightly) called out the establishment for AGW scare-mongering, like claiming Katrina was the result of global warming. (See for example, Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth.)
>the main problem in early education is that math, with its many abstractions of notation and convention, is brought in far too early
This is a myth from our child development overlords.
My wife, who grew up in Hong Kong, was learning algebra in elementary school. Kids are capable of learning algebra much younger than it's taught here in America. When she immigrated, she literally didn't learn any new math for four years. It's not a mistake we're ranked so poorly in the world math standings.
For international flights, you need to be there an hour early. For domestic, half an hour is possible, but risky.
I'm a frequent flier. It drives me crazy when I fly with people and they want to be there two or three hours early. Airlines won't even accept your baggage more than three hours beforr a flight.
I find it quite amusing that their "solution" to violent video games is Limbo.
They obviously never stepped one foot into that world. If anyone got through that game without being impaled or decapitated at least a dozen times, I would be very impressed.
My grandfather was an engineer back in the day when they were trying to figure out if concrete or asphalt was a better surface to use in the interstate system. He worked on an experiment in which tractor-trailers were run nonstop around a pair of tracks for a month or so to see which wore down more from the heavy loads.
The reason our health care costs so much is a complex issue, but most of it stems from government interference in the marketplace, and the extreme gyrations the industry does around the government regulations.
Single payer could probably work cheaper than our current system because of all these market deformities, but there's also free market approaches that would work, too.
If you look at American health care costs back when it was much more laissez faire, costs were much much lower than today, even after adjusting for inflation and new technologies.
My mobile devices do one thing: let me keep in touch with people (via email, SMS, phone, etc.) until I can get back to my desktop and get real work done.
Tablets and smartphones are a massive step back in usability.
Since the industrial revolution, the quality of life for everyone (rich and poor alike) has risen tremendously here in this country.
All companies make money by profiting from the labor of their employees. If they lost money on their employees, they'd go out of business. And being in a corporation with other people of similar skills and talents allows the corporation to make more money than the sum of the parts working individually.
As outrageous as it might seem for Ellison to buy an island, given how often I see/.-ers talk about buying their own island, it seems like he's just doing what we'd all do in his shoes anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
>>They set up a family area away from the shouting for people with children and the elderly to join in. They made some good points. Care to debate them?
I bet the elderly were just there because they couldn't run their AC due to the nuclear plant shutdowns. :p
Nuclear activists are generally a few batteries short of a full charge anyway.
>>If the courts issue an order for arrest of TSA officials and Eric Holder refuses to enact the order, he is in violation of his core job (execute the law), and he can be impeached and removed by the Congress.
This would be the same Eric Holder that was found guilty of Contempt of Congress and ignored it, right?
He has no respect for the rule of law.
I used to use the numpad for everything, but too many games with poor support for remapping keys made me grit my teeth and go WASD like everyone else.
I burned out on TD games a long time ago, but Orcs Must Die 1 restored my faith in the genre. It's really well done, and bypasses a lot of the annoying things about the genre, while still being enough of a challenge to be interesting. Finale... grr.
Global warming alarmist. The context should have been clear from TFA.
>She may have been taught more background before algebra than you did, despite having it at a younger age.
Well, I learned algebra in elementary school as well, but point taken.
Yeah, the way she describes it is that elementary school at her private school in Hong Kong was a lot less "hand painting" and a lot more serious business. Kids have to apply to get into the good primary schools there, and they don't mess around when it comes to an accelerated curriculum. Even their arts program was pretty intensive - my wife won a local radio story contest, and their choir director was like a Mary Poppins from hell.
In the OECD, we're near the bottom.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading
South Korea, Finland, Switzerland, and Japan are on top.
Common Core isn't implemented yet, but it will be in the next couple years.
Also, wow that's a long block of text.
>>"the establishment"? The establishment has always been and still is 100% denialist.
Except for Fox, the media is very much alarmist, blaming every episode of weather on global warming, not even educated enough to know you can't do that.
>Yeah, since they put a "skeptic" in charge of it. Bad luck for them he actually looked at the facts and changed his mind.
To a certain extent. He still (rightly) called out the establishment for AGW scare-mongering, like claiming Katrina was the result of global warming. (See for example, Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth.)
>the main problem in early education is that math, with its many abstractions of notation and convention, is brought in far too early
This is a myth from our child development overlords.
My wife, who grew up in Hong Kong, was learning algebra in elementary school. Kids are capable of learning algebra much younger than it's taught here in America. When she immigrated, she literally didn't learn any new math for four years. It's not a mistake we're ranked so poorly in the world math standings.
For international flights, you need to be there an hour early. For domestic, half an hour is possible, but risky.
I'm a frequent flier. It drives me crazy when I fly with people and they want to be there two or three hours early. Airlines won't even accept your baggage more than three hours beforr a flight.
I find it quite amusing that their "solution" to violent video games is Limbo.
They obviously never stepped one foot into that world. If anyone got through that game without being impaled or decapitated at least a dozen times, I would be very impressed.
He wants an ever increasing carbon tax to phase out pretty much all CO2 production, and transition to electric cars run by clean power.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/06/nasa-scientist-climate-change
>>Why do people seem to think that climate scientists advocate deindustrialisation?
Because of people like Hansen.
Sorry to burst your ideology, but pretty much all your facts are wrong.
>>There's a few hundred thousand in this country that are rich, and the rest of us are, or soon will be, dirt poor.
The US has the most millionaires of any country in the world, with 3M (about 1 out of 100 Americans is a millionaire!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire#Number_of_millionaires_by_country
The real median household income rose steadily from 1947 to the present day (not counting the current recession): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg
This includes all levels of income earners in America.
>>We can't manufacture most of the goods and services we depend on.
Manufacturing is doing fine: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/08/us-industrial-production-resumes-growth.html
>>It's just a matter of time until they can (and will) take the lead and do away with our exploitations.
If China stops exporting to us, there will be a disruption of our market as we shift production around. But China's economy would be destroyed.
That sounds absolutely delightful.
I get first dibs on your kidney.
My grandfather was an engineer back in the day when they were trying to figure out if concrete or asphalt was a better surface to use in the interstate system. He worked on an experiment in which tractor-trailers were run nonstop around a pair of tracks for a month or so to see which wore down more from the heavy loads.
I'm curious how people are supposed to defend themselves when the government takes all their money up front.
How is this even legal?
Our government was written with the assumption that men are inherently flawed and will seek to increase power at the expense of others.
Checks and balances.
The reason our health care costs so much is a complex issue, but most of it stems from government interference in the marketplace, and the extreme gyrations the industry does around the government regulations.
Single payer could probably work cheaper than our current system because of all these market deformities, but there's also free market approaches that would work, too.
If you look at American health care costs back when it was much more laissez faire, costs were much much lower than today, even after adjusting for inflation and new technologies.
My mobile devices do one thing: let me keep in touch with people (via email, SMS, phone, etc.) until I can get back to my desktop and get real work done.
Tablets and smartphones are a massive step back in usability.
Yeah, the crazy thing is that despite all that, our standard of living has been steadily increasing throughout all that time.
Buy a smaller one then. But they don't look bad at all. I use one.
The economy is not a fixed size pie.
Since the industrial revolution, the quality of life for everyone (rich and poor alike) has risen tremendously here in this country.
All companies make money by profiting from the labor of their employees. If they lost money on their employees, they'd go out of business. And being in a corporation with other people of similar skills and talents allows the corporation to make more money than the sum of the parts working individually.
As outrageous as it might seem for Ellison to buy an island, given how often I see /.-ers talk about buying their own island, it seems like he's just doing what we'd all do in his shoes anyway.