The illusion of choice is a powerful thing. The internet almost gave us the real thing, but the content and music is still firmly under the control of RIAA and MPAA. When their stranglehold ends, the last ISP standing will either be the most open, or the one with the best walled garden.
There's still room for competition, so lets hope it leads to a free-er market, at least.
That's because general news sites don't have slashdotters with brains modding your ridiculous assertions. I think/. does a good job sifting the rational from the kneejerk responses that you're displaying.
Khan Academy amply demonstrates why they're feeling so threatened. It's available for free, teaches individuals the subject matter in a clear and measurable way, and mitigates the need for individual tutors or teachers.
The Khan Academy model is probably applicable to any subject, it just needs the right series of lessons. Most MOOC's will probably tend toward the Khan model, and this means that teachers and professors have been made mostly obsolete.
This is an awesome thing. Imagine a world where kids get the best teachers for free, instead of the crapshoot that exists today; some math teachers are idiots. Others are boring as hell, and others vindictive assholes who will pick on students for arbitrary reasons.
Give every kid equal opportunity to learn in a system that objectively measures how well they've learned it. Put them in a Khan Academy system and let them compete for points and badges. The teacher's job becomes one of helping those students who are struggling with individual bits and pieces, rather than trying to shoehorn a lesson plan into the students' heads. The smart students won't get bored, the others will have the chance to learn core subjects effectively.
Condescending? I wasn't preaching imperial superiority or anything like that.
I already know the metric system. I accept the fact that there are two conventions, and I live with it. I agree the metric system is easier. At some point, however, you have to reconcile yourself to the undeniable fact that there are times in life you'll have to deal with imperial units. It sucks, but get over it. (That last bit was condescending, in case you missed it.)
As for the post that started this, he implied that the summary was somehow impolite because it didn't conform to his preferred units of measurement. I responded in kind. The summary wasn't impolite, it's a consequence of the worldwide culture we live in. It's not logical to go around expecting the rest of the world to conform to your notions of right and wrong (metric right, imperial wrong.) Even when metric measurement is clearly and objectively a superior system, it's not "impolite" to use imperial units of measurement It's especially not sensible to couch your expectation of other people's conformity in some sort of assumption that noncomformity is offensive or rude.
At worst, noncomformity is ignorant. At best, it's simply a competing convention. Learn to accept that and your life will have much less needless stress.
Learn to guesstimate big numbers. It will help reduce your apparent anxiety when confronted with American imperial units of measurement.
It takes about a second or so of guesswork - 1000 feet is about 300 meters. 2000 is 600. 75% of 300 is 225, so we get a guesstimate of 225 + 300 + 300 = 825m . In reality, we're off by about 13, but remember, that doesn't matter. If you're really good at math, you could subsitute 304 for 300 and get closer to the reality, but why bother? The more you do conversions like that, the easier they get.
Out of politeness to your future self, you should adjust your attitude and simply accept that sometimes you'll have to think a little bit. Not much, fortunately, but a little.
And if you absolutely can't handle it, then take responsibility for your own information consumption and install an automatic converter. There are plugins for firefox and chrome that automatically convert units to and from metric and imperial. You can even auto-convert units of currency. You'll never have to waste another second on translating again.
Real politeness never imposes on others. Do unto others as you would have done unto you has a nice corollary: do for yourself what you'd expect to do for others. At some point you have to take care of yourself.:)
Cyanogenmod on my phone and tablet, the cost of both being less than an iPhone 4, compatible with every game I've ever bothered buying, and I somehow am not weeping at the lack of Steve Jobs personal approval of the situation. It's smooth, supported, and consistent. If I *REALLY* need a driver or custom software, it can be done. Sorry, Android simply makes sense for a lot of things, from a rational, market perspective. I'm not saying Apple is worthless, or that the extra money you're dumping into their products is wasted. I'm saying that it's not necessary, and that I prefer independence to the Apple experience. I find it bothersome that fanbois seem to dispute my preference as some sort of evil. I'm not telling you what to do or what to think. I'm offering a personal observation from a casual users standpoint.
The choices are still right there. You get to trade off universal compatibility for pricing, support, community, customizability, and hardware specifications according to your own preference, rather than being restricted to only that mandated by the almighty fruit. Also, good luck getting iOS to behave as a good basic platform for anything other than Apple devices - whereas you can get Android to run on anything with a chip, short of a bag of Doritos.
I think Android kinda sucks because it's so incredibly tainted by the walled garden mindset, but the whole idea of fragmentation being bad is premised on the notion that what Apple is doing is the "right" thing. It's not - it's good for Apple from a business standpoint, period. They're not in business to make a better world, they're in business to peddle gizmos with a logo.
The case could be made that Android is in the business of making a better world, giving everyone a chance to peddle gizmos with a common logo.
Contracts at the time made it impossible for BP-ARCO to recover what was lost in the acquisition. The Wikipedia article about the Berkely Pit and Montana Resources is a good starting point if you're interested in the story. It's kinda ironic, but the profit from the other mines acquired with the Pit more than make up for the loss in keeping it clean and research into cleaning technology. Butte provided a helluva lot of copper and other resources to the world - and our mines continue to do so.
It's a perfect example of mining and resource extraction evolving with our understanding of environmental impacts and the balance between human expansion and long-term survivability. They tear down mountains in Butte, MT, to provide copper, molybdenum, silver, and other valuable resources for the rest of the world. It's an amazing thing to watch, having grown up there - you learn a little bit of awe at the fact that humans can tear down mountains, take what they want, and rebuild a mountain on the southeast end of the property. Trucks bigger than your house keep rolling loads of rock and soil, 24 hours a day. Fun stuff, for sure.
Soylent Green! Now in tasty new all natural mango flavor (no artificial flavorings added, only available in select locations, see central distribution outlets for details.)
In Jurassic Park, they used frog DNA and produced only males. The frog DNA caused them to spontaneously change sex, letting the mommy velociraptor and daddy velociraptor love each other very much to make the baby velociraptor.
So Slashdot's variation on the solution is... giant mango flavored genetically engineered vampire bat bugs? I for one welcome our new fruity overlords.
You can press the "Many More" button - setting up a script to get all of them is trivial with greasemonkey, and even more trivial if you spend a bit of time clicking. There doesn't appear to be another way of getting at posts, but all of them seem available, and all of them are easy to get at. I suppose you could also deconstruct whatever call is pulling the posts and try to get them all in one go.
And honestly, if you're dumb enough to send Russians good money to preorder a device made by a startup company based in England, you don't deserve that money anyway.
I'm advocating the khan academy style of teaching - for most subjects it is a compelling alternative to the standard one-size-fits all approach to public education. A set of videos and materials to teach a subject in a way that can be paced intuitively is better than an impatient live teacher - a student can pause and rewind if needed. The teacher's task becomes one of monitoring progress, filling in the gaps, and directing subjects. Everyone gets the same information, and progress is measurable and structured.
The sooner you teach a child discipline, the sooner he will learn. If he knows everything set out in your curriculum because it's all in a book that he read in the first week, you've now got a child who knows everything you planned on regurgitating. With no contingency for the smart ones, then not only will the teacher not teach discipline, but the kid will learn that teachers are blithering idiots like everyone else on the planet.
Most school teachers aren't worth as much as a well written book.
Slashdot Mirror
The illusion of choice is a powerful thing. The internet almost gave us the real thing, but the content and music is still firmly under the control of RIAA and MPAA. When their stranglehold ends, the last ISP standing will either be the most open, or the one with the best walled garden.
There's still room for competition, so lets hope it leads to a free-er market, at least.
That's because general news sites don't have slashdotters with brains modding your ridiculous assertions. I think /. does a good job sifting the rational from the kneejerk responses that you're displaying.
Khan Academy amply demonstrates why they're feeling so threatened. It's available for free, teaches individuals the subject matter in a clear and measurable way, and mitigates the need for individual tutors or teachers.
The Khan Academy model is probably applicable to any subject, it just needs the right series of lessons. Most MOOC's will probably tend toward the Khan model, and this means that teachers and professors have been made mostly obsolete.
This is an awesome thing. Imagine a world where kids get the best teachers for free, instead of the crapshoot that exists today; some math teachers are idiots. Others are boring as hell, and others vindictive assholes who will pick on students for arbitrary reasons.
Give every kid equal opportunity to learn in a system that objectively measures how well they've learned it. Put them in a Khan Academy system and let them compete for points and badges. The teacher's job becomes one of helping those students who are struggling with individual bits and pieces, rather than trying to shoehorn a lesson plan into the students' heads. The smart students won't get bored, the others will have the chance to learn core subjects effectively.
Condescending? I wasn't preaching imperial superiority or anything like that.
I already know the metric system. I accept the fact that there are two conventions, and I live with it. I agree the metric system is easier. At some point, however, you have to reconcile yourself to the undeniable fact that there are times in life you'll have to deal with imperial units. It sucks, but get over it. (That last bit was condescending, in case you missed it.)
As for the post that started this, he implied that the summary was somehow impolite because it didn't conform to his preferred units of measurement. I responded in kind. The summary wasn't impolite, it's a consequence of the worldwide culture we live in. It's not logical to go around expecting the rest of the world to conform to your notions of right and wrong (metric right, imperial wrong.) Even when metric measurement is clearly and objectively a superior system, it's not "impolite" to use imperial units of measurement It's especially not sensible to couch your expectation of other people's conformity in some sort of assumption that noncomformity is offensive or rude.
At worst, noncomformity is ignorant. At best, it's simply a competing convention. Learn to accept that and your life will have much less needless stress.
Learn to guesstimate big numbers. It will help reduce your apparent anxiety when confronted with American imperial units of measurement.
It takes about a second or so of guesswork - 1000 feet is about 300 meters. 2000 is 600. 75% of 300 is 225, so we get a guesstimate of 225 + 300 + 300 = 825m . In reality, we're off by about 13, but remember, that doesn't matter. If you're really good at math, you could subsitute 304 for 300 and get closer to the reality, but why bother? The more you do conversions like that, the easier they get.
Out of politeness to your future self, you should adjust your attitude and simply accept that sometimes you'll have to think a little bit. Not much, fortunately, but a little.
And if you absolutely can't handle it, then take responsibility for your own information consumption and install an automatic converter. There are plugins for firefox and chrome that automatically convert units to and from metric and imperial. You can even auto-convert units of currency. You'll never have to waste another second on translating again.
Real politeness never imposes on others. Do unto others as you would have done unto you has a nice corollary: do for yourself what you'd expect to do for others. At some point you have to take care of yourself. :)
Also, XDA kicks Apple in the nuts.
Cyanogenmod on my phone and tablet, the cost of both being less than an iPhone 4, compatible with every game I've ever bothered buying, and I somehow am not weeping at the lack of Steve Jobs personal approval of the situation. It's smooth, supported, and consistent. If I *REALLY* need a driver or custom software, it can be done. Sorry, Android simply makes sense for a lot of things, from a rational, market perspective. I'm not saying Apple is worthless, or that the extra money you're dumping into their products is wasted. I'm saying that it's not necessary, and that I prefer independence to the Apple experience. I find it bothersome that fanbois seem to dispute my preference as some sort of evil. I'm not telling you what to do or what to think. I'm offering a personal observation from a casual users standpoint.
The choices are still right there. You get to trade off universal compatibility for pricing, support, community, customizability, and hardware specifications according to your own preference, rather than being restricted to only that mandated by the almighty fruit. Also, good luck getting iOS to behave as a good basic platform for anything other than Apple devices - whereas you can get Android to run on anything with a chip, short of a bag of Doritos.
I think Android kinda sucks because it's so incredibly tainted by the walled garden mindset, but the whole idea of fragmentation being bad is premised on the notion that what Apple is doing is the "right" thing. It's not - it's good for Apple from a business standpoint, period. They're not in business to make a better world, they're in business to peddle gizmos with a logo.
The case could be made that Android is in the business of making a better world, giving everyone a chance to peddle gizmos with a common logo.
Yeah, I see a lot of silicone forms at Hooters.
What's wrong with timothy?
He can't even spell the title correctly... seriously, 'mision'? What the hell is this crap?
Contracts at the time made it impossible for BP-ARCO to recover what was lost in the acquisition. The Wikipedia article about the Berkely Pit and Montana Resources is a good starting point if you're interested in the story. It's kinda ironic, but the profit from the other mines acquired with the Pit more than make up for the loss in keeping it clean and research into cleaning technology. Butte provided a helluva lot of copper and other resources to the world - and our mines continue to do so.
It's a perfect example of mining and resource extraction evolving with our understanding of environmental impacts and the balance between human expansion and long-term survivability. They tear down mountains in Butte, MT, to provide copper, molybdenum, silver, and other valuable resources for the rest of the world. It's an amazing thing to watch, having grown up there - you learn a little bit of awe at the fact that humans can tear down mountains, take what they want, and rebuild a mountain on the southeast end of the property. Trucks bigger than your house keep rolling loads of rock and soil, 24 hours a day. Fun stuff, for sure.
Come visit our giant toxic Butte-hole!
Soylent Green! Now in tasty new all natural mango flavor (no artificial flavorings added, only available in select locations, see central distribution outlets for details.)
In Jurassic Park, they used frog DNA and produced only males. The frog DNA caused them to spontaneously change sex, letting the mommy velociraptor and daddy velociraptor love each other very much to make the baby velociraptor.
So Slashdot's variation on the solution is... giant mango flavored genetically engineered vampire bat bugs? I for one welcome our new fruity overlords.
You can press the "Many More" button - setting up a script to get all of them is trivial with greasemonkey, and even more trivial if you spend a bit of time clicking. There doesn't appear to be another way of getting at posts, but all of them seem available, and all of them are easy to get at. I suppose you could also deconstruct whatever call is pulling the posts and try to get them all in one go.
slashdot.org/~circletimessquare
Well, crap. You mean life's not fair? Damn it all.
And honestly, if you're dumb enough to send Russians good money to preorder a device made by a startup company based in England, you don't deserve that money anyway.
Their control mechanism is distinctly 'digital' - and the interface is point and click.
Thanks for that - and thanks for keeping up on slashdot :) Nice to see input from the head honcho!
Noooope! Chuck Testa.
I'm advocating the khan academy style of teaching - for most subjects it is a compelling alternative to the standard one-size-fits all approach to public education. A set of videos and materials to teach a subject in a way that can be paced intuitively is better than an impatient live teacher - a student can pause and rewind if needed. The teacher's task becomes one of monitoring progress, filling in the gaps, and directing subjects. Everyone gets the same information, and progress is measurable and structured.
Like Verizon would let a silly little thing like laws get in their way...
The sooner you teach a child discipline, the sooner he will learn. If he knows everything set out in your curriculum because it's all in a book that he read in the first week, you've now got a child who knows everything you planned on regurgitating. With no contingency for the smart ones, then not only will the teacher not teach discipline, but the kid will learn that teachers are blithering idiots like everyone else on the planet.
Most school teachers aren't worth as much as a well written book.