Unethical behavior is well publicized for certain fields. For instance, medical researchers get in trouble because they ghost write papers without discloser, recommend untested drugs for children because they get paid to do so, and ignore data that does not result in the conclusion the researcher was paid to prove. Of course any field of science that is funded by non-scientist,climate change research,
The thing with physics is that it is a pretty open subject. Like the recent faster than light thing. It was worked and reworked and a fault was found pretty quickly. Or the Voyager anomaly which is likely a thermal effect. In Physics scientist can not only ask for a solution that fits the data, but also a solution that fits underlying physics and can be used to generate other testable solution. Research that is most susceptible to fraud does not have all these layers of verification.
As a last example, I recall when the TAMU tabletop cold fusion paper was released. Every lab in Texas probably had a printout of it and scrutinized it. The inconsistencies were quickly found. This is why the current push to make all papers public, especially in the medical field, is so important. To minimize fraud.
As far as what should in physics, do what you love. Condensed matter is fascinating field and if that is what you love to do with the rest of you life, even if there are going to be lean times, then do it. The image of the public may effect funding, but it won't effect the science. The public does not understand the iterative process. They want simple answers and simple solutions. Most do not understand the process.
I wish you well in your studies and hope that every day is a new insight into the wonders of the universe.
There is basic, what I will call real research, and then there is the handwaving applied stuff. One big issue we have now in science is the confusing of the two. Increasingly medical research has become the bane of science. Paid for by firm that want a specific result rather than governments who profit from the increase of actual knowledge, research has become the a means to increase personal wealth rather than a means to increase the wealth of all humans. We see this with the desire patent life. Can you imagine a real scientist trying to patent the law of nature?
So when taking about a so-called research scientist who does work primarily in the medical area, call them what they are, medical researchers and do not besmirch the good name of scientists who are actually trying to model who the world, the plant, the animals, the universe works rather than just trying to get cash for writing whatever some firm wishes where true. I mean when some guy at some research firm writes whatever Fox news wants everyone to believe we do not him a scientist, do we?
Now, I am not saying that all researchers who work in the medical field are not real scientist. I known and have known many that faithfully follow their scientific training and do good work. Sometimes it is the lack of understanding of the public about what a scientist can and can't do that is problem. But sometimes people, even well meaning people, take advantage of that misunderstanding. Take Mythbuster as an example. Science, in general, cannot prove something false by simply not building an apparatus that can successfully carry out the experiment. We did not presume the Higgs boson to be a myth simply because we do not have a machine that could produce it. We do not discount the multiverse theory, or multidimension theory, simply because we cannot travel there. Some might say they are very unlikely, but exclude them we cannot.
Traditionally computers were programmed with text, and so many computer people tend to be text based. Text can be much more efficient than video or audio recording at communicating information. One can skim and quickly tell if something is interesting or not interesting. Video and audio is entertainment and tends to help keep people on a page, but is that the issue? Keeping people on/., or interesting stuff. Is it better to have people mindless watching moving pictures or writing and interacting?
I can see the point of video on a generic website. Most people are barely able to read, and really don't have a clue of how to code ideas into symbols. And maybe that is where/. is going. Passive consumption. Computer people aren't the same in the new century. This is not good or bad,. Most computer people of the last last century could not write assembly. Skills change.
This really why normal and non-sociopath christian folk think that these alleged christians are such a joke, albeit a dangerous joke as all religious fanatics fundamentally are. We are boycotting a game because fo who loves who and not because of the purpose is kill you fellow human, to destroy the creation. This is, in the vernacular, batshit insane. Do these people even read their sacred text?
So let's compare the game to one the most cited parts of the sacred text, the 10 commandments.
I will start with the first, even though it has little to do with this case, by saying that these people seem to spend most of their time trying to elevate themselves rather acknowledging they are under the creator.
Number two is often ignored, but to me it about creating things that are incompatible with the creation. Clearly one can boycott the game based on this, as it can be argued that the game is an abomination, but that is true without the homoerotic content, and the content does not make it more or less.
Again people,. we are here to worship, not judge or create fortunes by using the lord name.
If you can agree what the sabbath is, try not to be mean, something that I see few christian do. Just listen to some of the sermons. They say things like your are a failure because you don't have faith, go out and judge people so you do not have to take a look at your own pathetic self.
Do what you parent tell you, at least as far as you are able. If they don't want you to have, or have se with certain people, then maybe that should be a consideration, at least until you are old enough to make the mature choice. If they don't want you to play video games, maybe video games are not so important. But ultimately it is the parent responsibility to monitor what the kids do, not some megalomanic who thinks they know what is best for the whole world.
This is the biggie. Boycott the games for killing. Of course, these alleged christian like to kill people, so that is not an option.
Ever since Reagan became the head of the christian right, this has gone far away
This is good reason to boycott
This is another good reason to boycott
And another, and so on,
But nothing specifically about sex with the same gender. Hmm, lot of good reasons to boycott, but nothing directly to do with homoerotic behavior. Again, these christians just look like a joke to rational people.
Put this in context. Most people choose what they call themselves. As long as they did so professionally, it seems to be ok. For instance, Reagan was considered an actor, although his his profession prior to politics was to organize acting labor against the studios.
Romney has been a politician for nearly 15 years but he still calls himself a job creator and businessman. Maybe the best business to be in politics.
Carly Fiorina has not been the CEO of anything in years, yet she is still considered an business executive more than a politician. Sarah Palin did not even complete one term as Governor before quitting, and she is called Governor.
This is a guy who has been into space, something that only maybe 500 people have done. He is an astronaut. Saying he isn't is sign of desperation.
The thing is that no browser works with all applications, or satisfies all people, so one has to decision. In my experience, firefox has the long history of personal which means it is more or less universally supported and tends to work, but is considered slow and a memory hog. IE has an equal legacy in business, so does work in that environment. There are many legacy back ends that depend on IE as the front end, so if supporting one browser IE is good enough. Chrome works well but does not work everywhere. It is becoming good choice for personal browsing, or if Google is primary application provider. In any case, as long as businesses MS as a primary application provider, IE will be dominant.
My surprise is that there are 600K running macs to infect. I thought macs were just bought by rich people to display in there offices while they really used a PC. Clearly this article is propaganda.
I think many and doctors think so. Everyone who can be is diagnosed with ADDHD or autism, and let the lifetime of pill popping begin. Kids that are docile, obedient, and never talk. That is what will save the world!
All kidding aside, what will determine if the the tablet will help kids learn is the same thing that helped determine if the laptop, or desktop, book, or pen helps kids learn. Are they properly trained in their use. Do they understand them as tools or simply entertainment. I mean why is a book and pen and paper so out of vogue? Because schools are not teaching kids how to read and write to learn. We teach them how to read and write, praise them when they say the phonics, promote them when they can read a chapter book and copy a few passages, but what about learning? Books and pen are used both for pleasure and learning, sometimes at the same time, yet the later has been deemphasized.
A tablet can present information to a wider group of learning styles, but there is no magic elixir that will make students learn. A student who is not properly taught that the tablet is a tool will just use it as a toy. Learning might go on if the information is presented as a toy, and there might even be a higher rate of retention for the unmotivated student, but that hardly means that superman carries a tablet into the classroom.
I would certainly say that a tablet may provide benefits over traditional textbooks, even for no other reason that it is easier to get background information. I would say that every kids needs a text processor, though a word processor leads to toy territory, and like the MS commercial shows, replaces ideas and grammer with pretty colors and fonts. Some tablet do not run flash or java well, so for some teaching applications are not suitable. But at the end of the day, the question is if a student is going to use a tablet as tool for learning or to play angry birds in space, which illustrates good physics for the elementary school student, but will hardly prepare a kid for the AP exam.
I will only charge you 1 quid to not walk in front of your business and be annoying. You can't do anything about it because I am a public right of way, I am moving, so not loitering, and am dressed through not fully and not attractively. Furthermore the metered parking in front of your shop is available to all the paying public, and the fact that I park my five beat up dodge darts has nothing to do with me trying to shut you down.
Of course doing either thing individually, asking for a dollar, or being a nuisance, is not illegal. The two, together, however, would be.
Of this is covered under the RICO act in which multiple acts committed over a certain time period is classified as special criminal activity. In this case it seems plausible that extortion and blackmail may have been committed, and so there may be an RICO violation. It seems that RICO may apply because the internet, like the telephone, is considered a interstate device.
I think anyone, not just journalist and bloggers, deserve the benefit of the doubt when reporting what can be broadly classified as defensible facts, or even opinions. Freedom of speech say that we can go out onto the public pulpit in the public space and say pretty much what we want. There should be few if any restrictions on this.
What triggers a regulatory environment is when we are directly paid for reporting these facts and opinions. In such cases some responsibility should be imposed. If you are paid a million dollars a week to state your opinion though a commercial enterprise, funded by ads on radio, tv, or even google, then those statement should undergo some scrutiny, even be liable to prosecution, because it plausible, even likely, you are being paid to mold commercial allegiances, which is not illegal in itself, but is regulated. I mean if it is illegal for me to make a commercial stating that you will get rich investing in gold(as opposed to saying that gold is rising, so buying gold could be a safe investment), then why is it okay for someone to spend three hours a day convincing the public that the most secure currency in the world is going to fall(inflation has not bee an issue and is not rising) and therefore the only safe thing to do is to call this company that will sell you overpriced gold, that may not even exist.
Exactly. This has little to do directly with facebook. It has to do with a public employee acting in manner that may be inappropriate. As a public employee one is taking tax money from the public and as such are required to behave in an appropriate manner. If this were a private sector employee, it might be different, but as public employee, particularly an employee contracted with a public school, there specific things that can and cannot be done. In particular gossiping about teachers and students is a no no. Posting a picture of a teacher with pants down is another. Refusing a reasonable request of a supervisor three times is often another trigger for immediate dismissal.
One supposes that this aid was engaging in inappropriate activity on Facebook, as defined by her hiring contract, and instead of exposing the inappropriate activity, which might have been less defensible, made the case about passwords, which was more defensible. It might be a good strategy. But, in the end, if the union defends her, it is just going to make it worse for everyone else. Teachers, teachers aids, are the public face of schools, and schools have a need to protect themselves. By exposing every sordid detail on Facebook, by complaining online instead of commiserating with friends at the bar, people are just setting themselves up for pain.
As reported a couple weeks ago, Obama is lagging in big donors. While Romney is building his campaign thousand dollar donations, Obama is increasingly having to build his campaign on hundred dollar donations, or as the article suggests, $2 at a time.
So, if we assume, as pundits say, that big donors are not going to Obama because he wants to transfer all wealth to the lazy people, and the only people who support him are the young people who don't know any better, kids that are hoping for a socialist government so they do not have to work, how does Obama capitalize on that demographic? By using the one tool all these kids know. The phone. These kids, while they are in their drug induced stupor on payday, can click to donate a few bucks. They would never actually be able to write a check and address an envelope. But over a few months, they can donate $50 bucks.
Really, all kidding aside, this is the way a modern politician needs to collect funds. The maximum donation to a politician should be $50 a month. Anyone can do that. This idea of stealth funding of campaigns by a few large donors need to go. In the republican race, this has resulted in our choices being a polygamist in spirit, a polygamist in reality, a jihadist, and a one that wants to promote the idea that we should pay our troops to sit around the base playing video games and get high. Not a great list for a party that claims to be pro america.
Where I live, the base traffic is pretty predictable. Certain interchanges will be slow, certain arteries will be slow, but really the random feature are accidents. Some outlying areas have really bad drivers, because there is always an accident. other places not so much. In any case, Google is horrible at providing traffic data. We have a local service that is nearly perfect. There has been times when I have been sitting still on the freeway, and Google has told me that we were moving at posted speeds. No indication of a problem. Frankly I don't use it much anymore.
Using auto graders for routine writing is a mistake, just like using anything that a computer can grade for routine math or physics work is a mistake. The teacher and students have to have interaction with the process of writing, calculating and problems solving. No computer can completely replace that interaction.
That said, in math and science computers can do a lot to lower the cost of teaching, possibly with a decline of the quality of learning. What the decline is and if the tradeoffs are valid is something that needs to be discussed. What is true is that computers are going to be used to teach and assess, so we must work to make them as worthwhile as possible. The perceived savings are just too compelling.
So, what can these computers be used for. They can be used to grade a first draft to insure the student is following basic rules. While we want students to think, we also want them to communicate in a standard form. Flourishes and personal styles can be developed later. We need the kids to be able to write an inteligible memo. Second, these graders can be used for summative assessments, which often involve a timed writing that are very mechanical. I went through a training and was able to grade the standardized stuff in about three minute. It is mechanical work. For assessments for which the student will get significant feedback, the computer can do the basic mechanical work and the teacher can review assignments.
What such graders may be really used for, however, is to allow writing in other than language classes. Many teachers wan their kids to write essays, but really don't know how to grade them. Teaching writing is hard and no matter what the consultants may think, someone who does not know how to write teaching writing in say a math class can do more harm than good. Such a grader, along with a plagiarism checker, can allow productive writing to be done in all classes.
Better that he learn this now as opposed to when he has a well paying job. When using equipment that is not yours, you have to follow their rules. This is the same when you borrow your parent car, or your friends pad for an overnight stay.
Schools loaning computers are still a relatively uncommon thing. These kids are being given an opportunity to learn to use a tool that will greatly increase their future opportunities. Encouraging the kids to use it wisely is a good thing. How many reports have we seen about an employee misusing equipment and getting into big trouble, including a ruined reputation through reports in the press.
Sure kids are in rebellion and think that they can do anything they want. They have not yet understood that gifts come with strings. They think that by taking a computer they are doing the school a favor. That education is favor they do for their parents and a favor that society gives to them. Sure, it is cheaper than jail, but we are more than willing to pay for and put them in jail.
That said expulsion might seem a bit harsh, but we really don't know what else this kid has done or not done.
The banking analogy is really good. But we have to take it further. While storing your money in a swiss or Caribbean account provides great benefit with lesser risk, due to high costs, storing anything other than warez on Data Haven is a high risk low benefit venture that do not justify the high costs.
If I am earning 1 million dollars a year, one supposes that having the money deposited in an offshore account with a reputation of safety may be a good thing. I can pay them much less than would be required in US taxes, and have full access to the money through a credit card which is funded through the laundered money. The bank is making money hand over fist, so they have little incentive to snitch on the criminal activity, take my money, or mine my data. If the bank is sold, presumably I can get my money out.
Now take Haven. If I put real data on their servers, like the banks there are limited laws that prevent them from doing as they wish with my property. However, if Haven does mine my data or sell it to a competitor there is no way for me to know if Haven was the leak of someone else. And if I do want pull my data, there is no way for me to be sure if the data has really been pulled. There are no court or enforcement system for my to fall back on if the owners of the severs are behaving badly. If Haven is sold and my data goes along with it, there is little I can do to stop the process..
The thing that the people who hate regulation never seem to admit to is that the success of countries like the US is the highly regulated, highly managed, business environment. Capital flows freely because we do not have worry about each little transaction. Sales are fast, acceleration is maximized, as any problems can be solved later through a well defined process. I don't worry about safety because it is regulated. Just think of the economic damage that is done by pink slime, GMO, and tainted spinach, all caused by lack of regulation and labeling. Millions of consumers wasting time checking the label, thinking about purchases, instead of just consuming. Of course the fact that real earning for the people who tend to spend the most money, percentage wise, is a more significant problem, but the lack of efficiency due to the desired of opacity a few greedy people.
Recording cops get you arrested, but carrying a gun hoping for an excuse to murder someone, then chasing down and killing a random child in cold blood does not even get you detained.
I have not used these in any large distribution, but I do use them in small distribution. Like any prefab product, there is a need to conform your expectations to the product, which means that both student and instructor has to adjust to the product. This is pretty much the same in any situation. One could make the argument that use a prefab DBMS is silly when one can simply write a customized version in C that does not have to the same compromises. Of course most people do not see the compromises they have to make by used a commercial DBMS. Everyone has made the convenient deal that this is the way it is.
When I look these learning systems, what I was looking for was something that did not simply take the physical classroom experience and copy it to a computer, thereby keeping all the disadvantages of the physical classroom and adding the disadvantages of the computer. This is the temptation as it provides a comfortable environment to the instructor: powerpoint, multiple choice questions, typed essays. Of course there is little benefit to the students. I saw the same thing with Autodesk. Initially it simply mimicked the process of the drafting board, but as time went on it did leverage the unique capabilities of the computer.
This is where we are with LMS. Most of it is crap because it just brings all the horrible stuff to the computer. For example, there is no reason for a multiple choice test on the computer. With calculated question and short answers that are graded by regular expressions, there is a possibility of real assessment. For technical work, the LaTex filter allows us to process math(I don't know if BB has this), but users still present work as they would typewritten. There are lesson modules that allow branching and the like, which makes any powerpoint type presentation quite counter indicated.
A product like BB that has to be marketed to large purchasing departments is going to be, by it's very nature, a conservative product that does not allow innovation. Fortunately we do have OSS which can include controversial features.
Much of the problems in Africa, as far as I can tell from talking to the people from the continent, is that the profits from resource extraction are not shared with the people. For instance nigerians tell me that the oil money is not, as it is in the US, used to set up public infrastructure, but to enrich certain people. Obviously this telescope is going to utilize the local natural resources(the land, the spectrum, the sky, and if the riches produced are not shared with the people, then trouble will ensue. This is pretty much anywhere. It seems, however, there is some public projects that have worked with the people and are safe and succesful, so it could happen. Certainly Africa has been base for many research projects.
The only issue with Australia is the weather. There big concentration of scopes seems to be on the coast. I know Australia does get some severe weather, and living on the coast I know what severe weather can do. That in itself might make the Africa location a better fit. Plus the fact that Africa might be closer to resources.
We are horrible at predicting, but we do have some potential applications now. For instance, in the US we have three different power grids with three slightly set of specifications. Hooking these up directly is counter-indicated, as failures can cascade into blackouts over large geographical areas, but using superconducting materials it is likely we can connect the three grids. In fact such a project is now underway. The benefit is that blackouts will be less likely as power can be efficiently shared.
There is another question is do we need 'room temperature superconductivity'. Even if we get to actual room temperature, say 300K, there will still be some level of temperature control as superconductive cables are going to be highly sensitive to temperature. It is not always that 80F is the high temperature, so coolant is going to be fact of life for these conductors for the foreseeable future. Therefore through the 90's the march was to high temperature superconductivity that functioned at around 100K rather than 10K. 100K allows us to cool with liquid nitrogen, which is cheap, widely available, and not so dangerous to use.. In the past 10 years there have been some superconductors that could utilize a chilled water system in a high pressure environment.
One application we may see is DC transmission of power. Currently much of the power we use is consumed by DC devices. We transform to DC using devices that are usually no better than 50% efficient. We can get to 80% efficient, but that is still is a 20% loss. If we were to supply DC power to the house, then we only need a dc to dc converter which can be upward of 90% efficient.
I would argue that the reason we have analogue displays is that they are easier to comprehend. In my car I can glance at the speed and tach and comprehend the meaning with no reading, or minimal reading. The meaning is purely positional.
There is technical issue as well. Can a car calculate the speed to miles per hour and if so, is it meaningful? I would argue that a car cannot reliable calculate, on a second by second basis, the speed to such an accuracy and therefore such displays are there purely for entertainment purposes. I would argue that we are seeing an increasing number fo displays that are for entertainment purposes only. For instance, I rented an Altima that displays frequent updates to current fuel usages, which went from 60 mph on the down slope to 10mph on the step positive grades. This was not useful. My car gives me a trip average which potentially allows me to adjust my driving when the average is to low. The gauge on the Altima is entertainment.
And I think this is what the discussion is about. What part of mapping is useful and what part is visual entertainment, which many agree is not appropriate for the driver. I don't have one of these devices in my car, but from what I have seen driving with my friends is that the device tells you what you need to do, and all the driver needs to do is listen. There is no reason to constantly check the display. Now, I don't want those instructions, so I when I am going to a new place I figure our where I am going beforehand. It seems more dangerous to me to have to look at a map while on the go, and maybe have to make extreme changes in lanes or speed, or fast turns, rather than having the navigation planned in advance. Of course, with the computer telling you the navigation, that is fine. But checking a map to determine the navigation, that just sounds dangerous. You may as well be watching a movie.
I don't use blueray because I don't have a blue ray player, and really don't see a need to buy one. I would need about $1,000 worth of hardware to make it worthwhile.
Redbox has shown people want newly released movies cheap. $1 a day makes money for Redbox, but not for the studios. If Redbox aggressively marketed movie according to the first sale doctrine, the studios would be screwed Already the studios have engaged in a conspiracy to keep video our of redbox for 28 days, and the may double soon. It is in the studio to make sure that product is not available to the public, false scarcity. We saw this Blockbuster in which deals were cut with the studio, cheaper product for blockbuster in exchange for limits and delays, which of course was one of the many reasons the blockbuster went under.
The availability of legal and inexpensive routes to acquire content has been the primary reason i know have licensed content. The attack on red box, the complexity of Bluray, the fall of netflix, the fact that Amazon does not work on all devices, the limits of free Hulu, and the fact that paid hulu still has ads, all lead to a world in which paid content is difficult to use. I grew up in a world where paid content the kids are not going to grow up seeing the advantage of paid content. All they will see is that paid content has hurdles, and free content does not. Why pay for something that is going to be hard to use?
So in this case the casino would line up all their dealers and kill one out of every ten.
The problem I have with the use of decimate is that it does imply that 1/10th is gone. So I get a little annoyed when a newscaster is talking about a town being decimated by a tornado when, for all intents and purposes, the entire village has been destroyed. Or in this case, where it is implied that the entire profits have been wiped out. Wiped out is not decimated, it is wiped out.
We have had several male companions. Turlough, Adric, the Brigadere, The first companions were the doctors granddaughter, her teacher, and Ian. Not to mention Jamie.
In this current incarnation, the males have been less present, perhaps because the companions have been more explicitly romantic objects. Certainly most of the girls were sexualized, many more than the current companions, but then so was Turlough, wearing the fewest clothes that we have ever seen on Doctor Who, until Nicole Bryant(did Slader have a bikini scene at the beggining of the B&W episodes?)
I would think that MS Office may be on many employee machines at Apple. I would also think that many machines would have MS Windows to demo how Bootcamp works, though maybe they are using VMBox. As far as hardware, MS does not make computers, so that is a non issue. I suspect that if Apple has lounges and game rooms, an xBox 360 would be present.
As far as Phones, I suspect that Apple has the same policy that 90% of the US has. That the phones are garbage.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing with physics is that it is a pretty open subject. Like the recent faster than light thing. It was worked and reworked and a fault was found pretty quickly. Or the Voyager anomaly which is likely a thermal effect. In Physics scientist can not only ask for a solution that fits the data, but also a solution that fits underlying physics and can be used to generate other testable solution. Research that is most susceptible to fraud does not have all these layers of verification.
As a last example, I recall when the TAMU tabletop cold fusion paper was released. Every lab in Texas probably had a printout of it and scrutinized it. The inconsistencies were quickly found. This is why the current push to make all papers public, especially in the medical field, is so important. To minimize fraud.
As far as what should in physics, do what you love. Condensed matter is fascinating field and if that is what you love to do with the rest of you life, even if there are going to be lean times, then do it. The image of the public may effect funding, but it won't effect the science. The public does not understand the iterative process. They want simple answers and simple solutions. Most do not understand the process.
I wish you well in your studies and hope that every day is a new insight into the wonders of the universe.
So when taking about a so-called research scientist who does work primarily in the medical area, call them what they are, medical researchers and do not besmirch the good name of scientists who are actually trying to model who the world, the plant, the animals, the universe works rather than just trying to get cash for writing whatever some firm wishes where true. I mean when some guy at some research firm writes whatever Fox news wants everyone to believe we do not him a scientist, do we?
Now, I am not saying that all researchers who work in the medical field are not real scientist. I known and have known many that faithfully follow their scientific training and do good work. Sometimes it is the lack of understanding of the public about what a scientist can and can't do that is problem. But sometimes people, even well meaning people, take advantage of that misunderstanding. Take Mythbuster as an example. Science, in general, cannot prove something false by simply not building an apparatus that can successfully carry out the experiment. We did not presume the Higgs boson to be a myth simply because we do not have a machine that could produce it. We do not discount the multiverse theory, or multidimension theory, simply because we cannot travel there. Some might say they are very unlikely, but exclude them we cannot.
I can see the point of video on a generic website. Most people are barely able to read, and really don't have a clue of how to code ideas into symbols. And maybe that is where /. is going. Passive consumption. Computer people aren't the same in the new century. This is not good or bad,. Most computer people of the last last century could not write assembly. Skills change.
So let's compare the game to one the most cited parts of the sacred text, the 10 commandments.
I will start with the first, even though it has little to do with this case, by saying that these people seem to spend most of their time trying to elevate themselves rather acknowledging they are under the creator.
Number two is often ignored, but to me it about creating things that are incompatible with the creation. Clearly one can boycott the game based on this, as it can be argued that the game is an abomination, but that is true without the homoerotic content, and the content does not make it more or less.
Again people,. we are here to worship, not judge or create fortunes by using the lord name.
If you can agree what the sabbath is, try not to be mean, something that I see few christian do. Just listen to some of the sermons. They say things like your are a failure because you don't have faith, go out and judge people so you do not have to take a look at your own pathetic self.
Do what you parent tell you, at least as far as you are able. If they don't want you to have, or have se with certain people, then maybe that should be a consideration, at least until you are old enough to make the mature choice. If they don't want you to play video games, maybe video games are not so important. But ultimately it is the parent responsibility to monitor what the kids do, not some megalomanic who thinks they know what is best for the whole world.
This is the biggie. Boycott the games for killing. Of course, these alleged christian like to kill people, so that is not an option.
Ever since Reagan became the head of the christian right, this has gone far away
This is good reason to boycott
This is another good reason to boycott
And another, and so on,
But nothing specifically about sex with the same gender. Hmm, lot of good reasons to boycott, but nothing directly to do with homoerotic behavior. Again, these christians just look like a joke to rational people.
Romney has been a politician for nearly 15 years but he still calls himself a job creator and businessman. Maybe the best business to be in politics.
Carly Fiorina has not been the CEO of anything in years, yet she is still considered an business executive more than a politician. Sarah Palin did not even complete one term as Governor before quitting, and she is called Governor.
This is a guy who has been into space, something that only maybe 500 people have done. He is an astronaut. Saying he isn't is sign of desperation.
The thing is that no browser works with all applications, or satisfies all people, so one has to decision. In my experience, firefox has the long history of personal which means it is more or less universally supported and tends to work, but is considered slow and a memory hog. IE has an equal legacy in business, so does work in that environment. There are many legacy back ends that depend on IE as the front end, so if supporting one browser IE is good enough. Chrome works well but does not work everywhere. It is becoming good choice for personal browsing, or if Google is primary application provider. In any case, as long as businesses MS as a primary application provider, IE will be dominant.
My surprise is that there are 600K running macs to infect. I thought macs were just bought by rich people to display in there offices while they really used a PC. Clearly this article is propaganda.
All kidding aside, what will determine if the the tablet will help kids learn is the same thing that helped determine if the laptop, or desktop, book, or pen helps kids learn. Are they properly trained in their use. Do they understand them as tools or simply entertainment. I mean why is a book and pen and paper so out of vogue? Because schools are not teaching kids how to read and write to learn. We teach them how to read and write, praise them when they say the phonics, promote them when they can read a chapter book and copy a few passages, but what about learning? Books and pen are used both for pleasure and learning, sometimes at the same time, yet the later has been deemphasized.
A tablet can present information to a wider group of learning styles, but there is no magic elixir that will make students learn. A student who is not properly taught that the tablet is a tool will just use it as a toy. Learning might go on if the information is presented as a toy, and there might even be a higher rate of retention for the unmotivated student, but that hardly means that superman carries a tablet into the classroom.
I would certainly say that a tablet may provide benefits over traditional textbooks, even for no other reason that it is easier to get background information. I would say that every kids needs a text processor, though a word processor leads to toy territory, and like the MS commercial shows, replaces ideas and grammer with pretty colors and fonts. Some tablet do not run flash or java well, so for some teaching applications are not suitable. But at the end of the day, the question is if a student is going to use a tablet as tool for learning or to play angry birds in space, which illustrates good physics for the elementary school student, but will hardly prepare a kid for the AP exam.
Of course doing either thing individually, asking for a dollar, or being a nuisance, is not illegal. The two, together, however, would be.
Of this is covered under the RICO act in which multiple acts committed over a certain time period is classified as special criminal activity. In this case it seems plausible that extortion and blackmail may have been committed, and so there may be an RICO violation. It seems that RICO may apply because the internet, like the telephone, is considered a interstate device.
I think anyone, not just journalist and bloggers, deserve the benefit of the doubt when reporting what can be broadly classified as defensible facts, or even opinions. Freedom of speech say that we can go out onto the public pulpit in the public space and say pretty much what we want. There should be few if any restrictions on this.
What triggers a regulatory environment is when we are directly paid for reporting these facts and opinions. In such cases some responsibility should be imposed. If you are paid a million dollars a week to state your opinion though a commercial enterprise, funded by ads on radio, tv, or even google, then those statement should undergo some scrutiny, even be liable to prosecution, because it plausible, even likely, you are being paid to mold commercial allegiances, which is not illegal in itself, but is regulated. I mean if it is illegal for me to make a commercial stating that you will get rich investing in gold(as opposed to saying that gold is rising, so buying gold could be a safe investment), then why is it okay for someone to spend three hours a day convincing the public that the most secure currency in the world is going to fall(inflation has not bee an issue and is not rising) and therefore the only safe thing to do is to call this company that will sell you overpriced gold, that may not even exist.
One supposes that this aid was engaging in inappropriate activity on Facebook, as defined by her hiring contract, and instead of exposing the inappropriate activity, which might have been less defensible, made the case about passwords, which was more defensible. It might be a good strategy. But, in the end, if the union defends her, it is just going to make it worse for everyone else. Teachers, teachers aids, are the public face of schools, and schools have a need to protect themselves. By exposing every sordid detail on Facebook, by complaining online instead of commiserating with friends at the bar, people are just setting themselves up for pain.
So, if we assume, as pundits say, that big donors are not going to Obama because he wants to transfer all wealth to the lazy people, and the only people who support him are the young people who don't know any better, kids that are hoping for a socialist government so they do not have to work, how does Obama capitalize on that demographic? By using the one tool all these kids know. The phone. These kids, while they are in their drug induced stupor on payday, can click to donate a few bucks. They would never actually be able to write a check and address an envelope. But over a few months, they can donate $50 bucks.
Really, all kidding aside, this is the way a modern politician needs to collect funds. The maximum donation to a politician should be $50 a month. Anyone can do that. This idea of stealth funding of campaigns by a few large donors need to go. In the republican race, this has resulted in our choices being a polygamist in spirit, a polygamist in reality, a jihadist, and a one that wants to promote the idea that we should pay our troops to sit around the base playing video games and get high. Not a great list for a party that claims to be pro america.
Where I live, the base traffic is pretty predictable. Certain interchanges will be slow, certain arteries will be slow, but really the random feature are accidents. Some outlying areas have really bad drivers, because there is always an accident. other places not so much. In any case, Google is horrible at providing traffic data. We have a local service that is nearly perfect. There has been times when I have been sitting still on the freeway, and Google has told me that we were moving at posted speeds. No indication of a problem. Frankly I don't use it much anymore.
That said, in math and science computers can do a lot to lower the cost of teaching, possibly with a decline of the quality of learning. What the decline is and if the tradeoffs are valid is something that needs to be discussed. What is true is that computers are going to be used to teach and assess, so we must work to make them as worthwhile as possible. The perceived savings are just too compelling.
So, what can these computers be used for. They can be used to grade a first draft to insure the student is following basic rules. While we want students to think, we also want them to communicate in a standard form. Flourishes and personal styles can be developed later. We need the kids to be able to write an inteligible memo. Second, these graders can be used for summative assessments, which often involve a timed writing that are very mechanical. I went through a training and was able to grade the standardized stuff in about three minute. It is mechanical work. For assessments for which the student will get significant feedback, the computer can do the basic mechanical work and the teacher can review assignments.
What such graders may be really used for, however, is to allow writing in other than language classes. Many teachers wan their kids to write essays, but really don't know how to grade them. Teaching writing is hard and no matter what the consultants may think, someone who does not know how to write teaching writing in say a math class can do more harm than good. Such a grader, along with a plagiarism checker, can allow productive writing to be done in all classes.
Schools loaning computers are still a relatively uncommon thing. These kids are being given an opportunity to learn to use a tool that will greatly increase their future opportunities. Encouraging the kids to use it wisely is a good thing. How many reports have we seen about an employee misusing equipment and getting into big trouble, including a ruined reputation through reports in the press.
Sure kids are in rebellion and think that they can do anything they want. They have not yet understood that gifts come with strings. They think that by taking a computer they are doing the school a favor. That education is favor they do for their parents and a favor that society gives to them. Sure, it is cheaper than jail, but we are more than willing to pay for and put them in jail.
That said expulsion might seem a bit harsh, but we really don't know what else this kid has done or not done.
If I am earning 1 million dollars a year, one supposes that having the money deposited in an offshore account with a reputation of safety may be a good thing. I can pay them much less than would be required in US taxes, and have full access to the money through a credit card which is funded through the laundered money. The bank is making money hand over fist, so they have little incentive to snitch on the criminal activity, take my money, or mine my data. If the bank is sold, presumably I can get my money out.
Now take Haven. If I put real data on their servers, like the banks there are limited laws that prevent them from doing as they wish with my property. However, if Haven does mine my data or sell it to a competitor there is no way for me to know if Haven was the leak of someone else. And if I do want pull my data, there is no way for me to be sure if the data has really been pulled. There are no court or enforcement system for my to fall back on if the owners of the severs are behaving badly. If Haven is sold and my data goes along with it, there is little I can do to stop the process..
The thing that the people who hate regulation never seem to admit to is that the success of countries like the US is the highly regulated, highly managed, business environment. Capital flows freely because we do not have worry about each little transaction. Sales are fast, acceleration is maximized, as any problems can be solved later through a well defined process. I don't worry about safety because it is regulated. Just think of the economic damage that is done by pink slime, GMO, and tainted spinach, all caused by lack of regulation and labeling. Millions of consumers wasting time checking the label, thinking about purchases, instead of just consuming. Of course the fact that real earning for the people who tend to spend the most money, percentage wise, is a more significant problem, but the lack of efficiency due to the desired of opacity a few greedy people.
Recording cops get you arrested, but carrying a gun hoping for an excuse to murder someone, then chasing down and killing a random child in cold blood does not even get you detained.
When I look these learning systems, what I was looking for was something that did not simply take the physical classroom experience and copy it to a computer, thereby keeping all the disadvantages of the physical classroom and adding the disadvantages of the computer. This is the temptation as it provides a comfortable environment to the instructor: powerpoint, multiple choice questions, typed essays. Of course there is little benefit to the students. I saw the same thing with Autodesk. Initially it simply mimicked the process of the drafting board, but as time went on it did leverage the unique capabilities of the computer.
This is where we are with LMS. Most of it is crap because it just brings all the horrible stuff to the computer. For example, there is no reason for a multiple choice test on the computer. With calculated question and short answers that are graded by regular expressions, there is a possibility of real assessment. For technical work, the LaTex filter allows us to process math(I don't know if BB has this), but users still present work as they would typewritten. There are lesson modules that allow branching and the like, which makes any powerpoint type presentation quite counter indicated.
A product like BB that has to be marketed to large purchasing departments is going to be, by it's very nature, a conservative product that does not allow innovation. Fortunately we do have OSS which can include controversial features.
The only issue with Australia is the weather. There big concentration of scopes seems to be on the coast. I know Australia does get some severe weather, and living on the coast I know what severe weather can do. That in itself might make the Africa location a better fit. Plus the fact that Africa might be closer to resources.
There is another question is do we need 'room temperature superconductivity'. Even if we get to actual room temperature, say 300K, there will still be some level of temperature control as superconductive cables are going to be highly sensitive to temperature. It is not always that 80F is the high temperature, so coolant is going to be fact of life for these conductors for the foreseeable future. Therefore through the 90's the march was to high temperature superconductivity that functioned at around 100K rather than 10K. 100K allows us to cool with liquid nitrogen, which is cheap, widely available, and not so dangerous to use.. In the past 10 years there have been some superconductors that could utilize a chilled water system in a high pressure environment.
One application we may see is DC transmission of power. Currently much of the power we use is consumed by DC devices. We transform to DC using devices that are usually no better than 50% efficient. We can get to 80% efficient, but that is still is a 20% loss. If we were to supply DC power to the house, then we only need a dc to dc converter which can be upward of 90% efficient.
There is technical issue as well. Can a car calculate the speed to miles per hour and if so, is it meaningful? I would argue that a car cannot reliable calculate, on a second by second basis, the speed to such an accuracy and therefore such displays are there purely for entertainment purposes. I would argue that we are seeing an increasing number fo displays that are for entertainment purposes only. For instance, I rented an Altima that displays frequent updates to current fuel usages, which went from 60 mph on the down slope to 10mph on the step positive grades. This was not useful. My car gives me a trip average which potentially allows me to adjust my driving when the average is to low. The gauge on the Altima is entertainment.
And I think this is what the discussion is about. What part of mapping is useful and what part is visual entertainment, which many agree is not appropriate for the driver. I don't have one of these devices in my car, but from what I have seen driving with my friends is that the device tells you what you need to do, and all the driver needs to do is listen. There is no reason to constantly check the display. Now, I don't want those instructions, so I when I am going to a new place I figure our where I am going beforehand. It seems more dangerous to me to have to look at a map while on the go, and maybe have to make extreme changes in lanes or speed, or fast turns, rather than having the navigation planned in advance. Of course, with the computer telling you the navigation, that is fine. But checking a map to determine the navigation, that just sounds dangerous. You may as well be watching a movie.
Redbox has shown people want newly released movies cheap. $1 a day makes money for Redbox, but not for the studios. If Redbox aggressively marketed movie according to the first sale doctrine, the studios would be screwed Already the studios have engaged in a conspiracy to keep video our of redbox for 28 days, and the may double soon. It is in the studio to make sure that product is not available to the public, false scarcity. We saw this Blockbuster in which deals were cut with the studio, cheaper product for blockbuster in exchange for limits and delays, which of course was one of the many reasons the blockbuster went under.
The availability of legal and inexpensive routes to acquire content has been the primary reason i know have licensed content. The attack on red box, the complexity of Bluray, the fall of netflix, the fact that Amazon does not work on all devices, the limits of free Hulu, and the fact that paid hulu still has ads, all lead to a world in which paid content is difficult to use. I grew up in a world where paid content the kids are not going to grow up seeing the advantage of paid content. All they will see is that paid content has hurdles, and free content does not. Why pay for something that is going to be hard to use?
The problem I have with the use of decimate is that it does imply that 1/10th is gone. So I get a little annoyed when a newscaster is talking about a town being decimated by a tornado when, for all intents and purposes, the entire village has been destroyed. Or in this case, where it is implied that the entire profits have been wiped out. Wiped out is not decimated, it is wiped out.
Of course the story is that there are too many casino chasing too few players, and given the online competition, the time of the casino may be over.
In this current incarnation, the males have been less present, perhaps because the companions have been more explicitly romantic objects. Certainly most of the girls were sexualized, many more than the current companions, but then so was Turlough, wearing the fewest clothes that we have ever seen on Doctor Who, until Nicole Bryant(did Slader have a bikini scene at the beggining of the B&W episodes?)
As far as Phones, I suspect that Apple has the same policy that 90% of the US has. That the phones are garbage.