Undergraduate teaching typically takes the form of impressively qualified but distant professors giving lectures to huge theatres of undergraduates, with almost no opportunity for personal contact. Though I'm not all that impressed by the US higher education system, I think it probably has the edge on the German one for the bulk of people who pass through it.
And the US system isn't lecturing in huge halls (for the most part?) I'm a fan of the German system because its research oriented - universities shouldn't just be about the transmission of knowledge but also of the creation/discovery of knowledge as well. The Germans were the model that many American universities followed. And it beats the hell out of the medieval cultural BS you have to put up with at English universities.
Learning German is a hurdle...
I wonder if Germans aren't used to badly spoken of heavily accented German as English speakers are used to foriegners speaking English with a foriegn accent? I sometimes wonder if my German has become that bad or if Germans are just not used to German coming out of an Asian face. In any case, I think that in major metropolitan areas of Germany, you can get by with just English and a smattering of very basic German.
Hong Kong is the most wired city, but also the most expensive
On the other hand, you can get away with just English in HK. On the whole, HK is probably the most roundeye friendly city in East Asia.
Of course, learning a little bit of Cantonese will go a long way on geek friendly factor - wandering around the markets in Kowloon shopping for cutting edge stuff that will take forever or will never appear on the US market could well be worth it.
Cause if it can't be bought or sold in Hong Kong, it can't be bought or sold.
My first thought when reading this article was the example of the eye as complex parallel structural evolution as well, but on second thought, that might not be a good analogy.
There are better analogies to refute the featherlike structures too complex story. Not every "attempt" at evolution results in a successful product. For example, certain types of ferns "attempted" to develop seeds long before the modern parent of seed bearing plants did. For some reason or another, this family of ferns became extinct and nothing, evolutionarily, came of the seed like structures. Maybe this reptile attempted to develop feathers from scales but became extinct for whatever reason before it got the chance propogate itself.
I think this is more plausible than a recessive gene being carried through 75 million years of development before manifesting itself in archeopteryx or whatever.
From what I read (just went to the school library to read the orig article) yes, it did have a breastbone and a "wishbone". But then again, as with all fossils, the function of any structure is open to interpretation.
Its really open to interpretation on whether or not it had feathers at all.
You know, I know what Capoeira is, know people who are practioners, and as a student of the martial arts myself can appreciate the incredible physical beauty of two Capoeira maestros doing their dance but your engine isn't firing on all cylinders if you think the very essence of Capoeira isn't style over substance.
Noone sues gun companies for making guns that are used to kill, or for posting schematics that could be used to build them
There are a dozen lawsuits going on right now that have been filed against firearms manufacturers - many by cities and municipalities under the auspices of collecting damages caused by criminal use of firearms made cheaply availiable by arms manufacturers. And its not just the cheap Sat night specials getting hit, but Smith&Wesson and Beretta.
It really strikes my irony bone when the propeller heads of the world (esp here on/.) get bent out of shape about the way the public use words like hacker to describe "the wrong thing." Face it, language is the biggest open source project undertaken by man. Words come and go, if you like a word, you use it. If everyone uses it and finds it useful, it becomes a part of the next kernel recompile. If you're still using a old version and don't keep up with the updates, you end up like an old Eskimo, floating off on an iceberg. There's a delicious irony when would be hackers here of all places, complain about the public hijacking "our" word. In desperately trying to control the word, the hangers on of the world are unknowingly becoming what they despise the most. The language code is free.
Slashdot Mirror
And the US system isn't lecturing in huge halls (for the most part?) I'm a fan of the German system because its research oriented - universities shouldn't just be about the transmission of knowledge but also of the creation/discovery of knowledge as well. The Germans were the model that many American universities followed. And it beats the hell out of the medieval cultural BS you have to put up with at English universities.
Learning German is a hurdle...
I wonder if Germans aren't used to badly spoken of heavily accented German as English speakers are used to foriegners speaking English with a foriegn accent? I sometimes wonder if my German has become that bad or if Germans are just not used to German coming out of an Asian face. In any case, I think that in major metropolitan areas of Germany, you can get by with just English and a smattering of very basic German.
On the other hand, you can get away with just English in HK. On the whole, HK is probably the most roundeye friendly city in East Asia.
Of course, learning a little bit of Cantonese will go a long way on geek friendly factor - wandering around the markets in Kowloon shopping for cutting edge stuff that will take forever or will never appear on the US market could well be worth it.
Cause if it can't be bought or sold in Hong Kong, it can't be bought or sold.
There are better analogies to refute the featherlike structures too complex story. Not every "attempt" at evolution results in a successful product. For example, certain types of ferns "attempted" to develop seeds long before the modern parent of seed bearing plants did. For some reason or another, this family of ferns became extinct and nothing, evolutionarily, came of the seed like structures. Maybe this reptile attempted to develop feathers from scales but became extinct for whatever reason before it got the chance propogate itself.
I think this is more plausible than a recessive gene being carried through 75 million years of development before manifesting itself in archeopteryx or whatever.
Its really open to interpretation on whether or not it had feathers at all.
> Nintendo's Game Boy Advanced handheld console
>(Does anybody *still* use those?)
Where did this come from? The Gameboy family is the #1 gaming system still in popular use today the world over.
Hell, I know sorority girls who wouldn't know a Dreamcast from a NES that have and still play with Gameboys.
Not to mention that Gameboy Advanced still hasn't been released yet.
The perfect martial art for MI:2. ;)
There are a dozen lawsuits going on right now that have been filed against firearms manufacturers - many by cities and municipalities under the auspices of collecting damages caused by criminal use of firearms made cheaply availiable by arms manufacturers. And its not just the cheap Sat night specials getting hit, but Smith&Wesson and Beretta.
It really strikes my irony bone when the propeller heads of the world (esp here on /.) get bent out of shape about the way the public use words like hacker to describe "the wrong thing." Face it, language is the biggest open source project undertaken by man. Words come and go, if you like a word, you use it. If everyone uses it and finds it useful, it becomes a part of the next kernel recompile. If you're still using a old version and don't keep up with the updates, you end up like an old Eskimo, floating off on an iceberg. There's a delicious irony when would be hackers here of all places, complain about the public hijacking "our" word. In desperately trying to control the word, the hangers on of the world are unknowingly becoming what they despise the most. The language code is free.