The single greatest book I've read on how misinformed teachers are, and how bad textbooks are in pre-university schooling, is "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" by James W. Loewen, published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1995.
In it, Loewen surveys 12 American history textbooks and itemizes point by point the errors, falsehoods and lies. He starts the the Indians and Columbus, mentions the evilness that was Woodrow Wilson, examines slavery, the Pilgrims, everything. He finds many sins of omission, plain propaganda and lazyness on the part of teachers and textbook publishers alike.
Loewen tends to overuse exclamation marks and ride the deep left line a little too often, but there's no denying the book explains clearly how you were cheated. Any liberal or even Marxist perspectives are so obvious as to be easily spotted and ignored if one so desires (there's not a lot of subtlety here on any count; Loewen could never be called mealy-mouthed, waffling or hesitant).
January I left the information technology field for good. One of the reasons I was happy to go was the increasing feeling that I couldn't stay informed. The main cause of that was the deluge of free trade journals, tech magazines and newsletters stuffing my snail mailbox.
It's not that there wasn't enough information; there was too much. At one time, I received 43 publications a month, some weekly, some monthly, and most of them complimentary subscriptions. On top of that were at least a dozen necessary web sites to check daily, ever-flowing listservs and email newsletters. (And then, of course, there was my non-tech reading of all media forms, and radio. No television, though, thank God).
So instead of doing my filtering for me, as a good editorial staff should, nearly all the pubs made it harder. Most tech publications have poor editorial discretion, dubious relationships between ads and editorial, rampant cases of me-too-ism, killer-app-ism, and doubtful expert credentials.
But now I'm completely blind and happier than ever!
An interview with these two poseurs on the radio revealed them to be incredibly naïve about labor, industry and the goals of the current underclass.
They were incapable of speaking intelligently about current legislation, modern unions, collective bargainting, high pay as compensation for long hours, the risks of IPOs, the trap of stock options, the benefits of loose working environments, marketability of skills, easy job mobility and dozens of other things. They were incoherent when they tried.
Instead, they reverted to "as we say in our book" and then they'd offer useless anecdotes of very little relevance.
Their voices were smirking, self-interested and self-indulgent. Their word choices and terminology were clichéd, hackneyed, borrowed. Overall, their tone was, "I can't believe a good fortune! I thought people would have found us out before now!" You could hear it all in their voices: pathetic, whiny, voices of spoiled children arguing from a position of supposed superiority.
I'm convinced that these two are the kind of people speak with their eyes closed, a psychological indicator that the conversation is all about the speaker, not the recipient.
Jon Katz's review does the book too much of a favor. These two dolts not only do not deserve space on Slashdot, they probably do not warrant space on your bookshelf.
This is not a troll. I believe these guys are in it for the money. They know zip about the high-tech working poor or other mistreated entities; they just thought they could make a killing on a book.
It doesn't handle phrase searches properly, like most search engines.
First, when a word in Initial Caps is typed in, it should default to a phrase search. For example, any three words typed in (Hillary Rodham Clinton) should be assumed to be a phrase first, and all results with this phrase should show up at the top of the page. Then the results in which the three words are not contiguous should appear.
Try searching for "World New York." Do you see any pages with "World New York"? No.
Now try searching for "related:www.worldnewyork.com" The "World New York" pages are in there. Why don't they come up in the phrase search?
I use phrase searching equally as much as majority-word results, so this is a real shortcoming to me.
[Majority-word results are when you type in a bunch of words that you'd like to appear in the results and the pages returned for your search are ranked with those having the majority of the search terms you entered at the top.]
An interesting and relevant article from the New Criterion points out that the backlash of censorship, at least in the US, often has an opposite affect of that intended:
"But the main reason why censorship has been discredited is that it is always stupid in practice, and whatever else it could prevent it could not, in America, prevent people from saying that."
This rebuttal sets off alarms that make me suspicious of it. That's not to say the original article does not do the same, but this one is clearly problematic.
-- Numerous "quoted" "words." -- Use of exclamation marks. -- Proving claims by lack of evidence rather than by the presence of it. -- Numerous unecessarily bold words. -- Judgmental words like "spew", "aspersion", "takes a swipe at" -- Hedge words like "probably" and "might" -- Use of speculative "what-if" scenarios -- Confuses number of sources with quality of conclusion -- Relies on speculation on the motives and intentions of persons now dead -- Uses his father as a source -- More, but why find them?
1. Lack of proper market controls (free, mandated, or otherwise), have led to a glut of goods.
2. In attempts to convert the stockpiles to sales, price wars have broken out.
3. Drastically reduced prices have cause downward-spiralling deflation.
Now, whether you believe in the free market or not, something is happening in the US that is not happening in China: our productivity levels are such as to promote low unemployment, high standards of living, low inflation, a relatively stable investment arena, etc.
This, of course, simplifies it too much. Productivity can be both a cause and an effect of other market forces.
One of the causes of China's deflation is a distrust of the economic situation, leading to low spending and high saving rates. The Chinese are hoarding their money, while Americans spend freely, even into debt.
The American productivity level may be so high that it can only be regulated by the hypers-spending of our consumerist society.
Avid's completely pulled away from the Mac. Avid has since rescinded their decision to abandon on the Mac platform. Turns out they reason they had the impression there were more NT people internetested is because Avid never heard from most Mac folks about problems, upgrades and the like. The Mac folks, when hearing about Avid's decision, soon got on the horn and the keyboard, though.
The Internet should be admitted as the fifty-first State.
The Internet would have its own voting electorate and its own state laws, and its own taxation ability. US interstate commerce laws would apply to relationships between the Internet and the other 50 states. [Think of the relationships between, say, Martinique and the other overseas departments and the rest of France.]
Citizenship in the US Internet State could be granted by proof of residency, if so desired.
Foreign nationals and businesses using or connected to the Internet could set up their own Internet political entities in their own lands. Commerce and communication between the various Internet States around the world would be regulated by current international law, treaties and agreements.
[For some reason, when the word "Internet" is added to a debate, a previously settled issue is suddenly open to renegotiation, even in the face of established, current law.]
Absolutely: Firewire and USB devices are part of the new oncoming protocols: as long as the manufacturer makes drivers, and the hardware and OS implement the protocols correctly, everything should be compatible.
In fact, I've taken a USB Zip drive from Windows to Mac with zero problem.
There's something inherently slimy about linking directly to content rather than to the original page that contains it.
It's intellectually dishonest, in fact. It's not the stubbornness of old media saying this, it's everybody but the pants-less newcomers in love with the idea of content free for the taking. Even if it's not truly free. Merely linking to pages is perfectly acceptable: that's what the web is about. By linking to pages, not content, you provide the originating site with due respect, earned revenue and earned visits, publicity and promotion, increased identity and branding. You provide your visitors with the full experience and an opportunity to view an item in context. Withholding context is like hit singles: what is the rest of the album for? Why did the creator spend all the time and effort and money? Shouldn't the opportunity for immersion be offered?
When I see what I consider stolen links, there's always a sense of unease, discomfort, and dislike. Part of it is that these sites keep poor company: the worst offenders are porn sites, warez sites and the banner-laden pages of wimps with puny get-rich-via-banner schemes in their heads. But it's also because it's unfair, unreasonable, arrogant; it's the maneuver of the stupid and the cowardly, the uncreative, the lazy, those lacking in judgment and intelligence, the pimples on the ass of humanity.
If you wish to include an excellent trailer or movie or gif, provide your users to the link of the page of the owners of that content: your site gets credit for the referrer URL, your site becomes and avenue for path-making to other sites and your site still is given credit for the new information by your visitors.
Where are the rules of gentlemanly and gentlewomanly conduct that guide most of us? They should apply here, too. It feels wrong to link to images on another site. At least, it should.
Re:That system has been running in Canada for year
on
Beaming Money
·
· Score: 1
What you're describing is basically the same as ATM cards that can now be used any place that accepts a credit card: damned near anywhere.
We've had ATM-cards-as-credit-cards in the States for a number of years now, and to be honest I don't think smart cards are every going to catch on. My money is stored in the bank. Why do I need another middle man? My ATM card deducts directly from my bank account, or I can get cash if I want, and Chase (my bank) now allows you to do bill paying from the ATM machine.
The day that smart cards become universal is the day they act like banks: you can do a person to person transfer on the spot, your money collects interest if you don't spend it, and if you want, I can get in Euros or kroner or whatever.
For the record, and immediately off topic, the best fiction ever written about large foreign matter smashing into the Earth is "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I highly recommend it. Drama, scientific accuracy, commies, astronauts, violence, floods, etc. Easily beats anyting you've seen on screen, and brings back some of the scary vibes from the Seventies.
Reminds me of Douglas Coupland's concept in "Microserfs." One programmer on a coding binge locked himself in his office, so his pals went to the store and bought only foods they could slip under the door: toaster pastries, fruit roll-ups, individually wrapped cheese slices, etc.
I sent an email message to Richtel about this last time, when he explicitly jumbled crackers and hackers together.
Maybe it had an effect, because this time he says "so-called crackers."
As a hobbyist linguist, I can tell you that hacker will always be mis-used by some. It will never recover from the original mistake.
In addition, while we're at it, "bug" is now being used to refer to viruses, particularly in the Melissa coverage. This is an unfortunate homonym, because as most everybody knows, virus does equal bug in the medical world, but virus does not equal bug in the computer world.
You've hit upon a long-time question of mine: how does nano heat dissipate? If thousands or millions of nano machines are working in proximity, say, in a couple square millimeters, isn't there a risk of spontaneous combustion similar to that in grain silos?
This is the best translation I can do with my limited Swedish:
"Our best wooden furniture does not compare to the genius of Linus Torvalds. We bow and scrape before him, and in respect, we silence our mobile phones. We give him the door codes to our buildings so that he may visits our flats. We let him wear his shoes in the house. Cars stop in the streets for him. We drink Aquavit to him, and we compose and sing songs to him at our Kreftskivas. We name species of crayfish after him. Last year Stockholm was the Culture Capital of Europe, this year it is the Linus Capital of Europe, and we will name him winner of Eurovision automatically."
Slashdot Mirror
Dogma: Renter
Malkovich: See it in the theatre
Toy Story 2: See it in the theatre; requires big screen
Princess Monokone: See it in the theatre; requires big screen
Riding with the Devil: Renter
Insider: Must see it any way you can
Millennium has two N's, everybody.
The single greatest book I've read on how misinformed teachers are, and how bad textbooks are in pre-university schooling, is "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" by James W. Loewen, published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1995.
In it, Loewen surveys 12 American history textbooks and itemizes point by point the errors, falsehoods and lies. He starts the the Indians and Columbus, mentions the evilness that was Woodrow Wilson, examines slavery, the Pilgrims, everything. He finds many sins of omission, plain propaganda and lazyness on the part of teachers and textbook publishers alike.
Loewen tends to overuse exclamation marks and ride the deep left line a little too often, but there's no denying the book explains clearly how you were cheated. Any liberal or even Marxist perspectives are so obvious as to be easily spotted and ignored if one so desires (there's not a lot of subtlety here on any count; Loewen could never be called mealy-mouthed, waffling or hesitant).
January I left the information technology field for good. One of the reasons I was happy to go was the increasing feeling that I couldn't stay informed. The main cause of that was the deluge of free trade journals, tech magazines and newsletters stuffing my snail mailbox.
It's not that there wasn't enough information; there was too much. At one time, I received 43 publications a month, some weekly, some monthly, and most of them complimentary subscriptions. On top of that were at least a dozen necessary web sites to check daily, ever-flowing listservs and email newsletters. (And then, of course, there was my non-tech reading of all media forms, and radio. No television, though, thank God).
So instead of doing my filtering for me, as a good editorial staff should, nearly all the pubs made it harder. Most tech publications have poor editorial discretion, dubious relationships between ads and editorial, rampant cases of me-too-ism, killer-app-ism, and doubtful expert credentials.
But now I'm completely blind and happier than ever!
[joke]
An interview with these two poseurs on the radio revealed them to be incredibly naïve about labor, industry and the goals of the current underclass.
They were incapable of speaking intelligently about current legislation, modern unions, collective bargainting, high pay as compensation for long hours, the risks of IPOs, the trap of stock options, the benefits of loose working environments, marketability of skills, easy job mobility and dozens of other things. They were incoherent when they tried.
Instead, they reverted to "as we say in our book" and then they'd offer useless anecdotes of very little relevance.
Their voices were smirking, self-interested and self-indulgent. Their word choices and terminology were clichéd, hackneyed, borrowed. Overall, their tone was, "I can't believe a good fortune! I thought people would have found us out before now!" You could hear it all in their voices: pathetic, whiny, voices of spoiled children arguing from a position of supposed superiority.
I'm convinced that these two are the kind of people speak with their eyes closed, a psychological indicator that the conversation is all about the speaker, not the recipient.
Jon Katz's review does the book too much of a favor. These two dolts not only do not deserve space on Slashdot, they probably do not warrant space on your bookshelf.
This is not a troll. I believe these guys are in it for the money. They know zip about the high-tech working poor or other mistreated entities; they just thought they could make a killing on a book.
It doesn't handle phrase searches properly, like most search engines.
First, when a word in Initial Caps is typed in, it should default to a phrase search. For example, any three words typed in (Hillary Rodham Clinton) should be assumed to be a phrase first, and all results with this phrase should show up at the top of the page. Then the results in which the three words are not contiguous should appear.
Try searching for "World New York." Do you see any pages with "World New York"? No.
Now try searching for "related:www.worldnewyork.com" The "World New York" pages are in there. Why don't they come up in the phrase search?
I use phrase searching equally as much as majority-word results, so this is a real shortcoming to me.
[Majority-word results are when you type in a bunch of words that you'd like to appear in the results and the pages returned for your search are ranked with those having the majority of the search terms you entered at the top.]
An interesting and relevant article from the New Criterion points out that the backlash of censorship, at least in the US, often has an opposite affect of that intended:
"But the main reason why censorship has been discredited is that it is always stupid in practice, and whatever else it could prevent it could not, in America, prevent people from saying that."
This rebuttal sets off alarms that make me suspicious of it. That's not to say the original article does not do the same, but this one is clearly problematic.
-- Numerous "quoted" "words."
-- Use of exclamation marks.
-- Proving claims by lack of evidence rather than by the presence of it.
-- Numerous unecessarily bold words.
-- Judgmental words like "spew", "aspersion", "takes a swipe at"
-- Hedge words like "probably" and "might"
-- Use of speculative "what-if" scenarios
-- Confuses number of sources with quality of conclusion
-- Relies on speculation on the motives and intentions of persons now dead
-- Uses his father as a source
-- More, but why find them?
Typing Errors in Reason magazine.
Network Effects, Path Dependence and Lock-In
DISMAL SCIENCE FICTIONS Network Effects, Microsoft, and Antitrust Speculation
There are more acres of forested land in the United States now than there were at the founding of this country.
In two years, we'll all have huge, digital, plasma televisions on the living room wall. Some of us will also have them in the bathroom.
In two years, we'll have Linux on our credit cards, in our running shoes and trainers, in our hats, heads and toasters.
In two years, we'll be living under the sea and speaking with the dolphins.
In two years, we'll have an outpost on Mars.
In two years, we'll all be two years older.
In two years, the world will collide with an asteroid and only the bacteria will survive. Some Linux boxen will still not need to be rebooted.
http://www.worldnewyork.com
You better be kidding, buster. There's nothing I like more than buying 'em by the "sack."
The key word here being "proper." Top-down command economy equals improper market controls.
Here's what's happening:
1. Lack of proper market controls (free, mandated, or otherwise), have led to a glut of goods.
2. In attempts to convert the stockpiles to sales, price wars have broken out.
3. Drastically reduced prices have cause downward-spiralling deflation.
Now, whether you believe in the free market or not, something is happening in the US that is not happening in China: our productivity levels are such as to promote low unemployment, high standards of living, low inflation, a relatively stable investment arena, etc.
This, of course, simplifies it too much. Productivity can be both a cause and an effect of other market forces.
One of the causes of China's deflation is a distrust of the economic situation, leading to low spending and high saving rates. The Chinese are hoarding their money, while Americans spend freely, even into debt.
The American productivity level may be so high that it can only be regulated by the hypers-spending of our consumerist society.
Avid's completely pulled away from the Mac.
Avid has since rescinded their decision to abandon on the Mac platform. Turns out they reason they had the impression there were more NT people internetested is because Avid never heard from most Mac folks about problems, upgrades and the like. The Mac folks, when hearing about Avid's decision, soon got on the horn and the keyboard, though.
The Internet should be admitted as the fifty-first State.
The Internet would have its own voting electorate and its own state laws, and its own taxation ability. US interstate commerce laws would apply to relationships between the Internet and the other 50 states. [Think of the relationships between, say, Martinique and the other overseas departments and the rest of France.]
Citizenship in the US Internet State could be granted by proof of residency, if so desired.
Foreign nationals and businesses using or connected to the Internet could set up their own Internet political entities in their own lands. Commerce and communication between the various Internet States around the world would be regulated by current international law, treaties and agreements.
[For some reason, when the word "Internet" is added to a debate, a previously settled issue is suddenly open to renegotiation, even in the face of established, current law.]
Absolutely: Firewire and USB devices are part of the new oncoming protocols: as long as the manufacturer makes drivers, and the hardware and OS implement the protocols correctly, everything should be compatible.
In fact, I've taken a USB Zip drive from Windows to Mac with zero problem.
That was a friendly use of the word "fuck." See this.
Mac (and LinuxPPC) user here: What the friggin' hell is a Winmodem?
There's something inherently slimy about linking directly to content rather than to the original page that contains it.
It's intellectually dishonest, in fact. It's not the stubbornness of old media saying this, it's everybody but the pants-less newcomers in love with the idea of content free for the taking. Even if it's not truly free. Merely linking to pages is perfectly acceptable: that's what the web is about. By linking to pages, not content, you provide the originating site with due respect, earned revenue and earned visits, publicity and promotion, increased identity and branding. You provide your visitors with the full experience and an opportunity to view an item in context. Withholding context is like hit singles: what is the rest of the album for? Why did the creator spend all the time and effort and money? Shouldn't the opportunity for immersion be offered?
When I see what I consider stolen links, there's always a sense of unease, discomfort, and dislike. Part of it is that these sites keep poor company: the worst offenders are porn sites, warez sites and the banner-laden pages of wimps with puny get-rich-via-banner schemes in their heads. But it's also because it's unfair, unreasonable, arrogant; it's the maneuver of the stupid and the cowardly, the uncreative, the lazy, those lacking in judgment and intelligence, the pimples on the ass of humanity.
If you wish to include an excellent trailer or movie or gif, provide your users to the link of the page of the owners of that content: your site gets credit for the referrer URL, your site becomes and avenue for path-making to other sites and your site still is given credit for the new information by your visitors.
Where are the rules of gentlemanly and gentlewomanly conduct that guide most of us? They should apply here, too. It feels wrong to link to images on another site. At least, it should.
What you're describing is basically the same as ATM cards that can now be used any place that accepts a credit card: damned near anywhere.
We've had ATM-cards-as-credit-cards in the States for a number of years now, and to be honest I don't think smart cards are every going to catch on. My money is stored in the bank. Why do I need another middle man? My ATM card deducts directly from my bank account, or I can get cash if I want, and Chase (my bank) now allows you to do bill paying from the ATM machine.
The day that smart cards become universal is the day they act like banks: you can do a person to person transfer on the spot, your money collects interest if you don't spend it, and if you want, I can get in Euros or kroner or whatever.
World New York
Reminds me of Douglas Coupland's concept in "Microserfs." One programmer on a coding binge locked himself in his office, so his pals went to the store and bought only foods they could slip under the door: toaster pastries, fruit roll-ups, individually wrapped cheese slices, etc.
World New York
http://www.worldnewyork.com/
I sent an email message to Richtel about this last time, when he explicitly jumbled crackers and hackers together.
Maybe it had an effect, because this time he says "so-called crackers."
As a hobbyist linguist, I can tell you that hacker will always be mis-used by some. It will never recover from the original mistake.
In addition, while we're at it, "bug" is now being used to refer to viruses, particularly in the Melissa coverage. This is an unfortunate homonym, because as most everybody knows, virus does equal bug in the medical world, but virus does not equal bug in the computer world.
World New York
You've hit upon a long-time question of mine: how does nano heat dissipate? If thousands or millions of nano machines are working in proximity, say, in a couple square millimeters, isn't there a risk of spontaneous combustion similar to that in grain silos?
This is the best translation I can do with my limited Swedish:
"Our best wooden furniture does not compare to the genius of Linus Torvalds. We bow and scrape before him, and in respect, we silence our mobile phones. We give him the door codes to our buildings so that he may visits our flats. We let him wear his shoes in the house. Cars stop in the streets for him. We drink Aquavit to him, and we compose and sing songs to him at our Kreftskivas. We name species of crayfish after him. Last year Stockholm was the Culture Capital of Europe, this year it is the Linus Capital of Europe, and we will name him winner of Eurovision automatically."