If you worked at a news department, and someone sent you a video news release that was basically an infomercial, and you ran it as if it were an original news report, you deserve to be fired.
Umm... yeah. Unfortunately, what you just described isn't the way press releases are handled. At least, not to my knowledge. Instead, company A puts out a release. News organization B picks up on the release and then chooses to report on it as they wish, possibly interviewing other industry insiders and consultants, or potential customers. Regardless, the new organization ends up creating their own news segment.
What you've described is precisely what this article is talking about, and is, IMHO, a completely different breast.
How should the US government communicate information to news organizations then? News releases, whether on paper, in audio, or in video, are the preferred means of distribution for all news-disseminating bodies.
Wait wait... are you actually trying to tell me that you believe a news release is exactly equivalent to manufacturing a fake news report, complete with fake reporters and fake interviewees discussing their fake opinions? Seriously???
Umm, if you read the article, you'll note that it's not that the Voyagers aren't subject to the anomaly, it's that it's too difficult to measure, since you'd have to cancel out the effect of the thruster use.
'course, at this point, there's little Nintendo can do, anyway, given that the cartridge encryption has been cracked.
Re:the same thing
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Alternatively, the lazy folks might have had better training (better teachers, worked harder, etc) prior to University, and so were better mentally prepared.
Re:Read "The origins of exceptional abilities"
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
I agree that I was born without an innate skill at "Mineralogy". My point is that, the theory seems to say that people are not born brilliant, they are educated to be brilliant. That brilliance is only a matter of teaching a blank slate, brilliance has no inherited genetic component. If the theory says this, I firmly disagree.
Yes, because it offends your ego. I get that. Much of Slashdot feels the same way. After all, no one wants to be told that, guess what, you're not actually all that special.
But, according to the *science* (you know, the stuff that uses true rigor, rather than anecdotes and "feelings", in order to come to a conclusion), the only thing you were born with was an innate ability to be single mindedly obsessed.
On the other hand, it's a well known fact among strategy gamers that everybody has, more or less atleast, a limit to how good they get. During 5-6 years of steady play, most people just max at some point, usually after a couple of years and stop becoming better. Be it lack of intelligence, lack of patentience, lack of anal-retentivness, it still happens. They hit their roof.
Well, if you'd actually read the article, you'd note that they explain this. The problem is that your average amateur, when they're first learning, does a good job of pushing their own boundaries, tackling problems just beyond their reach. However, for most, there comes a point where this is no longer the case, perhaps due to lack of formal training, laziness, etc. The point is that that "hit their roof", not because they aren't capable, but because their training levels off.
I've noticed this in my own Go playing. I rapidly improved in skill, going from 20 kyu to about 8-9 kyu in a year. Since then, my improvement has leveled off significantly. Why? Because my own study has leveled off, and I'm no longer actively pushing my boundaries. It is, frankly, because I'm lazy.:)
First, US citizens are likely dealing with more propaganda than Canadians, so while our schools may not be worse, the end result is.
I picked Canada for a reason. We're exposed to US media on a very regular basis, and so I suspect we're subjected to nearly as much "propaganda" as your average US citizen.
Second, success in schooling is very strongly linked with the support provided by parents and with poverty.
As far as parenting goes, I'd be shocked if there was a truly significant difference. There may be some slight differences in parenting style due to difference in average lifestyle, but I suspect the similarities greatly outweight the differences.
Poverty may certainly be a factor in differences in education... though, I don't believe our two countries are *that* different, as far as that goes.
Canada has the BBC and other news sources not controlled by the same groups that control the US government with lobbying dollars, while the US does not have a government sponsored, but independent news source.
Again, Canada is regularly exposed to US news media. Moreover, our mainstream news sources (the CBC excluded) largely follow the US model. So I'm not sure how big of a difference there is between the two nations.
Schooling in the US has become very standards based, which is to say, based upon the memorization of facts, rather than the ability to do things....
Incentives for schools to only teach how to pass these standardized tests and even for teachers to cheat on behalf of their students are very real and result in hard cash.
The same is certainly true in Canada (standardized testing is the norm, here), although perhaps not to the same extent as in the US. I suspect the biggest difference is the idea of tying school funding to student performance. AFAIK, this practice doesn't exist in Canada, and my understanding is that it's had an extremely detrimental effect on the US school system.
On the flip side, I don't know a) how prevalent this practice is in the US, or b) how recent it is. Unless this has been going on for the last 25 years, I don't think it can fully explain the phenomenon we're seeing, here.
Frankly, I think the US school system is unfairly targeted when the whole 'evolution' thing comes up. I'm willing to bet the more likely culprit is cultural factors. Specifically, consider that a very large number of Americans identify themselves with fairly fundamentalist Christian religions (eg, baptist, Mormon, etc), unlike most other western nations. Thus, it seems unsurprising to me that more Americans would question evolution.
Wait... so you respected the writer up to that point, and one (frankly understandable) misrepresentation of RMS's motives, and you suddenly don't respect him anymore? Yeah... that's reasonable.
My only qualm is that I'm not sure we really have learned anything about space and our universe, save from the Hubble project, which came very close to being a huge bust.
Are you *insane*? Geez, the WMAP project alone has provided incredible insight into the formation of our universe. It's all but confirmed the inflationary model of stellar evolution, not to mention pinning down the age of the universe to +-200 million years.
And that's just one project. Chandra is providing some fantastic insights into galactic evolution (heck, just today their was an announcement from the Chandra project which all but confirms the existence of dark matter). If you're more interested in our "backyard", there's the enormously successful Mars rovers, not to mention the Cassini mission.
Honestly, we're in a veritable rennaissance as far as astronomy and astrophysics goes. It's an extremely exciting time!
Because you speak of the inerrant word of god as if there is such a thing. There isn't. There's a bunch of words written down in human language, which is itself far from perfect, being rife with ambiguities, which are then left to scholars to interpret, scholors who are themselves fallible. But that doesn't stop the fundies (Christian, Islamic, or ) from choosing their interpretation, forcing it on everyone else, and then hiding behind the idea that the word of God (specifically, their interpretation of it) is "infallible".
Oh wait, we're trying to show that we're the most clueless Western nation, not the most clueless nation overall. Sorry. I forgot that for a moment.
Uhh... yes, that's exactly the point. The US is among a small elite of very wealthy, very powerful, primarily western nations. I fail to see what's wrong with comparing the US to it's peers.
Genetic differences disallowing breeding between closely related sub-species of birds mean that the birds lost some genetic information that allowed them to breed. This in fact happens among humans where there is great pollution or other factors (chemicals, etc.) that effect reproductive abilities. So, this means that some of these birds cannot mate and produce offspring. That is not evolution in the sense of simple beings evolving into higher life forms but rather "devolution" or genetic loss of information and decay in the gene structure.
Holy shit... you have *no idea* what you're talking about, do you? "Lost genetic information"?!? W... T... F... They didn't "lose" anything. The two groups of birds experienced simple genetic divergence, resulting in the two groups being no longer able to interbreed for whatever reason.
The specific example the parent is referring to is probably the Greenish Warbler. These birds live in a ring of mountains surrounding a desert. Starting in Siberia, these birds change gradually... in particular, coloring and male mating calls vary. However, in Siberia itself, the mating calls and coloring are sufficiently different that the two varieties do not interbreed, meeting the typical definition of speciation.
Note, no genetic material was "lost", as you so ridiculously posit. Their traits are simply sufficient varied that they no longer breed with one another.
Honestly, the least you could do is educate yourself a little before spouting off. "Lost genetic information"... it's been a long time since I've read something so patently ignorant.
In all religions God gives moral principles in words and a normal believer would take that word as infallible. If you question the word of God, your religion does not worth a calfskin the book is written on.
If you don't question the *human interpretation* of the words of your god, then you're already condemned by your own hubris.
Umm... last I checked, the US public school model wasn't particularly unique. Perhaps you could explain what makes the US system different from, say, the Canadian system, in such a way as to explain these results.
So you're saying that the DS, a portable device with limited power and storage, should be used as the benchmark when predicting what the Wii will provide? I think that's probably a silly conclusion to jump to. I see no fundamental reason why the services provided by the Wii won't be on par with that available via XBox Live (minus things like chatting features, since Nintendo apparently fears direct user-to-user communication).
This is the first time that this has been shown, and it basically disproves the entire category of theories that DM is an illusional caused by us not understanding the action of gravity at long ranges (MOND).
Umm... these observations only "disprove" MOND if you believe that MOND and dark matter are mutually exclusive theories.
Disclaimer: I hold no allegiences to either theory. I just find it irritating when people talk about "proving" or "disproving" theories when they're doing nothing of the kind.
If these posts were about the Microsoft Xbox 360, we'd be living in bizarro-world. Why? Because, unlike the Wii, the 360 and it's games are just an expensive upgrade on an already tired concept. Woo woo, how exciting. The Wii, OTOH, looks like it could be the console equivalent of the DS: cheap, innovative, and fun.
What you and I do not know and cannot know is what price point is "price competitive".
I think it's simple. Do you cost more than your competitors without providing a comparative advantage? No? Then you're not price competative.
So, what do they offer that justifies the $100 price gap? Well, I'm sorry to say it, but HD is not, IMHO, a feature your average consumer cares about. HD uptake has been dismal, and your average middle-income family does not have an HD capable set, and won't for years (not until HD sets are in the $500-$600 range, if you ask me). And HD on a non-HD set is basically pointless.
Free online play? Okay, that's pretty handy. However, the value of this service is really dependant on my next point, that being...
Launch lineup. I think the only way Sony will be able to avoid the stagnation that's plagued the 360 is to offer an absolutely *stellar* launch lineup. Tied with free online play, I could see them achieving some amount of success, and gobbling up a decent chunk of the market that the 360 is competing for. OTOH, given what we've seen with the PSP, I'm not holding out a lot of hope, here.
Actually, my bet is that their online play features will work exactly like the DS. The games will use something similar to Nintendo's WFC, and will allow players to compete against one another for no cost. Will they likely provide other services for a price? Probably. The virtual console being on obvious example. But I highly suspect straight-forward WiFi play, which costs money on the 360, will be free of charge.
Slashdot Mirror
If you worked at a news department, and someone sent you a video news release that was basically an infomercial, and you ran it as if it were an original news report, you deserve to be fired.
Umm... yeah. Unfortunately, what you just described isn't the way press releases are handled. At least, not to my knowledge. Instead, company A puts out a release. News organization B picks up on the release and then chooses to report on it as they wish, possibly interviewing other industry insiders and consultants, or potential customers. Regardless, the new organization ends up creating their own news segment.
What you've described is precisely what this article is talking about, and is, IMHO, a completely different breast.
How should the US government communicate information to news organizations then? News releases, whether on paper, in audio, or in video, are the preferred means of distribution for all news-disseminating bodies.
Wait wait... are you actually trying to tell me that you believe a news release is exactly equivalent to manufacturing a fake news report, complete with fake reporters and fake interviewees discussing their fake opinions? Seriously???
Its a matter of opinion -- they make you laugh, good enough. Just don't expect me to share the same opinion.
But... but... you're wrong!
Umm, if you read the article, you'll note that it's not that the Voyagers aren't subject to the anomaly, it's that it's too difficult to measure, since you'd have to cancel out the effect of the thruster use.
'course, at this point, there's little Nintendo can do, anyway, given that the cartridge encryption has been cracked.
Alternatively, the lazy folks might have had better training (better teachers, worked harder, etc) prior to University, and so were better mentally prepared.
I agree that I was born without an innate skill at "Mineralogy". My point is that, the theory seems to say that people are not born brilliant, they are educated to be brilliant. That brilliance is only a matter of teaching a blank slate, brilliance has no inherited genetic component. If the theory says this, I firmly disagree.
Yes, because it offends your ego. I get that. Much of Slashdot feels the same way. After all, no one wants to be told that, guess what, you're not actually all that special.
But, according to the *science* (you know, the stuff that uses true rigor, rather than anecdotes and "feelings", in order to come to a conclusion), the only thing you were born with was an innate ability to be single mindedly obsessed.
On the other hand, it's a well known fact among strategy gamers that everybody has, more or less atleast, a limit to how good they get. During 5-6 years of steady play, most people just max at some point, usually after a couple of years and stop becoming better. Be it lack of intelligence, lack of patentience, lack of anal-retentivness, it still happens. They hit their roof.
:)
Well, if you'd actually read the article, you'd note that they explain this. The problem is that your average amateur, when they're first learning, does a good job of pushing their own boundaries, tackling problems just beyond their reach. However, for most, there comes a point where this is no longer the case, perhaps due to lack of formal training, laziness, etc. The point is that that "hit their roof", not because they aren't capable, but because their training levels off.
I've noticed this in my own Go playing. I rapidly improved in skill, going from 20 kyu to about 8-9 kyu in a year. Since then, my improvement has leveled off significantly. Why? Because my own study has leveled off, and I'm no longer actively pushing my boundaries. It is, frankly, because I'm lazy.
First, US citizens are likely dealing with more propaganda than Canadians, so while our schools may not be worse, the end result is.
...
I picked Canada for a reason. We're exposed to US media on a very regular basis, and so I suspect we're subjected to nearly as much "propaganda" as your average US citizen.
Second, success in schooling is very strongly linked with the support provided by parents and with poverty.
As far as parenting goes, I'd be shocked if there was a truly significant difference. There may be some slight differences in parenting style due to difference in average lifestyle, but I suspect the similarities greatly outweight the differences.
Poverty may certainly be a factor in differences in education... though, I don't believe our two countries are *that* different, as far as that goes.
Canada has the BBC and other news sources not controlled by the same groups that control the US government with lobbying dollars, while the US does not have a government sponsored, but independent news source.
Again, Canada is regularly exposed to US news media. Moreover, our mainstream news sources (the CBC excluded) largely follow the US model. So I'm not sure how big of a difference there is between the two nations.
Schooling in the US has become very standards based, which is to say, based upon the memorization of facts, rather than the ability to do things.
Incentives for schools to only teach how to pass these standardized tests and even for teachers to cheat on behalf of their students are very real and result in hard cash.
The same is certainly true in Canada (standardized testing is the norm, here), although perhaps not to the same extent as in the US. I suspect the biggest difference is the idea of tying school funding to student performance. AFAIK, this practice doesn't exist in Canada, and my understanding is that it's had an extremely detrimental effect on the US school system.
On the flip side, I don't know a) how prevalent this practice is in the US, or b) how recent it is. Unless this has been going on for the last 25 years, I don't think it can fully explain the phenomenon we're seeing, here.
Frankly, I think the US school system is unfairly targeted when the whole 'evolution' thing comes up. I'm willing to bet the more likely culprit is cultural factors. Specifically, consider that a very large number of Americans identify themselves with fairly fundamentalist Christian religions (eg, baptist, Mormon, etc), unlike most other western nations. Thus, it seems unsurprising to me that more Americans would question evolution.
Wait... so you respected the writer up to that point, and one (frankly understandable) misrepresentation of RMS's motives, and you suddenly don't respect him anymore? Yeah... that's reasonable.
My only qualm is that I'm not sure we really have learned anything about space and our universe, save from the Hubble project, which came very close to being a huge bust.
Are you *insane*? Geez, the WMAP project alone has provided incredible insight into the formation of our universe. It's all but confirmed the inflationary model of stellar evolution, not to mention pinning down the age of the universe to +-200 million years.
And that's just one project. Chandra is providing some fantastic insights into galactic evolution (heck, just today their was an announcement from the Chandra project which all but confirms the existence of dark matter). If you're more interested in our "backyard", there's the enormously successful Mars rovers, not to mention the Cassini mission.
Honestly, we're in a veritable rennaissance as far as astronomy and astrophysics goes. It's an extremely exciting time!
Because you speak of the inerrant word of god as if there is such a thing. There isn't. There's a bunch of words written down in human language, which is itself far from perfect, being rife with ambiguities, which are then left to scholars to interpret, scholors who are themselves fallible. But that doesn't stop the fundies (Christian, Islamic, or ) from choosing their interpretation, forcing it on everyone else, and then hiding behind the idea that the word of God (specifically, their interpretation of it) is "infallible".
Oh wait, we're trying to show that we're the most clueless Western nation, not the most clueless nation overall. Sorry. I forgot that for a moment.
Uhh... yes, that's exactly the point. The US is among a small elite of very wealthy, very powerful, primarily western nations. I fail to see what's wrong with comparing the US to it's peers.
Genetic differences disallowing breeding between closely related sub-species of birds mean that the birds lost some genetic information that allowed them to breed. This in fact happens among humans where there is great pollution or other factors (chemicals, etc.) that effect reproductive abilities. So, this means that some of these birds cannot mate and produce offspring. That is not evolution in the sense of simple beings evolving into higher life forms but rather "devolution" or genetic loss of information and decay in the gene structure.
Holy shit... you have *no idea* what you're talking about, do you? "Lost genetic information"?!? W... T... F... They didn't "lose" anything. The two groups of birds experienced simple genetic divergence, resulting in the two groups being no longer able to interbreed for whatever reason.
The specific example the parent is referring to is probably the Greenish Warbler. These birds live in a ring of mountains surrounding a desert. Starting in Siberia, these birds change gradually... in particular, coloring and male mating calls vary. However, in Siberia itself, the mating calls and coloring are sufficiently different that the two varieties do not interbreed, meeting the typical definition of speciation.
Note, no genetic material was "lost", as you so ridiculously posit. Their traits are simply sufficient varied that they no longer breed with one another.
Honestly, the least you could do is educate yourself a little before spouting off. "Lost genetic information"... it's been a long time since I've read something so patently ignorant.
In all religions God gives moral principles in words and a normal believer would take that word as infallible. If you question the word of God, your religion does not worth a calfskin the book is written on.
If you don't question the *human interpretation* of the words of your god, then you're already condemned by your own hubris.
Umm... last I checked, the US public school model wasn't particularly unique. Perhaps you could explain what makes the US system different from, say, the Canadian system, in such a way as to explain these results.
So you're saying that the DS, a portable device with limited power and storage, should be used as the benchmark when predicting what the Wii will provide? I think that's probably a silly conclusion to jump to. I see no fundamental reason why the services provided by the Wii won't be on par with that available via XBox Live (minus things like chatting features, since Nintendo apparently fears direct user-to-user communication).
This is the first time that this has been shown, and it basically disproves the entire category of theories that DM is an illusional caused by us not understanding the action of gravity at long ranges (MOND).
Umm... these observations only "disprove" MOND if you believe that MOND and dark matter are mutually exclusive theories.
Disclaimer: I hold no allegiences to either theory. I just find it irritating when people talk about "proving" or "disproving" theories when they're doing nothing of the kind.
So I presume you have a better understanding of "basic" physics? Good! Please point me to some of your research papers so I can educate myself.
I've got neighbors who attempt to gain access to wireless networks all the time.
Uhh... that's a far cry from being willing to sniff the gigabytes of traffic necessary to crack a WEP key.
Somehow, I don't expect the Wii service to have much more than the basics.
Why?
If these posts were about the Microsoft Xbox 360, we'd be living in bizarro-world. Why? Because, unlike the Wii, the 360 and it's games are just an expensive upgrade on an already tired concept. Woo woo, how exciting. The Wii, OTOH, looks like it could be the console equivalent of the DS: cheap, innovative, and fun.
What you and I do not know and cannot know is what price point is "price competitive".
I think it's simple. Do you cost more than your competitors without providing a comparative advantage? No? Then you're not price competative.
So, what do they offer that justifies the $100 price gap? Well, I'm sorry to say it, but HD is not, IMHO, a feature your average consumer cares about. HD uptake has been dismal, and your average middle-income family does not have an HD capable set, and won't for years (not until HD sets are in the $500-$600 range, if you ask me). And HD on a non-HD set is basically pointless.
Free online play? Okay, that's pretty handy. However, the value of this service is really dependant on my next point, that being...
Launch lineup. I think the only way Sony will be able to avoid the stagnation that's plagued the 360 is to offer an absolutely *stellar* launch lineup. Tied with free online play, I could see them achieving some amount of success, and gobbling up a decent chunk of the market that the 360 is competing for. OTOH, given what we've seen with the PSP, I'm not holding out a lot of hope, here.
Actually, my bet is that their online play features will work exactly like the DS. The games will use something similar to Nintendo's WFC, and will allow players to compete against one another for no cost. Will they likely provide other services for a price? Probably. The virtual console being on obvious example. But I highly suspect straight-forward WiFi play, which costs money on the 360, will be free of charge.
Okay, that's uncanny... I just said the *exact* same thing to a co-worker not ten minutes ago.