... "lets never improve anything because some of us managed to make due in totally different conditions almost a century ago"... yea... good for you managing to get somewhere in a world where skills weren't generally required for jobs, and it was possible to get a job without a high school or college education. Cause, you know, nothing has changed in the past century. It is not about making due, it is about improving systems to make them better. You know, improving things.
I walk to my college classes about a mile away, but I moved close so I didn't have too walk too far. I walk barefoot, uphill part of both ways, through wind, rain, sleet and snow, all year round, totally barefoot. I do it by choice, but hell I still do it.
The good old "well, some people do it so lets not take the effort to fix it" argument. The sad fact is that with internet and video games, kids can get as much mental stimulation as they want without ever going to school, and are given the general impression that life will be fine whether they go to school or not. People in those countries know it is not an option. But if those poor schools used more contextual and relevant teaching styles, and filled in the specifics with practice, then you could absolutely teach those students a lot faster too.
It doesn't have to be expensive at all. Look at how much things like Khan Academy are helping tens of thousands of people learn. You can watch the same video as many times as you need until you get it. You can look up other methods on the internet and watch other kinds of videos. Our schools simply need to connect with such methods, and develop new types of education that can teach a large number of students easily and cheaply, and provide tutoring upon request, if even only for one concept.
The current system is absolutely a bullshit hell. In high school I was put in handcuffs and told I would be arrested because somebody beat me up and it was ridiculous that I let it happen (like really, what was I going to do about it). The simple fact is that it is retarded to demand students memorize a bunch of unrelated crap out of order and keep it memorized forever. That is simply not possible for anyone without a perfect memory, and creates an artificial overlap of memory and intelligence, which is absolutely not true.
Kids in some areas of the world willfully walk miles to school every day. Why? because they are learning. In America, our schools force our students to memorize arbitrary facts in arbitrary order with no regard to context or meaning. This is problematic because the brain is typically terrible at memorizing out of context, out of order, arbitrary information, we have a very small capacity for it. On the other hand, it is possible to cover several weeks of math in a single day, and the students will enjoy and remember it, it is is conceptual, in proper context, and useful. I learned partial fraction decomposition 4 years ago, and just learned a use for it today in differential equations. All you have to do to compel students to attend school is to teach them, instead of screaming at them to memorize totally pointless bullshit while eating shitty food, being told what they are allowed to say and where they have to be every minute of the day, even when they are allowed to go to the bathroom, and they can be arrested for being physically attacked. Of course truancy is a problem in this bullshit hell of a system.
Support real education reform. Well educated children don't need strict discipline, because they know better, they understand why it is bad to do X action. But if you just scream at them "OBEY ME OR SUFFER!" of course they are going to be angsty and rebellious. What an insensitive clod.
Easy, just scan people as they walk by, record their numbers and get yourself an adjustable implant. You could change identities whenever you please. That is probably the easiest to spoof of all.
Dude, it is not about processing power, it is just ridiculously glitchy. I can't run it on my intel i7 920, along with 2 SLI GTS 250s, and 12 gb or ram in 2 triple channel kits at 2000 htz.
That computer I just mentioned, cost me 1,200 dollars, and I use it primarily for doing my work. Games are just a secondary. Consoles can't be used to get work done. Sure, the PS3 could be for a time, but no longer. I can afford to keep my computer for work, school, and study. I can't afford to waste money on a dedicated gaming system. So yes, consoles are for the rich.
And GTA IV PC version sucked, and still sucks. I still play GTA SA because GTA IV is just to fucking glitchy to be any fun, and every time I start getting something done it crashes. I am a few years behind on games, part of the whole "poor guy" thing. Can't really afford to buy the latest games.
I wanted to play it, but the PC version was shit, even with a top of the line run anything computer, it still lagged like crazy and crashed after 5 laggy minutes. Consoles are for those rich enough to buy them, I am not in that category, and therefore have to miss out on some of the most awesome games. Like GTA IV, Fable 2, 3. etc.
I have a lot of trouble with it. I have thousands of pages of school papers useful for portfolios, I have homework assignments for this semester and the previous one (in case I need to dispute grades), hundreds of pictures, tons of music, a lot of junk, and a lot of things that aren't junk. Every few months I manage to go through some of it and organize it somewhat, but it is still a major problem. I throw out garbage bags full of junk during these cleanings, yet I still have pictures, music, stuff that I want to keep that gets too much to organize simply. Not hoarding much, just too many files to view at once or search at once comfortably. The same with bills and reciepts, I need to keep them all for college, tax write offs, ect., as I am one of those poor saps that was convinced to go into debt to get an education (only way I could, poor).
I do admit it would be a lot easier if I could afford a smartphone and the plan for one. right now people can only really reliably reach me by e-mail.
It is win7 ultimate x64 just for clarification. I think a European version, it messes up a couple of my keys, " and @ are switched, as are £ and #, where the pound should be a hash, and a hash should be a backslash. Confuddling.
I too have win7, but I also have a ton of programs installed, increasing the size of my dll libraries. I have about 10 autodesk programs, several adobe programs, and many other things. I run everything from simulation design to product design, virtual landscaping and architecture, video encoding and editing, mapping utilities, a wide assortment of video games, stress analysis and fluid dynamics programs, mathematical modeling software, audio editing software, programming environments, networking utilities, publishing, video conferencing, electronic circuit simulation, accounting and trading, ect. My windows folder is 45 gb, my program files folder (and program files x86) is around 95 gb. So like I said, I would need a 128 GB SSD to hold all of the things that need to go fast.
I am a believer in using computers as tools, and I don't just have an OS on some minimalist shit, I have a decked out system that can do anything I can imagine. It still runs very fast, as it is spec'd out, but I have to admit I can't wait for the price to drop so I can run this thing off an SSD.
It really saddens me when I see people using computers only for internet and word processing, instead of allowing them to make their dreams come true.
Now of course I would happily set up my laptop to remote desktop my computer and use all of these utilities wherever I go. That would be great, if only I could figure out how to go about doing it. Could you recommend any software that would allow me to do so?
64 gb SSD won't even hold my operating system, I would need at least 128 gb SSD to hold my OS and and program files. Which is a good 250 bucks at the cheapest. That is a lot, considering I just bought a 1.5 tb external HD for just 49.99. Sure speed is not that great, but right now that 250 is insane for all but the most serious. Now if costs drop to 50 cents a gb, I would happily pay 65 bucks for a 128 GB SSD. That would be absolutely worth it for holding my os/program files.
Airship Launch pad. Yes, the dust is abrasive, but on a microscopic level. The biggest problem is that it sticks to everything. The abrasiveness is only a problem for internal components which can be easily protected and biology.
Religion really has a strong history of following through on its promises and achieving anything at all, hahahahahahahaha. Dumb ass investor should have known better.Thats what you get for betting on shit.
Sure they will devalue rapidly, but not until a few hundred million worth has been sold. Plus, when that loses too much value we can just ship back gold, make reserves of water for spacecraft passing through, ect. Cheaper to ship things off the moon than off the earth.
Actually, after the initial base it would be cheap as hell. Once you set up a small base, you can send tons upon tons of moon rocks (which sell for quite a lot), gold and other things, and send them back to earth using very small amounts of energy. The base can be entirely robotic, and it could pay for itself in just a few months. If we found rare earth metals, platinum, rhodium, or helium compounds this could also be incredibly profitable for a plethora of mining opportunities. With threats from china to stop exporting anything rare, and hoard it to drive up costs, it would be worth it to search.
Compensating for something. He is just pissed that people have freedom on the android, which means porn can exist, and so can non-apple-approved bullshit. Common, yes the fragmentation is a problem with the android market, but at least there is freedom there too.
COMMON GUYS! This is a website that is *supposed* to consist primarily of intelligent people and nobody asked the important question, or pointed out the moronic flaw!
Of course the US will have the highest absolute number of infected computers, we have the highest number of computers period! This is only relevant if we have the highest PERCENTAGE of infected computers. if 10% of our computers are infected and 100% of canada's computers are infected, we still probably have a lot more infected computers than canada, despite better upkeep.
That being said, I don't doubt that we also have the highest percentage of infected computers, I am just flabbergasted something so incredibly stupid and meaningless would be posted to slashdot when any moron that passed middle school math class should know why this article is totally meaningless, but simply by switching from descriptions in absolute terms to description in percent infected terms, the article would all of a sudden actually show that americans suck with computers or are targeted more frequently. Right now all it is saying is that we have more infected computers than anybody else. Well that's fine and dandy, I suppose you are going to tell me that China has more cases of the flu than the US does too? I mean, sure they have several times more people than us, so even if they had double the flu cases they would still be healthier per capita than us. You just need to say they have twice as many flu cases per population than the US, and it suddenly becomes a glaring scar on their image instead of a meaningless rant about irrelevant bullshit.
And really, i am always the guy attacking people who inject excess sense into a conversation gone terribly astray, but this doesn't even have a baseline of sense to which an excess can be added.
Also, most of the posts are just pointless nerd culture which speaks nothing of intelligence simply that you watched star trek instead of football. Really the both of you are the same unless you can say something important and they can't. And when you lose the ability to say something important, like a per capita comparison of issues between cultures instead of ranting about how your country has more penises just because it has a higher number of total men, then you are no longer any more intelligent than even the dumbest jock. What is nerd culture worth if you are not being nerdy but totally retarded, ranting about pointless bullshit like how hot your quarterback/sci-fi character is?
The nature of this should be covered under anti-trust legislation, however the government stopped protecting consumers from dangerous monopolies on not just corporate works but on ideas and concepts. one is reminded of xkcd 129: Content Protection.
The significantly higher costs of game production and distribution, along with the drastically inflated dollar? Hell, incomes are not exactly higher, but prices sure are steady, despite decreasing costs. They make easily twice the profit per sale as they did back then.
Now that that is done, I might note that Windows doesn't act like a virus. You can easily remove it, it doesn't spread across things and tell you what you are allowed to do, if you know how to use it. Apple and apple products on the other hand are as close to virii as an operating system can get.
While I thank you for your advice, I think it is important to look beyond people like yourself or myself. What special skills or talents do the millions living in poverty in inner cities have? What can they do to get in a better situation? When jobs there dry up, they aren't exactly off to much. And I will be honest, I don't have the capital to monetize what I do. I am working on side stuff, but I am totally crazy and do things nobody I know would even consider, yet actually do, and that gives me a significant advantage in monetized insanity. The margins are too low for the general person to make enough money to live off of.
I will say though, if/when window farms and small gardens start providing enough for the average family to sustain themselves on, and once power generation becomes a bit more dispersed, solar panels become cheaper and living is actually cheap instead of inordinately expensive, that will be a great reality. And sure somebody like me, with extensive crap in my background, honors on everything and an eagle scout badge has it pretty easy to land myself somewhere, but what about most people? My main point is regarding the average joe.
Myself, I need to stay in college, primarily because, as I have said, I am an inventor. My ideas have been in many areas with many backgrounds, and the knowledge to create them largely comes from college, not much of the higher level stuff is available online. If I want to know advanced electrodynamics, I have to stay in college, or do something crazy and illegal.
And if everyone tried to do what you, or your room mate did that, nobody would be able to. Very niche situations that you got simply lucky to be in. I moved to an area where rent was half of what it was where I lived and where meat is cheaper, and where college was significantly cheaper. As happy as your story sounds, it doesn't work for everybody. And for some people our talents don't go far. For example, I invented a 'filter' that separates nitrogen from the other parts of air, so that car engines can be made more efficient and not produce nitrogen based pollution. And yet, I can't even get a company to look at it. Not even to talk to me, I have studied the process, I have asked professionals for advice, blah blah. it is not for lack of trying, but I am tired of poverty. And I can't exactly afford down payments or anything like that. And I have looked into every option I can, I have searched like hell and I simply don't have any easy options.
Also, if it takes me longer to graduate I have more living expenses I have to take out in loans, because even with an increase in how much I could make working it would still cost me several thousand more to extend college.
Slashdot Mirror
... "lets never improve anything because some of us managed to make due in totally different conditions almost a century ago" ... yea... good for you managing to get somewhere in a world where skills weren't generally required for jobs, and it was possible to get a job without a high school or college education. Cause, you know, nothing has changed in the past century. It is not about making due, it is about improving systems to make them better. You know, improving things.
I walk to my college classes about a mile away, but I moved close so I didn't have too walk too far. I walk barefoot, uphill part of both ways, through wind, rain, sleet and snow, all year round, totally barefoot. I do it by choice, but hell I still do it.
The good old "well, some people do it so lets not take the effort to fix it" argument. The sad fact is that with internet and video games, kids can get as much mental stimulation as they want without ever going to school, and are given the general impression that life will be fine whether they go to school or not. People in those countries know it is not an option. But if those poor schools used more contextual and relevant teaching styles, and filled in the specifics with practice, then you could absolutely teach those students a lot faster too.
It doesn't have to be expensive at all. Look at how much things like Khan Academy are helping tens of thousands of people learn. You can watch the same video as many times as you need until you get it. You can look up other methods on the internet and watch other kinds of videos. Our schools simply need to connect with such methods, and develop new types of education that can teach a large number of students easily and cheaply, and provide tutoring upon request, if even only for one concept.
The current system is absolutely a bullshit hell. In high school I was put in handcuffs and told I would be arrested because somebody beat me up and it was ridiculous that I let it happen (like really, what was I going to do about it). The simple fact is that it is retarded to demand students memorize a bunch of unrelated crap out of order and keep it memorized forever. That is simply not possible for anyone without a perfect memory, and creates an artificial overlap of memory and intelligence, which is absolutely not true.
Kids in some areas of the world willfully walk miles to school every day. Why? because they are learning. In America, our schools force our students to memorize arbitrary facts in arbitrary order with no regard to context or meaning. This is problematic because the brain is typically terrible at memorizing out of context, out of order, arbitrary information, we have a very small capacity for it. On the other hand, it is possible to cover several weeks of math in a single day, and the students will enjoy and remember it, it is is conceptual, in proper context, and useful. I learned partial fraction decomposition 4 years ago, and just learned a use for it today in differential equations. All you have to do to compel students to attend school is to teach them, instead of screaming at them to memorize totally pointless bullshit while eating shitty food, being told what they are allowed to say and where they have to be every minute of the day, even when they are allowed to go to the bathroom, and they can be arrested for being physically attacked. Of course truancy is a problem in this bullshit hell of a system.
Support real education reform. Well educated children don't need strict discipline, because they know better, they understand why it is bad to do X action. But if you just scream at them "OBEY ME OR SUFFER!" of course they are going to be angsty and rebellious. What an insensitive clod.
Cut off their hands.
Easy, just scan people as they walk by, record their numbers and get yourself an adjustable implant. You could change identities whenever you please. That is probably the easiest to spoof of all.
Dude, it is not about processing power, it is just ridiculously glitchy. I can't run it on my intel i7 920, along with 2 SLI GTS 250s, and 12 gb or ram in 2 triple channel kits at 2000 htz.
That computer I just mentioned, cost me 1,200 dollars, and I use it primarily for doing my work. Games are just a secondary. Consoles can't be used to get work done. Sure, the PS3 could be for a time, but no longer. I can afford to keep my computer for work, school, and study. I can't afford to waste money on a dedicated gaming system. So yes, consoles are for the rich.
And GTA IV PC version sucked, and still sucks. I still play GTA SA because GTA IV is just to fucking glitchy to be any fun, and every time I start getting something done it crashes. I am a few years behind on games, part of the whole "poor guy" thing. Can't really afford to buy the latest games.
I wanted to play it, but the PC version was shit, even with a top of the line run anything computer, it still lagged like crazy and crashed after 5 laggy minutes. Consoles are for those rich enough to buy them, I am not in that category, and therefore have to miss out on some of the most awesome games. Like GTA IV, Fable 2, 3. etc.
I have a lot of trouble with it. I have thousands of pages of school papers useful for portfolios, I have homework assignments for this semester and the previous one (in case I need to dispute grades), hundreds of pictures, tons of music, a lot of junk, and a lot of things that aren't junk. Every few months I manage to go through some of it and organize it somewhat, but it is still a major problem. I throw out garbage bags full of junk during these cleanings, yet I still have pictures, music, stuff that I want to keep that gets too much to organize simply. Not hoarding much, just too many files to view at once or search at once comfortably. The same with bills and reciepts, I need to keep them all for college, tax write offs, ect., as I am one of those poor saps that was convinced to go into debt to get an education (only way I could, poor).
I do admit it would be a lot easier if I could afford a smartphone and the plan for one. right now people can only really reliably reach me by e-mail.
Specs are 2 Nvidia GTS 250s, intel i7 920, 12 GB ram in 2 triple channel kits (OCP gold I think), a 600 gb internal 7200 rpm disk, intel X58 motherboard by asus
It is win7 ultimate x64 just for clarification. I think a European version, it messes up a couple of my keys, " and @ are switched, as are £ and #, where the pound should be a hash, and a hash should be a backslash. Confuddling.
I too have win7, but I also have a ton of programs installed, increasing the size of my dll libraries. I have about 10 autodesk programs, several adobe programs, and many other things. I run everything from simulation design to product design, virtual landscaping and architecture, video encoding and editing, mapping utilities, a wide assortment of video games, stress analysis and fluid dynamics programs, mathematical modeling software, audio editing software, programming environments, networking utilities, publishing, video conferencing, electronic circuit simulation, accounting and trading, ect. My windows folder is 45 gb, my program files folder (and program files x86) is around 95 gb. So like I said, I would need a 128 GB SSD to hold all of the things that need to go fast.
I am a believer in using computers as tools, and I don't just have an OS on some minimalist shit, I have a decked out system that can do anything I can imagine. It still runs very fast, as it is spec'd out, but I have to admit I can't wait for the price to drop so I can run this thing off an SSD.
It really saddens me when I see people using computers only for internet and word processing, instead of allowing them to make their dreams come true.
Now of course I would happily set up my laptop to remote desktop my computer and use all of these utilities wherever I go. That would be great, if only I could figure out how to go about doing it. Could you recommend any software that would allow me to do so?
64 gb SSD won't even hold my operating system, I would need at least 128 gb SSD to hold my OS and and program files. Which is a good 250 bucks at the cheapest. That is a lot, considering I just bought a 1.5 tb external HD for just 49.99. Sure speed is not that great, but right now that 250 is insane for all but the most serious. Now if costs drop to 50 cents a gb, I would happily pay 65 bucks for a 128 GB SSD. That would be absolutely worth it for holding my os/program files.
Airship Launch pad. Yes, the dust is abrasive, but on a microscopic level. The biggest problem is that it sticks to everything. The abrasiveness is only a problem for internal components which can be easily protected and biology.
Religion really has a strong history of following through on its promises and achieving anything at all, hahahahahahahaha. Dumb ass investor should have known better.Thats what you get for betting on shit.
Sure they will devalue rapidly, but not until a few hundred million worth has been sold. Plus, when that loses too much value we can just ship back gold, make reserves of water for spacecraft passing through, ect. Cheaper to ship things off the moon than off the earth.
Actually, after the initial base it would be cheap as hell. Once you set up a small base, you can send tons upon tons of moon rocks (which sell for quite a lot), gold and other things, and send them back to earth using very small amounts of energy. The base can be entirely robotic, and it could pay for itself in just a few months. If we found rare earth metals, platinum, rhodium, or helium compounds this could also be incredibly profitable for a plethora of mining opportunities. With threats from china to stop exporting anything rare, and hoard it to drive up costs, it would be worth it to search.
Compensating for something. He is just pissed that people have freedom on the android, which means porn can exist, and so can non-apple-approved bullshit. Common, yes the fragmentation is a problem with the android market, but at least there is freedom there too.
COMMON GUYS! This is a website that is *supposed* to consist primarily of intelligent people and nobody asked the important question, or pointed out the moronic flaw!
Of course the US will have the highest absolute number of infected computers, we have the highest number of computers period! This is only relevant if we have the highest PERCENTAGE of infected computers. if 10% of our computers are infected and 100% of canada's computers are infected, we still probably have a lot more infected computers than canada, despite better upkeep.
That being said, I don't doubt that we also have the highest percentage of infected computers, I am just flabbergasted something so incredibly stupid and meaningless would be posted to slashdot when any moron that passed middle school math class should know why this article is totally meaningless, but simply by switching from descriptions in absolute terms to description in percent infected terms, the article would all of a sudden actually show that americans suck with computers or are targeted more frequently. Right now all it is saying is that we have more infected computers than anybody else. Well that's fine and dandy, I suppose you are going to tell me that China has more cases of the flu than the US does too? I mean, sure they have several times more people than us, so even if they had double the flu cases they would still be healthier per capita than us. You just need to say they have twice as many flu cases per population than the US, and it suddenly becomes a glaring scar on their image instead of a meaningless rant about irrelevant bullshit.
And really, i am always the guy attacking people who inject excess sense into a conversation gone terribly astray, but this doesn't even have a baseline of sense to which an excess can be added.
Also, most of the posts are just pointless nerd culture which speaks nothing of intelligence simply that you watched star trek instead of football. Really the both of you are the same unless you can say something important and they can't. And when you lose the ability to say something important, like a per capita comparison of issues between cultures instead of ranting about how your country has more penises just because it has a higher number of total men, then you are no longer any more intelligent than even the dumbest jock. What is nerd culture worth if you are not being nerdy but totally retarded, ranting about pointless bullshit like how hot your quarterback/sci-fi character is?
The nature of this should be covered under anti-trust legislation, however the government stopped protecting consumers from dangerous monopolies on not just corporate works but on ideas and concepts. one is reminded of xkcd 129: Content Protection.
The significantly higher costs of game production and distribution, along with the drastically inflated dollar? Hell, incomes are not exactly higher, but prices sure are steady, despite decreasing costs. They make easily twice the profit per sale as they did back then.
funny? no this should get +5 troll
Fixed if for you.
Now that that is done, I might note that Windows doesn't act like a virus. You can easily remove it, it doesn't spread across things and tell you what you are allowed to do, if you know how to use it. Apple and apple products on the other hand are as close to virii as an operating system can get.
While I thank you for your advice, I think it is important to look beyond people like yourself or myself. What special skills or talents do the millions living in poverty in inner cities have? What can they do to get in a better situation? When jobs there dry up, they aren't exactly off to much. And I will be honest, I don't have the capital to monetize what I do. I am working on side stuff, but I am totally crazy and do things nobody I know would even consider, yet actually do, and that gives me a significant advantage in monetized insanity. The margins are too low for the general person to make enough money to live off of.
I will say though, if/when window farms and small gardens start providing enough for the average family to sustain themselves on, and once power generation becomes a bit more dispersed, solar panels become cheaper and living is actually cheap instead of inordinately expensive, that will be a great reality. And sure somebody like me, with extensive crap in my background, honors on everything and an eagle scout badge has it pretty easy to land myself somewhere, but what about most people? My main point is regarding the average joe.
Myself, I need to stay in college, primarily because, as I have said, I am an inventor. My ideas have been in many areas with many backgrounds, and the knowledge to create them largely comes from college, not much of the higher level stuff is available online. If I want to know advanced electrodynamics, I have to stay in college, or do something crazy and illegal.
And if everyone tried to do what you, or your room mate did that, nobody would be able to. Very niche situations that you got simply lucky to be in. I moved to an area where rent was half of what it was where I lived and where meat is cheaper, and where college was significantly cheaper. As happy as your story sounds, it doesn't work for everybody. And for some people our talents don't go far. For example, I invented a 'filter' that separates nitrogen from the other parts of air, so that car engines can be made more efficient and not produce nitrogen based pollution. And yet, I can't even get a company to look at it. Not even to talk to me, I have studied the process, I have asked professionals for advice, blah blah. it is not for lack of trying, but I am tired of poverty. And I can't exactly afford down payments or anything like that. And I have looked into every option I can, I have searched like hell and I simply don't have any easy options.
Also, if it takes me longer to graduate I have more living expenses I have to take out in loans, because even with an increase in how much I could make working it would still cost me several thousand more to extend college.