citizenship, rights, and social pressure
on
The Million-Gnome March
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think the most interesting statement in the Terra Nova piece is "Look, there's a trend in human political systems that appears to be basically universal as of 2005: social stress eventually puts all policymaking and the monopoly of force in the hands of an elected and more or less representative body of rulers." I have some problems with this statement, but will leave them aside for now and just say that I love the contrast between this statement and the idea of individuals asserting what Terra Nova calls "citizenship" in the next paragraph and other people call "rights". We have to remember that some rights that we exercise in the real world in some countries are not rights of citizenship in synthetic worlds or other countries. Players on WoW were exercising particular rights... which they don't necessarily have under the laws of that land (see the licensing agreement).
What is most interesting to me is that, when the few in power do have a monopoly on policymaking and use of force, and when demonstrative protest is against the rules, it still happens when discontent and indignation reach an inflection point.
Nowhere did he say that men were more likely to be good at math and science. He said that perhaps innate differences (not lack of intellectual ability) may be a factor that women do not advance or succeed in certain fields. Okay. Let's see. What are some innate differences? People keep mentioning the vagina, but let's remember a couple of other things that women have that men do not: ovaries and a uterus. While a baby is in the oven, the father can continue working, a mother often cannot. While a child is small, it is more often women than men who sacrifice work time to care for them, especially if the parents decide that breastfeeding is important to them. The first is an innate difference. The second is largely cultural (how many offices want a small child in them? How many allow breastfeeding?) Mr. Summers said his remarks were misconstrued as suggesting that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of math and science, and that he "did not say that, nor do I believe it" (RTFA)
As a woman who is on the cusp of receiving her PhD and looking for a teaching position, I am faced with the reality that my potential employers are very concerned about my marital status, whether I have children now, and whether I plan to have them in the next few years, or ever. (Legal or not, that's how it is; I have been at staff meetings where someone brings it up in relation to a prospective faculty member, and the department chair had to say "it is illegal for us to consider that factor." Do you think it's not on people's minds, even after that?) I am also faced with the reality of an ad I saw recently: "Egg donors needed. Waited too long for tenure." From my perspective, poignant. Will I have to choose between a family and a career? My intellectual capacity and the body of research reflected in my CV rival that of any man I will be competing with for junior faculty positions. But I know that I want to have children. I will be getting my PhD at the age of 30, and starting a career when most of my friends have small children. Should I put off kids? Should I have them and then look for a job? Should I land a job with maternity leave and hope that I still get tenure if I use maternity leave within the first few years I am working there?
"Innate differences." Are the concerns I have due to innate, physical differences? Or our society's inability to cope with a workforce that is actively involved in reproduction? A combination, perhaps, as Mr. Summers suggests: due to innate differences, women are not advancing, and he is concerned about the role discrimination plays in keeping women from advancing at elite universities. Universities which are among the most demanding of their junior faculty. Recent PhDs, who are at an age when most women in our society have children.
Maybe it's not sensitivity training that the cops need, maybe it's that they shouldn't have access to surveilance tapes. Or maybe the suicide was supposed to be public. In a public place your image is not your property, but this still definitely qualifies as an invasion of privacy.
Generally, though, it's not aout whether the cop should be more sensitive about what he puts on the web, it's that he shouldn't be allowed to put anything from a surveilance camera on the web, or he should be able to put all of it on the web. Either the unfortunate Mr. Lane committed suicide in public, or he didn't. We still haven't figured out here [the US: I'm not talking about slashdot or places like the UK where these cameras are more ubiquitous and widely accepted] which we value more: privacy or freedom of information.
So they a) lived there and b) gave the place its name. Seems like a good enough pair of reasons to call it an "Aztec site" to me. Would you prefer "mysterious Teotihuacan culture" on all references?
Actually, they didn't live there. They lived nearby, and considered the enormous ruins a holy site. They thought that that city was where humans came into being ("Teotihuacan" means "City of the Gods" in the Aztec language, Nahuatl.) In the literature, it really is referred to as a Mysterious Teotihuacan Culture (also called "Toltec" because this is what the Aztec called the Mysterious Teotihuacano Culture.) They had an enormous empire, conquering and trading with groups as far as 1500 km to the south, and Teotihuacan was the FIRST major urban center in the New World. It was enormous, with big, government-issue apartment complexes, sewage systems, and public market places.
Aztecs thought it a high compliment to be considered Toltec-ish, since when they established themselves in the area a thousand years after the place had peaked they claimed legitimacy by claiming to be at least the spiritual descendents of the Toltec (hey, look, they were fierce warriors and so are we!) even though they and everyone else acknowledged that they were entirely different peoples.
And this really is just about the extent of what we do know about the truly Mysterious Teotihuacano Culture (with some other random speculations about how they came to be the only big culture in the New World without someone like a king, how and why the city of hundreds of thousands came to be burned to the ground and abandoned within about 50 years, et cetera.) We know a hell of a lot about the Aztec. They were separated by time, space and culture. Saying 'what's the difference' between Aztec and Teotihuacano is like saying 'what's the difference' between you and an Ancient Greek.
I am a graduate student; my student funding covers tuition and provides a stipend, and I can buy into the university health care. My stipend, from which health care fees are deducted. I live in Pittsburgh, which is a very affordable city, and I pay $400 a month for my apartment-- about half of my take-home, monthly. But in Pittsburgh, this affords me the top floor and finished attic of a house; I live alone, and it's a very spacious, with big rooms, lots of windows, a balcony, and I use the attic as an office instead of the second bedroom it was marketed as. Of course, I spent a couple of months looking for a deal-- not all apartments are so nice for the price, but I did find one. I have my car that I bought and paid off before I quit the cushy job. I don't buy new clothes often, and I can use busses free with my student ID. I love to cook so don't eat out much. I am lucky, but the luck partly is of my making-- I spent a long time researching my options before quitting my job, and spent a lot of time making sure I had an apartment that I could afford and would like to stay in; I can't afford to move right now, or in the near future, without a team of friends with trucks and some scrimping to deal with overlapping security deposits. I don't have cable, but I have a cell phone I use carefully to conserve daytime minutes, and have people over to my house instead of going out all the time. I can afford wine and cheese, roadtrips and concerts, and that amazing dress I saw in the window at Express, but I can't afford to do them every week. That's fine with me. I spend four months a year on beaches and in the jungle, and I'm happy with my 15 year old television and no landline. I have scraped together savings in case of things like car trouble, family emergencies, and those "necessary" spur-of-the-moment trips I take when I see that there's an airline having a sale with round-trip tickets for $75 to San Diego. I have some money in long-term savings that I add to slowly, and as I said, I don't plan to be living below the poverty line forever. I have no problem working "odd" teaching jobs and programming or analyzing data for extra money, I just don't like having a boss giving me deadlines to do them on a weekly basis. Many of my neighbors are also living on what I make, and while they aren't students and so don't have the university health care, they do have government health care to help them out; most of them, however, have things like cable and take fewer trips. It's all about the choices you make; it costs very little to live from day to day in most of the U.S.; the things that cost more are the luxuries-- living in big cities, amenities, the different shoes that match every outfit you own, detailing your car, getting the newest graphics card. (My vaio laptop, that I'm using with Pittsburgh's fantastic free wireless access is six years old. My desktop is built from used parts.) Yeah, it takes more work. It takes better planning. But I'm loving it.
Isn't a "professional student" what the best teachers are? People who dedicate their lives to learning and to passing on their knowledge. I love teaching, I love the flexibility of an academic environment, I love learning, and I'm not looking back towards CorporateLand or Government-Style BureaucraticSinkhole ever again.:)
I realized a few years ago that I like having all bills paid too, but that I care a lot more about travelling to new and beautiful places during the summer than I do about having cable TV during the winter. You choose your luxuries in life. My luxuries are less material and more quality-of-life things. I can pay off all my bills even living under the poverty line, and I'm much happier now than I was when I had more bills-- and a LOT more money.
I was a programmer for a while, most notably during the bubble. I was paid really well, enjoyed the work itself most of the time, and got great perks. I also worked in an office with no windows 40 to 50 hours a week, and it could be pretty frustrating at times (in a damn, this idiot will NEVER understand the point I'm trying to make! kind of way) So I decided to go back to school.
I'm working on a PhD in archaeology. The stipend I'm living off of is a quarter of what I was making at my old job (not considering things like inflation and the raises I would've gotten between then and now.) I can't afford cable or to go out for dinner all that much; I'm living below the poverty line. But I love my life! I travel every summer to exotic places, I love what I spend my time doing, I am intellectually challenged every minute of the day, set my own schedule again, and am excited about the fact that I have so much freedom to determine where I will be in the future. Which university or universties I'll end up teaching at, where I'll do my research, all of the places I'll be able to visit. All of the reading I'll do and all of the time I'll spend outdoors instead of in an office with no windows. It'd be great if at some point I make a lot of money again, and I'm sure I'll manage to do just fine (under the poverty line is for grad students; I don't plan to stay here forever.) But for me, it was no choice: job and LIFE satisfaction over any amount of money, any day.
What percentage of the overall survey participants were women over 40? Because these findings state that a higher percentage of women over 40 play games daily than the interviewed men or teens. So if in their survey of 3500 people there are only 100 women over 40, but most of them play games all the time, it doesn't mean that they outnumber the men or teens. It just means that, if women over 40 are online, or gamers, or computer literate (we don't know what the universe of the survey is-- did they interview everyone in a games forum somewhere? Call random households? Send email to people with AOL accounts?) they're very likely to play wordgames in the wee hours of the morning.
Be careful with statistics. Especially if you're trying to figure out if you're outnumbered [yet].
Nope, it's usually multi-layered and dim and wet and dampness poses one of the biggest problems for gear, generally. The thickness of the cover not only makes solar-power really impossible, but makes getting a GIS signal generally impossible, too. If someone makes it possible, a lot of us would be ecstatic. NASA gives a hand and remote sensing helps, but under a canopy as dense as rainforest can be is about as remote as you can get these days, where satellite at least makes it possible to establish contact with something in the middle of deserts and oceans.
It's the perfect tool for an archaeologist. We need compasses, GPS, inclinometers, digital cameras-- but I probably couldn't use it under the canopy of a jungle, and since the battery is only good for 8 hours and rechargable in a car-- and I wouldn't see a car nor a generator for a couple of months-- it remains, sadly, impractical. I guess I just have to tote around the 6 separate, heavier instruments and the supply of batteries. If this had smarter batteries, I would be ecstatic right now. I'm sure that archaeologists who work closer to civilization (and therefore care less whether they're carting 1 instrument or 6) are probably pretty psyched, though!
Witnessescredibility has been under debate for years. Witnesses can be influenced by suggestive questioning, their own backgrounds and prejudices, or the amount of sleep they have had on a given day. And how do you quantify or qualify that kind of tampering? Witness testimony has been used for millenia. No evidence is foolproof. The problem is 1. to know what kind of tampering can be done and be aware and wary of it and 2. to get the trust of the public in that type of evidence so it can be admitted, falible or not.
Educators and Copyright (Score:2) by Bonker (243350) on 15:09 Tuesday 25 March 2003 (#5593550) (http://www.furinkan.net/) Many educators I know (Elementary school teachers, so take that into account) honestly beleive they are completely immune from copyright law because they are educators. I routinely hear of a teacher buying or borrowing a book and then copying that book in its entirety on a xerox machine, and then distributing copies to students or other teachers. When asked about it, the response is invariably the same. "Oh, it's okay. I'm a teacher."
But educators are exempt from copyright laws in many ways that common folk are. There are four factors outlined in Section 107 of the copyright law that determine fair use for educators:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes.
The nature of the copyrighted work.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
So it's essentially a "good faith" doctrine: is the copied portion brief? Is this use of the work likely to threaten its market potential? Is your intent to avoid paying for copyrighted materials?
Educators definitely have rights and privilages outside of mere mortals. They do not have blank checks or blanket protection-- but they certainly are exempt in many ways. If that was the last copy of an out-of-print or hard to find book, or a book that those other educators or students would otherwise not be able to obtain (ie, cost prohibitive) and their copies would not be further distributed (here, we re-collect and/or destroy copies like that once we're done with them) then it is fine.
We've known for a while that the DMCA collides with other laws and rights for a while, most notably fair use. So my question is what makes this any more of a legal victory other than the Copyright Office making an oppinion on this particular issue? How can this collision be any stronger than other colliding laws?
It's important if it (or any of the others) go to a high enough court that it can recognize how poorly written the DMCA is and do something to get rid of it. The clearer-cut the collision or violation, the more likely it is to illustrate the inanity of the DMCA and to help us get rid of it.
That's a problem I've seen all over media coverage, as well. I love my country, I support the troops, and I hope that they get home soon and alive. I just wish that the government wouldn't spend their lives so cheaply-- I think that we had not yet come to a point where war was the only answer, and as long as it's not the only answer there are alternatives to be explored. I am anti-war, but I am very patriotic and I definitely support the men and women risking their lives for big issues.
Yeah, I thought that it was really interesting that CNN's website immediately switched to a smaller version of their usual website; fewer stories, fewer pictures, less to load, with links from there at 9:30pm EST Wednesday. Instead of waiting for the slowdown, they anticipated it. I don't think I've ever seen that happen before-- not that there have been so many incidents that have generated that kind of blanket interest since the web became a major news source for the masses. The only one, in fact, that I can think of was Sept. 11th; these measures were definitely not taken then until sites had already started going down.
...and a couple of sites for tech and science news: EurekAlert, a great site for science and medicine press releases, the former, but still running, Hacker News Network, BottomQuark, the phenomenal journal Nature, Science magazine, and, of course, The Source.
Some good comics, most of which you will all know, but which I love; here are a couple you might not know: Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, a comic that actually features a female sysadmin/techgoddess, and Bateman Political cartoons, a fun political comic updated regularly.
And, of course, take a look at my sig... Click every day.
The most interesting thing about this is that the bonobo in question learned this stuff on his own. We've all heard about sign language, chimps pointing to symbols on keyboards or screens or whatever... all that stuff. The skeptics have always said, "ok, fine-- but you must intensively train animals to use even very rudimentary symbolic communication; you wouldn't be able to stop a human from learning all that and much, much more. How much can all this signing mean?" This bonobo was not intensively trained. He wasn't trained to speak at all. In fact, he wasn't taught any of this, to begin with.
Human children soak up new languages like sponges. Adults are notoriously bad at learning new languages. Virtually all language research done on non-human primates to date has been intensively training adult animals to use abstract symbols (like ASL or glyphs or whatever) to make a one-to-one correspondence to an object or action.
Kanzi grew up around humans, since his mother was being intensively trained to use a keyboard and he was too young to leave her side. He was not trained. He didn't even seem interested. Then, one day, Kanzi's mother was taken away-- and he began using everything she'd been taught (quite a bit more, in fact, than she ever learned) and very accurately. He learned because he was around that type of communication when he was young, and he just "picked it up."
Now, that was when his mother was being specifically trained to use a keyboard. She wasn't being specifically trained to speak. So he picked up, on his own, that human speech has something to do with communication, and how it works, and is able to use words across contexts, and was never explicitly taught to do so. I'd call that pretty damn revealing about the inherent linguistic abilities of bonobos.
Since they're our closest relatives, I'd say it's pretty revealing about the evolutionary history of our own linguistic abilities.
Planning my road trips (I've driven about 7k miles in the past year- around the US, southern Canada and northern Mexico) is something I do most of online and with the help of an atlas. Most important tip: Don't be afraid to detour! You see random sign for a "Dutch Windmill" in the middle of rural Iowa, well, go see what the fuss is about! Even if the destination isn't all that, the sideroute offers more of a view of what Iowa looks like than the highway does, and those detours will be the most memorable parts of your trip. Second most important tip: Truck stops are awesome. They have great, cheap food at any time of day; they have showers and laundry facilities, should you be desperate; they have anything you could possibly have run out of or not known you needed; and they are full of the friendliest and most open people, people who know the roads well, that you'll ever meet. And this is coming from a young, not-bad-looking woman who travels alone a lot; I stop at truck stops all the time and always feel safe and welcome and well-fed. Truck stops are awesome.
Links:
Resources by state, including computer-friendly truck stops (easy access to phone jacks &c.)
If you're going to be connected on the road, this is a great link: TruckerNews has updates on road conditions all over the US, as well as stop closures, detours, weather, &c. Check your route in the morning and you won't have to detour or backtrack during the day.
Roadside America has a great list of quirky roadside attractions (ever wanted to see the world's largest ball of twine?)
Another great attractions link is Hidden America...lots of great Americana.
If you really want to take your time and look around, try some scenic byways. A really wonderful way to get a taste of what America looks like at her best.
If you're like me and enjoy feeling the wind rush by, speedtrap.com is a great resource. Look up the places you'll be travelling the next day, and make sure you know where to watch for The Man.
Now watch tapes of the original version of the trilogy shoot up to $200 on eBay.
That's the point-- I don't have to. I own them. I saw them, I wanted them, I got them, and now I don't need to worry about changes. I hear a random song I like on the radio, I get a copy before the remix is the only version available or the band fades from view.
Those people who wanted the original version and always assumed they'd have it available to them are the ones that are at fault here. Not Lucas, who has every right to release whatever version he'd like, or not disseminate something that he has a copyright to. Someday the copyright is supposed to end and this will all be public domain, and then it will be freely available. Until then, if you want indefinite access to something that could potentially be altered, it's your own responsibility to go ensure that you'll have it.
Maybe that means either buying a copy of something you enjoy and will want to see/hear/experience in the future, or buying a VCR and taping it from tv.
The problem here is that this is a slippery slope. You can go to the library and read explicit sexual novels, and many books that can be found at public libraries have graphic pictures. Try the art section, for starters, or the medical/human sexuality section. Where do you draw the line? We don't take art out of the library because children might look at it-- we trust them to be suprevised if they cannot take care of themselves. Once you begin drawing lines like this, between what can be in a public library and what can't, where are you going to draw the line? With Huck Finn be allowed in your library?
Next comes the problem with filters themselves as a viable tool, even should you decide that you want to draw that line and where you want to draw it. I, personally, think it's better for a kid to stumble on a nude picture accidentally than for a teen to try to look up breast self-exams or information on STDs and not be able to. Most filters cannot effectively distinguish. As for people who directly go looking for porn, well, they'd probably be jacking off in the art section anyhow, if they were that resourseful and desperate.
Not only ISPs; all telecoms. All data. Seven years. The EU draftsman, Marco Capatto, is not happy with the data collection/retention clause, and has written a report on the proposal-- an interesting read. The problem is that this is a step away from the various governments independently deciding how to handle data collection and retention; the bill forces them to enact legislation that collects and retains in accordance with this bill. stop1984 has issued a press release on the subject.
Actually you're right. It was originally named Star Wars but was renamed "Episode IV: A New Hope" when the sequels were picked up. That's also when Lucas had to come up with backstory enough to write two more episodes to follow the original, and the idea for the prequels seems to have sprouted in his knobby little head.
You're confusing 'wanting to make changes' with 'having changes forced upon'.
How is this possibly being forced upon you? You don't have to see it, you don't have to buy it-- you've probably already seen the original and if it's that holy you should already have your very own copy. Lucas never, to my knowledge, said "this is the right and only version" (though his commercial practices may seem that way, and he probably does think that way.) He, like most artists/songwriters, wants to release something he considers more finished. Artists and songwriters often release remixes, too. If you want some particular version of something-- either to mess with it or to keep it pristine-- you should take pains to get it.
If you "want to make changes" you have to accept other people's rights (especially the original author/artist/etc!) to do the same!
They just aren't advertising backups. The memo said that the agent was so upset that she deleted the email. An agent contributed my favorite quote in the article:
A Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday night that the e-mails were not destroyed. The official did not elaborate or try to reconcile the statement with the memo.
Yeah, I'm sure there are backups. I'm sure the FBI is avoiding confirming that there are records somewhere of emails captured from "non-target" subjects, while trying to cover its ass in re: losing evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the most interesting statement in the Terra Nova piece is "Look, there's a trend in human political systems that appears to be basically universal as of 2005: social stress eventually puts all policymaking and the monopoly of force in the hands of an elected and more or less representative body of rulers." I have some problems with this statement, but will leave them aside for now and just say that I love the contrast between this statement and the idea of individuals asserting what Terra Nova calls "citizenship" in the next paragraph and other people call "rights". We have to remember that some rights that we exercise in the real world in some countries are not rights of citizenship in synthetic worlds or other countries. Players on WoW were exercising particular rights ... which they don't necessarily have under the laws of that land (see the licensing agreement).
What is most interesting to me is that, when the few in power do have a monopoly on policymaking and use of force, and when demonstrative protest is against the rules, it still happens when discontent and indignation reach an inflection point.
Nowhere did he say that men were more likely to be good at math and science. He said that perhaps innate differences (not lack of intellectual ability) may be a factor that women do not advance or succeed in certain fields. Okay. Let's see. What are some innate differences? People keep mentioning the vagina, but let's remember a couple of other things that women have that men do not: ovaries and a uterus. While a baby is in the oven, the father can continue working, a mother often cannot. While a child is small, it is more often women than men who sacrifice work time to care for them, especially if the parents decide that breastfeeding is important to them. The first is an innate difference. The second is largely cultural (how many offices want a small child in them? How many allow breastfeeding?) Mr. Summers said his remarks were misconstrued as suggesting that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of math and science, and that he "did not say that, nor do I believe it" (RTFA)
As a woman who is on the cusp of receiving her PhD and looking for a teaching position, I am faced with the reality that my potential employers are very concerned about my marital status, whether I have children now, and whether I plan to have them in the next few years, or ever. (Legal or not, that's how it is; I have been at staff meetings where someone brings it up in relation to a prospective faculty member, and the department chair had to say "it is illegal for us to consider that factor." Do you think it's not on people's minds, even after that?) I am also faced with the reality of an ad I saw recently: "Egg donors needed. Waited too long for tenure." From my perspective, poignant. Will I have to choose between a family and a career? My intellectual capacity and the body of research reflected in my CV rival that of any man I will be competing with for junior faculty positions. But I know that I want to have children. I will be getting my PhD at the age of 30, and starting a career when most of my friends have small children. Should I put off kids? Should I have them and then look for a job? Should I land a job with maternity leave and hope that I still get tenure if I use maternity leave within the first few years I am working there?
"Innate differences." Are the concerns I have due to innate, physical differences? Or our society's inability to cope with a workforce that is actively involved in reproduction? A combination, perhaps, as Mr. Summers suggests: due to innate differences, women are not advancing, and he is concerned about the role discrimination plays in keeping women from advancing at elite universities. Universities which are among the most demanding of their junior faculty. Recent PhDs, who are at an age when most women in our society have children.
Maybe it's not sensitivity training that the cops need, maybe it's that they shouldn't have access to surveilance tapes. Or maybe the suicide was supposed to be public. In a public place your image is not your property, but this still definitely qualifies as an invasion of privacy.
Generally, though, it's not aout whether the cop should be more sensitive about what he puts on the web, it's that he shouldn't be allowed to put anything from a surveilance camera on the web, or he should be able to put all of it on the web. Either the unfortunate Mr. Lane committed suicide in public, or he didn't. We still haven't figured out here [the US: I'm not talking about slashdot or places like the UK where these cameras are more ubiquitous and widely accepted] which we value more: privacy or freedom of information.
So they a) lived there and b) gave the place its name. Seems like a good enough pair of reasons to call it an "Aztec site" to me. Would you prefer "mysterious Teotihuacan culture" on all references?
Actually, they didn't live there. They lived nearby, and considered the enormous ruins a holy site. They thought that that city was where humans came into being ("Teotihuacan" means "City of the Gods" in the Aztec language, Nahuatl.) In the literature, it really is referred to as a Mysterious Teotihuacan Culture (also called "Toltec" because this is what the Aztec called the Mysterious Teotihuacano Culture.) They had an enormous empire, conquering and trading with groups as far as 1500 km to the south, and Teotihuacan was the FIRST major urban center in the New World. It was enormous, with big, government-issue apartment complexes, sewage systems, and public market places.
Aztecs thought it a high compliment to be considered Toltec-ish, since when they established themselves in the area a thousand years after the place had peaked they claimed legitimacy by claiming to be at least the spiritual descendents of the Toltec (hey, look, they were fierce warriors and so are we!) even though they and everyone else acknowledged that they were entirely different peoples.
And this really is just about the extent of what we do know about the truly Mysterious Teotihuacano Culture (with some other random speculations about how they came to be the only big culture in the New World without someone like a king, how and why the city of hundreds of thousands came to be burned to the ground and abandoned within about 50 years, et cetera.) We know a hell of a lot about the Aztec. They were separated by time, space and culture. Saying 'what's the difference' between Aztec and Teotihuacano is like saying 'what's the difference' between you and an Ancient Greek.
I am a graduate student; my student funding covers tuition and provides a stipend, and I can buy into the university health care. My stipend, from which health care fees are deducted. I live in Pittsburgh, which is a very affordable city, and I pay $400 a month for my apartment-- about half of my take-home, monthly. But in Pittsburgh, this affords me the top floor and finished attic of a house; I live alone, and it's a very spacious, with big rooms, lots of windows, a balcony, and I use the attic as an office instead of the second bedroom it was marketed as. Of course, I spent a couple of months looking for a deal-- not all apartments are so nice for the price, but I did find one. I have my car that I bought and paid off before I quit the cushy job. I don't buy new clothes often, and I can use busses free with my student ID. I love to cook so don't eat out much. I am lucky, but the luck partly is of my making-- I spent a long time researching my options before quitting my job, and spent a lot of time making sure I had an apartment that I could afford and would like to stay in; I can't afford to move right now, or in the near future, without a team of friends with trucks and some scrimping to deal with overlapping security deposits. I don't have cable, but I have a cell phone I use carefully to conserve daytime minutes, and have people over to my house instead of going out all the time. I can afford wine and cheese, roadtrips and concerts, and that amazing dress I saw in the window at Express, but I can't afford to do them every week. That's fine with me. I spend four months a year on beaches and in the jungle, and I'm happy with my 15 year old television and no landline. I have scraped together savings in case of things like car trouble, family emergencies, and those "necessary" spur-of-the-moment trips I take when I see that there's an airline having a sale with round-trip tickets for $75 to San Diego. I have some money in long-term savings that I add to slowly, and as I said, I don't plan to be living below the poverty line forever. I have no problem working "odd" teaching jobs and programming or analyzing data for extra money, I just don't like having a boss giving me deadlines to do them on a weekly basis. Many of my neighbors are also living on what I make, and while they aren't students and so don't have the university health care, they do have government health care to help them out; most of them, however, have things like cable and take fewer trips. It's all about the choices you make; it costs very little to live from day to day in most of the U.S.; the things that cost more are the luxuries-- living in big cities, amenities, the different shoes that match every outfit you own, detailing your car, getting the newest graphics card. (My vaio laptop, that I'm using with Pittsburgh's fantastic free wireless access is six years old. My desktop is built from used parts.) Yeah, it takes more work. It takes better planning. But I'm loving it.
Isn't a "professional student" what the best teachers are? People who dedicate their lives to learning and to passing on their knowledge. I love teaching, I love the flexibility of an academic environment, I love learning, and I'm not looking back towards CorporateLand or Government-Style BureaucraticSinkhole ever again. :)
I realized a few years ago that I like having all bills paid too, but that I care a lot more about travelling to new and beautiful places during the summer than I do about having cable TV during the winter. You choose your luxuries in life. My luxuries are less material and more quality-of-life things. I can pay off all my bills even living under the poverty line, and I'm much happier now than I was when I had more bills-- and a LOT more money.
I was a programmer for a while, most notably during the bubble. I was paid really well, enjoyed the work itself most of the time, and got great perks. I also worked in an office with no windows 40 to 50 hours a week, and it could be pretty frustrating at times (in a damn, this idiot will NEVER understand the point I'm trying to make! kind of way) So I decided to go back to school.
I'm working on a PhD in archaeology. The stipend I'm living off of is a quarter of what I was making at my old job (not considering things like inflation and the raises I would've gotten between then and now.) I can't afford cable or to go out for dinner all that much; I'm living below the poverty line. But I love my life! I travel every summer to exotic places, I love what I spend my time doing, I am intellectually challenged every minute of the day, set my own schedule again, and am excited about the fact that I have so much freedom to determine where I will be in the future. Which university or universties I'll end up teaching at, where I'll do my research, all of the places I'll be able to visit. All of the reading I'll do and all of the time I'll spend outdoors instead of in an office with no windows. It'd be great if at some point I make a lot of money again, and I'm sure I'll manage to do just fine (under the poverty line is for grad students; I don't plan to stay here forever.) But for me, it was no choice: job and LIFE satisfaction over any amount of money, any day.
What percentage of the overall survey participants were women over 40? Because these findings state that a higher percentage of women over 40 play games daily than the interviewed men or teens. So if in their survey of 3500 people there are only 100 women over 40, but most of them play games all the time, it doesn't mean that they outnumber the men or teens. It just means that, if women over 40 are online, or gamers, or computer literate (we don't know what the universe of the survey is-- did they interview everyone in a games forum somewhere? Call random households? Send email to people with AOL accounts?) they're very likely to play wordgames in the wee hours of the morning.
Be careful with statistics. Especially if you're trying to figure out if you're outnumbered [yet].
Nope, it's usually multi-layered and dim and wet and dampness poses one of the biggest problems for gear, generally. The thickness of the cover not only makes solar-power really impossible, but makes getting a GIS signal generally impossible, too. If someone makes it possible, a lot of us would be ecstatic. NASA gives a hand and remote sensing helps, but under a canopy as dense as rainforest can be is about as remote as you can get these days, where satellite at least makes it possible to establish contact with something in the middle of deserts and oceans.
It's the perfect tool for an archaeologist. We need compasses, GPS, inclinometers, digital cameras-- but I probably couldn't use it under the canopy of a jungle, and since the battery is only good for 8 hours and rechargable in a car-- and I wouldn't see a car nor a generator for a couple of months-- it remains, sadly, impractical. I guess I just have to tote around the 6 separate, heavier instruments and the supply of batteries. If this had smarter batteries, I would be ecstatic right now. I'm sure that archaeologists who work closer to civilization (and therefore care less whether they're carting 1 instrument or 6) are probably pretty psyched, though!
Witnesses credibility has been under debate for years. Witnesses can be influenced by suggestive questioning, their own backgrounds and prejudices, or the amount of sleep they have had on a given day. And how do you quantify or qualify that kind of tampering? Witness testimony has been used for millenia. No evidence is foolproof. The problem is 1. to know what kind of tampering can be done and be aware and wary of it and 2. to get the trust of the public in that type of evidence so it can be admitted, falible or not.
Educators and Copyright (Score:2)
by Bonker (243350) on 15:09 Tuesday 25 March 2003 (#5593550)
(http://www.furinkan.net/)
Many educators I know (Elementary school teachers, so take that into account) honestly beleive they are completely immune from copyright law because they are educators.
I routinely hear of a teacher buying or borrowing a book and then copying that book in its entirety on a xerox machine, and then distributing copies to students or other teachers. When asked about it, the response is invariably the same. "Oh, it's okay. I'm a teacher."
But educators are exempt from copyright laws in many ways that common folk are. There are four factors outlined in Section 107 of the copyright law that determine fair use for educators:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes.
The nature of the copyrighted work.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
So it's essentially a "good faith" doctrine: is the copied portion brief? Is this use of the work likely to threaten its market potential? Is your intent to avoid paying for copyrighted materials?
Educators definitely have rights and privilages outside of mere mortals. They do not have blank checks or blanket protection-- but they certainly are exempt in many ways. If that was the last copy of an out-of-print or hard to find book, or a book that those other educators or students would otherwise not be able to obtain (ie, cost prohibitive) and their copies would not be further distributed (here, we re-collect and/or destroy copies like that once we're done with them) then it is fine.
We've known for a while that the DMCA collides with other laws and rights for a while, most notably fair use. So my question is what makes this any more of a legal victory other than the Copyright Office making an oppinion on this particular issue? How can this collision be any stronger than other colliding laws?
It's important if it (or any of the others) go to a high enough court that it can recognize how poorly written the DMCA is and do something to get rid of it. The clearer-cut the collision or violation, the more likely it is to illustrate the inanity of the DMCA and to help us get rid of it.
That's a problem I've seen all over media coverage, as well. I love my country, I support the troops, and I hope that they get home soon and alive. I just wish that the government wouldn't spend their lives so cheaply-- I think that we had not yet come to a point where war was the only answer, and as long as it's not the only answer there are alternatives to be explored. I am anti-war, but I am very patriotic and I definitely support the men and women risking their lives for big issues.
Yeah, I thought that it was really interesting that CNN's website immediately switched to a smaller version of their usual website; fewer stories, fewer pictures, less to load, with links from there at 9:30pm EST Wednesday. Instead of waiting for the slowdown, they anticipated it. I don't think I've ever seen that happen before-- not that there have been so many incidents that have generated that kind of blanket interest since the web became a major news source for the masses. The only one, in fact, that I can think of was Sept. 11th; these measures were definitely not taken then until sites had already started going down.
I go to a number of sites for "news" news; I find that the "same" news is very different coming from different countries:
...and a couple of sites for tech and science news:
BBC News, which everyone's familiar with;
CNN, the epitome of US government-sanctioned news;
The Economist, of course;
The Times of London,
Japan Today,
Pravda,
The Beijing Review,
Le Monde, and
The Tehran Times
EurekAlert, a great site for science and medicine press releases,
the former, but still running, Hacker News Network,
BottomQuark,
the phenomenal journal Nature,
Science magazine,
and, of course, The Source.
Some good comics, most of which you will all know, but which I love; here are a couple you might not know:
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, a comic that actually features a female sysadmin/techgoddess, and
Bateman Political cartoons, a fun political comic updated regularly.
And, of course, take a look at my sig... Click every day.
The most interesting thing about this is that the bonobo in question learned this stuff on his own. We've all heard about sign language, chimps pointing to symbols on keyboards or screens or whatever... all that stuff. The skeptics have always said, "ok, fine-- but you must intensively train animals to use even very rudimentary symbolic communication; you wouldn't be able to stop a human from learning all that and much, much more. How much can all this signing mean?" This bonobo was not intensively trained. He wasn't trained to speak at all. In fact, he wasn't taught any of this, to begin with.
Human children soak up new languages like sponges. Adults are notoriously bad at learning new languages. Virtually all language research done on non-human primates to date has been intensively training adult animals to use abstract symbols (like ASL or glyphs or whatever) to make a one-to-one correspondence to an object or action.
Kanzi grew up around humans, since his mother was being intensively trained to use a keyboard and he was too young to leave her side. He was not trained. He didn't even seem interested. Then, one day, Kanzi's mother was taken away-- and he began using everything she'd been taught (quite a bit more, in fact, than she ever learned) and very accurately. He learned because he was around that type of communication when he was young, and he just "picked it up."
Now, that was when his mother was being specifically trained to use a keyboard. She wasn't being specifically trained to speak. So he picked up, on his own, that human speech has something to do with communication, and how it works, and is able to use words across contexts, and was never explicitly taught to do so. I'd call that pretty damn revealing about the inherent linguistic abilities of bonobos.
Since they're our closest relatives, I'd say it's pretty revealing about the evolutionary history of our own linguistic abilities.
Planning my road trips (I've driven about 7k miles in the past year- around the US, southern Canada and northern Mexico) is something I do most of online and with the help of an atlas. Most important tip: Don't be afraid to detour! You see random sign for a "Dutch Windmill" in the middle of rural Iowa, well, go see what the fuss is about! Even if the destination isn't all that, the sideroute offers more of a view of what Iowa looks like than the highway does, and those detours will be the most memorable parts of your trip. Second most important tip: Truck stops are awesome. They have great, cheap food at any time of day; they have showers and laundry facilities, should you be desperate; they have anything you could possibly have run out of or not known you needed; and they are full of the friendliest and most open people, people who know the roads well, that you'll ever meet. And this is coming from a young, not-bad-looking woman who travels alone a lot; I stop at truck stops all the time and always feel safe and welcome and well-fed. Truck stops are awesome.
...lots of great Americana.
Links:
Resources by state, including computer-friendly truck stops (easy access to phone jacks &c.)
List of truck stops in general
Another truck stop guide
If you're going to be connected on the road, this is a great link: TruckerNews has updates on road conditions all over the US, as well as stop closures, detours, weather, &c. Check your route in the morning and you won't have to detour or backtrack during the day.
Roadside America has a great list of quirky roadside attractions (ever wanted to see the world's largest ball of twine?)
Another great attractions link is Hidden America
If you really want to take your time and look around, try some scenic byways. A really wonderful way to get a taste of what America looks like at her best.
If you're like me and enjoy feeling the wind rush by, speedtrap.com is a great resource. Look up the places you'll be travelling the next day, and make sure you know where to watch for The Man.
Enjoy!
Now watch tapes of the original version of the trilogy shoot up to $200 on eBay.
That's the point-- I don't have to. I own them. I saw them, I wanted them, I got them, and now I don't need to worry about changes. I hear a random song I like on the radio, I get a copy before the remix is the only version available or the band fades from view.
Those people who wanted the original version and always assumed they'd have it available to them are the ones that are at fault here. Not Lucas, who has every right to release whatever version he'd like, or not disseminate something that he has a copyright to. Someday the copyright is supposed to end and this will all be public domain, and then it will be freely available. Until then, if you want indefinite access to something that could potentially be altered, it's your own responsibility to go ensure that you'll have it.
Maybe that means either buying a copy of something you enjoy and will want to see/hear/experience in the future, or buying a VCR and taping it from tv.
The problem here is that this is a slippery slope. You can go to the library and read explicit sexual novels, and many books that can be found at public libraries have graphic pictures. Try the art section, for starters, or the medical/human sexuality section. Where do you draw the line? We don't take art out of the library because children might look at it-- we trust them to be suprevised if they cannot take care of themselves. Once you begin drawing lines like this, between what can be in a public library and what can't, where are you going to draw the line? With Huck Finn be allowed in your library?
Next comes the problem with filters themselves as a viable tool, even should you decide that you want to draw that line and where you want to draw it. I, personally, think it's better for a kid to stumble on a nude picture accidentally than for a teen to try to look up breast self-exams or information on STDs and not be able to. Most filters cannot effectively distinguish. As for people who directly go looking for porn, well, they'd probably be jacking off in the art section anyhow, if they were that resourseful and desperate.
Not only ISPs; all telecoms. All data. Seven years. The EU draftsman, Marco Capatto, is not happy with the data collection/retention clause, and has written a report on the proposal-- an interesting read. The problem is that this is a step away from the various governments independently deciding how to handle data collection and retention; the bill forces them to enact legislation that collects and retains in accordance with this bill. stop1984 has issued a press release on the subject.
Sure thing-- the hungersite has been back up for a few months now. Another good one is Stop the Hunger ...I hit them both every day.
Actually you're right. It was originally named Star Wars but was renamed "Episode IV: A New Hope" when the sequels were picked up. That's also when Lucas had to come up with backstory enough to write two more episodes to follow the original, and the idea for the prequels seems to have sprouted in his knobby little head.
You're confusing 'wanting to make changes' with 'having changes forced upon'.
How is this possibly being forced upon you? You don't have to see it, you don't have to buy it-- you've probably already seen the original and if it's that holy you should already have your very own copy. Lucas never, to my knowledge, said "this is the right and only version" (though his commercial practices may seem that way, and he probably does think that way.) He, like most artists/songwriters, wants to release something he considers more finished. Artists and songwriters often release remixes, too. If you want some particular version of something-- either to mess with it or to keep it pristine-- you should take pains to get it.
If you "want to make changes" you have to accept other people's rights (especially the original author/artist/etc!) to do the same!
Yes, I have the original trilogy on vhs.
They just aren't advertising backups. The memo said that the agent was so upset that she deleted the email. An agent contributed my favorite quote in the article:
A Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday night that the e-mails were not destroyed. The official did not elaborate or try to reconcile the statement with the memo.
Yeah, I'm sure there are backups. I'm sure the FBI is avoiding confirming that there are records somewhere of emails captured from "non-target" subjects, while trying to cover its ass in re: losing evidence.