Except most Hispanic kids lag way behind even if they're in the same good schools. Resources are then reallocated to pay for a higher-cost ESL teacher and handle various associated problems, damaging that school's quality.
I saw the decline firsthand growing up here. When I was in grade school, my Hispanic classmates/friends had been pushed by their parents to use English and fit in, so they only 1-2 hours per day with one of the few district ESL teachers and were mainstreamed otherwise. Then a flood of immigrants arrived that had no interest in learning English, told their kids how superior their homeland was and promised they'd go back soon. Those kids had to be put into all-day ESL (so 2-3 specially-trained teachers were hired per campus), extra had to be spent to give them pleasure-based reasons to not drop out, then more to handle the rise in gang violence and teen pregnancies.
That is why Hispanic kids often end up in shitty schools -- educating them and handling related problems costs so fucking much that it drastically drags the school's quality down.
The pampered generation was the one born in the very early 90s onwards; she was born in the mid-70s, and kids were still having 'traditional' childhoods for a good 15 years after that point.
Also, most of the estimates I've seen place people in their mid-30s (ages 34-37, perhaps) either in the overlap between two generations, or outside of both. The childhood technological experiences of Generation X and Generation Y are drastically different thanks to the sudden rise of home computers, microwaves, VCRs, 1st/2nd wave of video games, etc. -- and the mid-30s crowd lands in-between the two.
Considering all of the other social media 'experts' I've heard of had majored in psychology or sociology, this sounds more to me like the usual self-important Washington Post article passing judgment on how we non-rich people from outside the East Coast live.
PC users don't buy a high-priced computer incompatible with their current software just because the next version of Windows sucks, we either stick with the current version of Windows or migrate to Linux (as I did). People that buy an Apple product would have already been planning to do so, and at most might use this as an excuse to go through with it.
Also, turning the word Republican into anything but republican, same goes for liberal/democratic and red/blue, makes you look like an underwear stain on the great fabric of the internet.
It also shows that they're still far too immature to voice disagreement or disgust without acting like a bratty younger sibling, signaling to other people that we should give their opinions equivalent weight.
The first one covers games from all early types (Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, etc.), and the other two are using DOS but most of their games appeared on other platforms as well. I've been enjoying them all enough that I figured I'd share.
Anyone know of any similar blogs that are active right now?
That's assuming you'd be given the chance to program them. Apple II+ or IIe systems were the norm at the schools I attended in the 80s & 90s, but we were always restricted to running existing software like educational games/simulations, typing tutorials, and word processing.
As far as I'm aware, the best time to be a student computer-wise was when Windows PCs were first being installed in the mid-late 90s, since the staff still didn't know how to properly lock them down. At least, that's what my little brother told me, as he and his friends used to have a lot of fun getting into minor mischief during computers class.
It has nothing to do with "peak" age of anything. It's all about having tons of time free, and very few interests that are focused such that you'll spend 12 hours a day doing something that you'd not have the time or patience to do nowadays.
I have plenty of free time as I'm on disability, I still have an absurdly long attention span courtesy of being autistic, and I've continued pushing myself to learn new things -- but at 35, it still takes me a greater amount of time and effort to gain the same level of proficiency at something new that I would have as a kid or teenager.
Yeah, and then we'll have cut the number of events that fans get to watch in half and regressed several decades to when women couldn't compete in the Olympics. I have a better suggestion: you can pretend that female athletes don't exist by not watching their sports, and the rest of us can keep cheering on the best athletes of both sexes if we're so inclined.
There isn't really a parallel between race/ethnicity here -- *unlike* those, the sexes reliably come with certain physical traits thanks to the effect of hormones. Most white guys are faster than some black guys and slower than others, rather than being across-the-board slower -- but men of all races are reliably stronger & faster than women at the same level of fitness.
There's no good reason not to give women a division for the sports where they can't compete against men. Most people enjoy watching sports and cheering on their favorite team regardless of the athlete's sex, and athletic women enjoy the thrill of competing against others that have the same level of skill. I'll never be an athlete, but I see no reason to go back to the days when society automatically excluded half the human race from the pinnacle of international amateur athletic competitions just because I'm not able to join in; it'd take serious sour grapes or issues with women to feel otherwise!
Except that a body that has spent its entire life being female will still have certain "female" physical weaknesses, including being weaker/slower than men at an equivalent athletic level.
The kid that criticized the athlete doesn't have AS -- the troll that posted the inappropriate image of those dead teenagers did. However, I agree: I don't see any reason to assume that charging someone with a crime or punishing them will, on its own, teach them a lesson if the misbehavior was caused by some kind of disability.
More to the point... The "lack of empathy" is a two-way communicative barrier between autistic & non-autistic people from the same culture, in the same way as the "Mars vs Venus" clash. Simply put, empathy is ultimately just assuming how somebody will/does feel about something based on how you would; that's why we see such cultural clashes between people from different parts of the world, skin colors, and genders. It'd take me far too long to explain adequately, but the excellent AutismAndEmpathy.com has more than enough links to studies, articles, and commentaries to cover it.
Pretty disgusting for (yet) a(nother) company who owes its success to the Apple ][.
Not really, given Jobs did all he could to undermine & destroy the Apple IIgs (Woz's creation) because it was outselling the unprofitable Macintosh (Jobs' baby), and decided that no more Apple II family systems would be released. If I was shoved violently into a ditch to give a less-worthy sibling the sole chance at survival, I sure as hell wouldn't protest if old friends of mine turned their back on said sibling the moment he ceased benefiting them in a huge way (and would likely cheer if they gave him the boot ahead of time).
That doesn't follow at all -- most people that post obnoxious crap under their real name do so because they don't care if anybody in real life finds out they said it. A decent percentage of people with no interest in being obnoxious post anonymously because we don't want certain other individuals (employer, abusive ex, etc.) to be able to see what we're up to or find ways to contact us, or alternately because we want to speak out about certain problems or controversies without worrying it will result in a job loss, threats, vandalism of our home, or other real-life trouble. Removing anonymity won't improve the quality of comments because the people like us already weren't being aggressive and the trolls don't care who sees their behavior -- not because both groups don't care either way.
Of all the articles I've seen questioning whether one subject or another is useful (let alone "necessary"), that one's the absolute most idiotic yet. Even though I have dyscalculia (my mind scrambles the numbers despite my best efforts) and basically struggled my way through math from first grade onwards as a result, I find algebra itself vitally important in average day-to-day life. Without grasping how to set up a simple algebraic formula, how could I figure out the true cost of items at the grocery store to know which is a better value, scale ingredients for a recipe to match what I need or if I'm low on one ingredient, or figure out amounts/measurements to use if instructions I'm following to create something will result in the item being the wrong size?
Sure, no doubt people could theoretically find an app for their smartphone (if they have one -- I don't yet) to figure that stuff out for them, but that would waste so much extra time over making up a simple equation that it's really not funny.
In addition to that, algebra is where math finally starts to make sense, and trains a kid's mind to deal with abstractions. How is some kid supposed to know that they'd love physics, chemistry, or other algebra-dependent fields if they decide not to take algebra because they hated basic math? How are they to handle programming computers, regardless of how interesting it sounds, if they haven't already trained their mind to work easily with variables or similar abstract notions?
I was actually discussing this with my father & unofficial stepmother last night, in fact... I was very annoyed as a teen that I had to "waste time" by taking any class other than English or biology, and only did so because high school & California public colleges/universities required it. I'm very glad I did, as it exposed me to so much more about the world -- including math/algebra-related things like how home loans work, physics, programming, astronomy, etc. -- that made me better at my preferred fields but that I never would have paid any real attention to or even considered trying on my own.
It could also be a sibling, relative, babysitter, etc. -- or it could even be one of those cases where it's the parent's first kid, so they don't realize that even a kid that seems to have matured enough to be trustworthy can do dangerously dumb things, or that even the kid that has never shown the least interest in mouthing anything can abruptly do so out of the blue.
My parents went through that with my little brother when he was a toddler. He wasn't the sort of kid that did much of anything on his own, yet one morning our mother came downstairs to find he had escaped from his crib, climbed the kitchen drawers to get onto the counter, and was eating a bottle of extra-iron kids'/Flintstone vitamins. He understood that we weren't supposed to go into that cabinet or climb the drawers, but his urge to be a good boy by "helpfully" taking his vitamins overrode his usual caution. (They weren't alone -- the vitamins were pulled off the market & reformulated a year or two later because of the sheer number of little kids that had been hurt that way.)
Many people get it from a cheating partner/spouse, so everyone would need to become celibate—HIV would be conquered in 1 generation, but humanity wouldn't be around to celebrate it.
My chick did not come with a manual, which would have helped during initial set up and especially during troubleshooting. Seems to malfunction every month.
Sounds like a job for the open-source manuals project -- Guide To Feminine Beings, for all of the people like us that are baffled by feminine men/women. The chapter headings could be things like: Meaningless 'understanding' noises to make when listening to their woes How to identify romantic gestures and respond appropriately How to indicate something doesn't look good without emotional thermonuclear war
Must be a chick, that's the only logical reason anyone would ever look at a manual.
Ever.
Nah, anal-retentive semi-geek dudes like the two I've dated (and several others I've known) are the type that look at manuals. From the way they acted, you'd think that we were defusing a bomb each time we went to do much of anything related to electronics, let alone anything remotely "interesting.":-p
Most women younger than my age (mid-30s) thankfully don't have the total lack of confidence around electronics like women born before the mid-70s; I wouldn't be able to stand the vast majority of women near my age otherwise.
Funny thing, the one person I've met that has tried to convince me to ditch my disability medications in favor of belief-based activities is an atheist that feels meditation can "cure" all kinds of things science indicates it can't. Likewise, when it comes to being aggressive jerks about folks that don't share their belief, I've unfortunately seen far more atheists like her engaging in it than religious people.
As an agnostic that used to self-identify as atheist, I agree. It was actually the new-atheist cult that showed me where my beliefs truly are: their comments made me see that it's one thing to believe that we can't know either way while harboring strong suspicions, and a whole other (extremely arrogant) one to claim absolute knowledge of something that thus far can't be measured or proven, let alone to harass or attack others for disagreeing.
Now they are all 32-bit apps and anyone who knows about the Windows memory model knows this means they won't be designed to use more than 2GB of RAM themselves under normal circumstances.
I haven't played current-release games in years (prefer retro) but thinking back to when my games were current, I would've been deeply frustrated if I'd waited for months or years to try a game because my computer didn't meet the "required" specs, only to learn that the publisher overstated them rather than letting me see the minimum/recommended stats so I could make minor changes (like not running a virus scanner, IM, web browser, etc.) to play it reasonably.
Something I always hated back in the day was games that were under on their recommendations. They'd say something like "386 20MHz 1MB minimum, 486 25MHz 2MB recommended, 486 33MHz 2MB optimal." Now to me "optimal" means "runs really well cranked up" and "minimum" means "minimum to run reasonable." However what they really mean was "minimum to run the program at all, you can't really play at this level," and optimal meant "Runs reasonably well with this but you'll need a good bit more to crank it up."
It seemed pretty clear to everyone else that "minimum" was meant literally, so that we had the choice of playing a game at a slow pace (which rarely caused problems, at least on the games I played), using a tiny mouse driver to have every last k available, or making other changes/sacrifices to quality. Similarly, "recommended" pretty clearly referred to the specs required to use all of the game's multimedia capabilities (highest resolution, stereo sound effects, extra visual/sound effects like rain, etc.) while still having smooth gameplay. Of course, often to get the best experience that particular computer could offer, a person had to be fairly good at modifying autoexec.bat & config.sys, so maybe you just weren't very good at that.
Slashdot Mirror
Except most Hispanic kids lag way behind even if they're in the same good schools. Resources are then reallocated to pay for a higher-cost ESL teacher and handle various associated problems, damaging that school's quality.
I saw the decline firsthand growing up here. When I was in grade school, my Hispanic classmates/friends had been pushed by their parents to use English and fit in, so they only 1-2 hours per day with one of the few district ESL teachers and were mainstreamed otherwise. Then a flood of immigrants arrived that had no interest in learning English, told their kids how superior their homeland was and promised they'd go back soon. Those kids had to be put into all-day ESL (so 2-3 specially-trained teachers were hired per campus), extra had to be spent to give them pleasure-based reasons to not drop out, then more to handle the rise in gang violence and teen pregnancies.
That is why Hispanic kids often end up in shitty schools -- educating them and handling related problems costs so fucking much that it drastically drags the school's quality down.
The pampered generation was the one born in the very early 90s onwards; she was born in the mid-70s, and kids were still having 'traditional' childhoods for a good 15 years after that point.
Also, most of the estimates I've seen place people in their mid-30s (ages 34-37, perhaps) either in the overlap between two generations, or outside of both. The childhood technological experiences of Generation X and Generation Y are drastically different thanks to the sudden rise of home computers, microwaves, VCRs, 1st/2nd wave of video games, etc. -- and the mid-30s crowd lands in-between the two.
Considering all of the other social media 'experts' I've heard of had majored in psychology or sociology, this sounds more to me like the usual self-important Washington Post article passing judgment on how we non-rich people from outside the East Coast live.
PC users don't buy a high-priced computer incompatible with their current software just because the next version of Windows sucks, we either stick with the current version of Windows or migrate to Linux (as I did). People that buy an Apple product would have already been planning to do so, and at most might use this as an excuse to go through with it.
This times 1000:
Also, turning the word Republican into anything but republican, same goes for liberal/democratic and red/blue, makes you look like an underwear stain on the great fabric of the internet.
It also shows that they're still far too immature to voice disagreement or disgust without acting like a bratty younger sibling, signaling to other people that we should give their opinions equivalent weight.
I've been enjoying these a lot:
All-Time Favorite Games
CRPG Addict
The Adventure Gamer
The first one covers games from all early types (Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, etc.), and the other two are using DOS but most of their games appeared on other platforms as well. I've been enjoying them all enough that I figured I'd share.
Anyone know of any similar blogs that are active right now?
Ultima series, Jinxter, Boulderdash, Repton, Paperboy, Xevious, Legacy of the Ancients...
That's assuming you'd be given the chance to program them. Apple II+ or IIe systems were the norm at the schools I attended in the 80s & 90s, but we were always restricted to running existing software like educational games/simulations, typing tutorials, and word processing.
As far as I'm aware, the best time to be a student computer-wise was when Windows PCs were first being installed in the mid-late 90s, since the staff still didn't know how to properly lock them down. At least, that's what my little brother told me, as he and his friends used to have a lot of fun getting into minor mischief during computers class.
It has nothing to do with "peak" age of anything. It's all about having tons of time free, and very few interests that are focused such that you'll spend 12 hours a day doing something that you'd not have the time or patience to do nowadays.
I have plenty of free time as I'm on disability, I still have an absurdly long attention span courtesy of being autistic, and I've continued pushing myself to learn new things -- but at 35, it still takes me a greater amount of time and effort to gain the same level of proficiency at something new that I would have as a kid or teenager.
Yeah, and then we'll have cut the number of events that fans get to watch in half and regressed several decades to when women couldn't compete in the Olympics. I have a better suggestion: you can pretend that female athletes don't exist by not watching their sports, and the rest of us can keep cheering on the best athletes of both sexes if we're so inclined.
There isn't really a parallel between race/ethnicity here -- *unlike* those, the sexes reliably come with certain physical traits thanks to the effect of hormones. Most white guys are faster than some black guys and slower than others, rather than being across-the-board slower -- but men of all races are reliably stronger & faster than women at the same level of fitness.
There's no good reason not to give women a division for the sports where they can't compete against men. Most people enjoy watching sports and cheering on their favorite team regardless of the athlete's sex, and athletic women enjoy the thrill of competing against others that have the same level of skill. I'll never be an athlete, but I see no reason to go back to the days when society automatically excluded half the human race from the pinnacle of international amateur athletic competitions just because I'm not able to join in; it'd take serious sour grapes or issues with women to feel otherwise!
Except that a body that has spent its entire life being female will still have certain "female" physical weaknesses, including being weaker/slower than men at an equivalent athletic level.
'copycat' campaigns by the likes of Allstate...are proving to be unsucessful...
I can't imagine why -- doesn't everyone want to join an insurance company that appears to be designed for obnoxious know-it-alls that correct everything other people say until others want to punch them in the face? /facetious
There are also polo shirts made/shaped specifically for women, so that shouldn't be a problem, I would think.
The kid that criticized the athlete doesn't have AS -- the troll that posted the inappropriate image of those dead teenagers did. However, I agree: I don't see any reason to assume that charging someone with a crime or punishing them will, on its own, teach them a lesson if the misbehavior was caused by some kind of disability.
More to the point... The "lack of empathy" is a two-way communicative barrier between autistic & non-autistic people from the same culture, in the same way as the "Mars vs Venus" clash. Simply put, empathy is ultimately just assuming how somebody will/does feel about something based on how you would; that's why we see such cultural clashes between people from different parts of the world, skin colors, and genders. It'd take me far too long to explain adequately, but the excellent AutismAndEmpathy.com has more than enough links to studies, articles, and commentaries to cover it.
Pretty disgusting for (yet) a(nother) company who owes its success to the Apple ][.
Not really, given Jobs did all he could to undermine & destroy the Apple IIgs (Woz's creation) because it was outselling the unprofitable Macintosh (Jobs' baby), and decided that no more Apple II family systems would be released. If I was shoved violently into a ditch to give a less-worthy sibling the sole chance at survival, I sure as hell wouldn't protest if old friends of mine turned their back on said sibling the moment he ceased benefiting them in a huge way (and would likely cheer if they gave him the boot ahead of time).
That doesn't follow at all -- most people that post obnoxious crap under their real name do so because they don't care if anybody in real life finds out they said it. A decent percentage of people with no interest in being obnoxious post anonymously because we don't want certain other individuals (employer, abusive ex, etc.) to be able to see what we're up to or find ways to contact us, or alternately because we want to speak out about certain problems or controversies without worrying it will result in a job loss, threats, vandalism of our home, or other real-life trouble. Removing anonymity won't improve the quality of comments because the people like us already weren't being aggressive and the trolls don't care who sees their behavior -- not because both groups don't care either way.
Of all the articles I've seen questioning whether one subject or another is useful (let alone "necessary"), that one's the absolute most idiotic yet. Even though I have dyscalculia (my mind scrambles the numbers despite my best efforts) and basically struggled my way through math from first grade onwards as a result, I find algebra itself vitally important in average day-to-day life. Without grasping how to set up a simple algebraic formula, how could I figure out the true cost of items at the grocery store to know which is a better value, scale ingredients for a recipe to match what I need or if I'm low on one ingredient, or figure out amounts/measurements to use if instructions I'm following to create something will result in the item being the wrong size?
Sure, no doubt people could theoretically find an app for their smartphone (if they have one -- I don't yet) to figure that stuff out for them, but that would waste so much extra time over making up a simple equation that it's really not funny.
In addition to that, algebra is where math finally starts to make sense, and trains a kid's mind to deal with abstractions. How is some kid supposed to know that they'd love physics, chemistry, or other algebra-dependent fields if they decide not to take algebra because they hated basic math? How are they to handle programming computers, regardless of how interesting it sounds, if they haven't already trained their mind to work easily with variables or similar abstract notions?
I was actually discussing this with my father & unofficial stepmother last night, in fact... I was very annoyed as a teen that I had to "waste time" by taking any class other than English or biology, and only did so because high school & California public colleges/universities required it. I'm very glad I did, as it exposed me to so much more about the world -- including math/algebra-related things like how home loans work, physics, programming, astronomy, etc. -- that made me better at my preferred fields but that I never would have paid any real attention to or even considered trying on my own.
It could also be a sibling, relative, babysitter, etc. -- or it could even be one of those cases where it's the parent's first kid, so they don't realize that even a kid that seems to have matured enough to be trustworthy can do dangerously dumb things, or that even the kid that has never shown the least interest in mouthing anything can abruptly do so out of the blue.
My parents went through that with my little brother when he was a toddler. He wasn't the sort of kid that did much of anything on his own, yet one morning our mother came downstairs to find he had escaped from his crib, climbed the kitchen drawers to get onto the counter, and was eating a bottle of extra-iron kids'/Flintstone vitamins. He understood that we weren't supposed to go into that cabinet or climb the drawers, but his urge to be a good boy by "helpfully" taking his vitamins overrode his usual caution. (They weren't alone -- the vitamins were pulled off the market & reformulated a year or two later because of the sheer number of little kids that had been hurt that way.)
Many people get it from a cheating partner/spouse, so everyone would need to become celibate—HIV would be conquered in 1 generation, but humanity wouldn't be around to celebrate it.
My chick did not come with a manual, which would have helped during initial set up and especially during troubleshooting. Seems to malfunction every month.
Sounds like a job for the open-source manuals project -- Guide To Feminine Beings, for all of the people like us that are baffled by feminine men/women. The chapter headings could be things like:
Meaningless 'understanding' noises to make when listening to their woes
How to identify romantic gestures and respond appropriately
How to indicate something doesn't look good without emotional thermonuclear war
Must be a chick, that's the only logical reason anyone would ever look at a manual.
Ever.
Nah, anal-retentive semi-geek dudes like the two I've dated (and several others I've known) are the type that look at manuals. From the way they acted, you'd think that we were defusing a bomb each time we went to do much of anything related to electronics, let alone anything remotely "interesting." :-p
Most women younger than my age (mid-30s) thankfully don't have the total lack of confidence around electronics like women born before the mid-70s; I wouldn't be able to stand the vast majority of women near my age otherwise.
Funny thing, the one person I've met that has tried to convince me to ditch my disability medications in favor of belief-based activities is an atheist that feels meditation can "cure" all kinds of things science indicates it can't. Likewise, when it comes to being aggressive jerks about folks that don't share their belief, I've unfortunately seen far more atheists like her engaging in it than religious people.
As an agnostic that used to self-identify as atheist, I agree. It was actually the new-atheist cult that showed me where my beliefs truly are: their comments made me see that it's one thing to believe that we can't know either way while harboring strong suspicions, and a whole other (extremely arrogant) one to claim absolute knowledge of something that thus far can't be measured or proven, let alone to harass or attack others for disagreeing.
Now they are all 32-bit apps and anyone who knows about the Windows memory model knows this means they won't be designed to use more than 2GB of RAM themselves under normal circumstances.
I haven't played current-release games in years (prefer retro) but thinking back to when my games were current, I would've been deeply frustrated if I'd waited for months or years to try a game because my computer didn't meet the "required" specs, only to learn that the publisher overstated them rather than letting me see the minimum/recommended stats so I could make minor changes (like not running a virus scanner, IM, web browser, etc.) to play it reasonably.
Something I always hated back in the day was games that were under on their recommendations. They'd say something like "386 20MHz 1MB minimum, 486 25MHz 2MB recommended, 486 33MHz 2MB optimal." Now to me "optimal" means "runs really well cranked up" and "minimum" means "minimum to run reasonable." However what they really mean was "minimum to run the program at all, you can't really play at this level," and optimal meant "Runs reasonably well with this but you'll need a good bit more to crank it up."
It seemed pretty clear to everyone else that "minimum" was meant literally, so that we had the choice of playing a game at a slow pace (which rarely caused problems, at least on the games I played), using a tiny mouse driver to have every last k available, or making other changes/sacrifices to quality. Similarly, "recommended" pretty clearly referred to the specs required to use all of the game's multimedia capabilities (highest resolution, stereo sound effects, extra visual/sound effects like rain, etc.) while still having smooth gameplay. Of course, often to get the best experience that particular computer could offer, a person had to be fairly good at modifying autoexec.bat & config.sys, so maybe you just weren't very good at that.