While you raise an interesting point, there is a published standard for the English language that has been recognized as such for the last seventy-seven or so years: the Oxford English Dictionary.
It recognizes that there are dialectical differences (such as this silly aluminum v. aluminium business), but also lays down some very firm syntactical rules (e.g. - the proper form of possessives). It is also, rather famously, always changing, thus rendering specious the argument "I can spel howevr I want 'cuz language is always changing, man."
It's amazing to me how many in the Slashdot crowd will jump up and down screaming about standards compliance until it comes to written English, whereupon the rules (i.e. - standards) are apparently taken as meaningless.
The "change the channel" arguement doesn't hold, because just like spam and telemarketing, the sheer volume of "vulgarity" would become overly invasive.
Of course it holds. If you don't want to see the vulgarity on TV, don't turn it on. You have a choice to vote with your feet. If enough people grew a pair and did this, the quality of what comes on the television might actally start to improve. But instead, people would prefer to be lazy and just bitch about what they don't like rather than doing anything about it (in this case, finding something more productive to do with their spare time than vegging out in front of the commercial delivery syst^H^H^H television).
This is the same logic by which I changed ISP's when it became clear that they'd sold out my address to a spammer and invested in a callerID to screen out calls.
Upon graduation the students can and must have the right to take not just that knowledge but its source materials as well.
It's interesting that you should say that... I work in a state where the push is toward a "textless" learning environment. The idea being that, while there are certainly books worth recommending to students, it should be incumbent on the professors to know and be able to teach all of the course material (most of which is, admittedly, done through WebCT). This is not knowledge as a tangible item; it's learning as a process. If a course is limited to the contents of a book or books then what the hell am I paying tuition for?
That said, I'll go you one further and say that the idea of DRM on any book for sale is a horrible idea, though I have to admit I'm intrigued by the idea of applying this technology to a library system.
You laugh about this, but I can clearly remember letters to the editor of my local paper from the mid and late 90's saying this exact thing. My favorite quote about 'net pr0n was : "The Devil has been allowed into my home through the evil of the internet!" This lady was ready to absolve herself of all responsiblilty for what her two teenage sons were doing with un-monitored computers in their rooms. The Internet made them do it!
The average red-stater doesn't care about mods, hacks, or scripts. All they see is Children + Porn = Need More Laws.
We're moving from a tech school model to a Junior College model (read: university feeder school) and for the life of me I can't figure out why so few others see this as the perfect time to make the switch. If we're prepping people for moving to a bachelors program rather than to go straight to the workforce, why the hell not teach them technique rather than "click here, now here."
Let the guys in continuing ed. worry about teaching software packages (that's where their money is anyway).
Good education will teach skills and not teach to a particular application.
I hate to be this way, because I agree with you (I'm fighting this battle at a community college at the moment), but most employers I've run into don't give a damn about your "skills."
Skills = profficiency in their package of choice.
If you can't convince the HR drone that you are proficient in MS Office, you're not getting the job. It sucks but it's true.
Using this same idea, why couldn't you submit a picture of a given person/place/thing and the search engine return return all the other pictures it knows of that same person/place/thing. I realize that this is likely exponentially more complex, but it could stem the tide of data about to be lost to the billion+ pictures out there named DSCXXXX.jpg or MVCXXXX.jpg....
Yes, I'm being an elitist prick about it. But when the quality is so vastly different, it matters. People should be able to USE things without knowing how they work, but not BUILD things without knowing how they work. There is a difference.
But when I'm training 40 somthing faculty members per semester how to get their content from their specialty areas up on the web for their students and port the content to WebCT, I haven't got time to be an elitist prick about it. People with a PhD in some non-technical dicipline have no real need to know HTML; they just need to get information out in a context that is meaningful to their students, handicapped accessable, and technically accurate. As a developer, I need a solution for them that works, and while I don't necessarily think that the author of this article has something that would work for me, but I'd prefer a FOSS solution to the dreamweaver templates we're using now.
I wonder why it is that they spent so much time working on Ewan McGreggor, but apparently none on Hayden Christianson.
I doubt "they" spent much time on Ewan McGregor. I'm betting Ewan McGregor took the time to work on the accent because he takes his craft seriously. Hayden Christianson... well, we've seen the performances he's turned in.
I think (based on talking to my friends and family around the state) that the measure in Mississippi served the function of getting the christian right out to the polls. I'm not saying that it made a huge difference in terms of raw numbers, but I'd fully expected Mississippi to swing back to a Democrat state this year; They are, after all, approaching "Minority Majority" status at a pretty brisk pace and Kerry easily carried the minority vote. Add that to the Pro-union tendencies of many Mississippians and it could have worked.
The fear of "the other", however, is a pretty strong motivator for some folks.
The courts have been pretty damned clear on this. The Miller test may not be as free speech friendly as I'd like it to be, but it does say that to regulate speech the work must be considered "as a whole" and be found "obscene". I have a hard time believing that a Per Incident fine structure would stand up as constitutional.
I think I have to come down with the View Askew news folks on this one. I can see him writing for the show (and maybe directing an episode or two), but I really would hate to see him tie his career to this thing (for a number of reasons).
I'm currently on a committee tasked with evaluating synchronous distance learning software and with very few exceptions, they all seem to have the same failings as Blackboard, but promote them as features.
I've been floored by how many of the products are based on the PowerPoint model (if not on PowerPoint itself). This sort of reductive epistemology may be OK for conducting corporate training seminars, but I can't imagine teaching Shakespeare by bullet-pointing Hamlet.
We as a society have seemed to accept over the last few years that "learning" means being able to recite a Cliff's Notes version of a given set of facts. If this is how we are going to continue to define education, then perhaps we don't need better tools. If not, I'm not sure this guy has a better solution, but at least he appears to be trying something different.
King Arthur : Look if he was dying he wouldn't have bothered to carve 'Aaaaauuuggghhh' on the rock he would of just said it. Galahad : Maybe he was dictating? King Arthur : Oh Shut up. King Arthur : Well does it say anything else? Brother Maynard : No, just 'Aaaaauuuugggghhh' [knights making groaning sounds] Sir Bedevere : Do you think he could have mean, 'Camaaaauuuuggghhhh'? Galahad : Where's that? Sir Bedevere : France I think. Sir Lancelot : Isn't there a Saint 'Iiiiivvvveeeesss' in Condor? King Arthur : No that's Saint 'Ives' Sir Bedevere : Whooooouuuuaaa! Sir Lancelot : No it's 'Aaaaauuuugggghhhh' from the back of the throat. Sir Bedevere : No I mean, 'Whoooouuuuaaa!' as in surprise and alarm. Sir Lancelot : Oh you mean like, 'Auuuuhhhhh!' Sir Bedevere : Yes that's it. Auuuuuhhhhhaaa! Sir Lancelot : Auuuuhhhhhaaa! Brother Maynard : It's the legendary black beast of Aaaaauuuugghhhh! King Arthur : Run Away! RUN AWAY! Sir Lancelot : RUN AWAY!
...won't necissarily keep this guy out of trouble. He's still distributing copies of a copyrighted work (the underlying composition has a copyright separate from the recorded performance). While the bootlegging law seems pretty stupid, it would stand to reason that they'll just come back after him for the usual statutory damages since I seriously doubt he's passed the life +70 time limit.
When will people stop repeating this obviously false information?
I for one will stop today, now that I stand corrected. However, there are more effective ways of correcting someone than calling them a blatant liar, you know.
What makes this 'obviously false'?
Answer: nothing but refuting evidence of which I was, until now, unaware.
Besides, Iraqi or not, my original premise stands... 9/11 was not the first attack against Americans on American soil in the modern era.
because there weren't any attacks on the U.S. before he came along.
Oh really? You mean the world trade center bombing by a man with ties to Iraq in 1993 that killed 6 people was just a figment of our national imagination?
or maybe you just didn't care because it didn't affect your nations bottom line...
Slashdot Mirror
While you raise an interesting point, there is a published standard for the English language that has been recognized as such for the last seventy-seven or so years: the Oxford English Dictionary.
It recognizes that there are dialectical differences (such as this silly aluminum v. aluminium business), but also lays down some very firm syntactical rules (e.g. - the proper form of possessives). It is also, rather famously, always changing, thus rendering specious the argument "I can spel howevr I want 'cuz language is always changing, man."
It's amazing to me how many in the Slashdot crowd will jump up and down screaming about standards compliance until it comes to written English, whereupon the rules (i.e. - standards) are apparently taken as meaningless.
why bring an ice scraper to a place that hasn't seen snow in years?
non-linear multi-track audio editing? (pref w/ video playback and pluggin support)
The "change the channel" arguement doesn't hold, because just like spam and telemarketing, the sheer volume of "vulgarity" would become overly invasive.
Of course it holds. If you don't want to see the vulgarity on TV, don't turn it on. You have a choice to vote with your feet. If enough people grew a pair and did this, the quality of what comes on the television might actally start to improve. But instead, people would prefer to be lazy and just bitch about what they don't like rather than doing anything about it (in this case, finding something more productive to do with their spare time than vegging out in front of the commercial delivery syst^H^H^H television).
This is the same logic by which I changed ISP's when it became clear that they'd sold out my address to a spammer and invested in a callerID to screen out calls.
Upon graduation the students can and must have the right to take not just that knowledge but its source materials as well.
It's interesting that you should say that... I work in a state where the push is toward a "textless" learning environment. The idea being that, while there are certainly books worth recommending to students, it should be incumbent on the professors to know and be able to teach all of the course material (most of which is, admittedly, done through WebCT). This is not knowledge as a tangible item; it's learning as a process. If a course is limited to the contents of a book or books then what the hell am I paying tuition for?
That said, I'll go you one further and say that the idea of DRM on any book for sale is a horrible idea, though I have to admit I'm intrigued by the idea of applying this technology to a library system.
You laugh about this, but I can clearly remember letters to the editor of my local paper from the mid and late 90's saying this exact thing. My favorite quote about 'net pr0n was : "The Devil has been allowed into my home through the evil of the internet!" This lady was ready to absolve herself of all responsiblilty for what her two teenage sons were doing with un-monitored computers in their rooms. The Internet made them do it!
The average red-stater doesn't care about mods, hacks, or scripts. All they see is Children + Porn = Need More Laws.
Tennessee...
We're moving from a tech school model to a Junior College model (read: university feeder school) and for the life of me I can't figure out why so few others see this as the perfect time to make the switch. If we're prepping people for moving to a bachelors program rather than to go straight to the workforce, why the hell not teach them technique rather than "click here, now here."
Let the guys in continuing ed. worry about teaching software packages (that's where their money is anyway).
Good education will teach skills and not teach to a particular application.
I hate to be this way, because I agree with you (I'm fighting this battle at a community college at the moment), but most employers I've run into don't give a damn about your "skills."
Skills = profficiency in their package of choice.
If you can't convince the HR drone that you are proficient in MS Office, you're not getting the job. It sucks but it's true.
Long maligned as the worst project ever associated with the Star Wars universe
I thought that was Episode one??
New? Dude, this is Slashdot... the fact that the AC's didn't RTFS just means that it's Thursday...
Using this same idea, why couldn't you submit a picture of a given person/place/thing and the search engine return return all the other pictures it knows of that same person/place/thing. I realize that this is likely exponentially more complex, but it could stem the tide of data about to be lost to the billion+ pictures out there named DSCXXXX.jpg or MVCXXXX.jpg....
Yes, I'm being an elitist prick about it. But when the quality is so vastly different, it matters. People should be able to USE things without knowing how they work, but not BUILD things without knowing how they work. There is a difference.
But when I'm training 40 somthing faculty members per semester how to get their content from their specialty areas up on the web for their students and port the content to WebCT, I haven't got time to be an elitist prick about it. People with a PhD in some non-technical dicipline have no real need to know HTML; they just need to get information out in a context that is meaningful to their students, handicapped accessable, and technically accurate. As a developer, I need a solution for them that works, and while I don't necessarily think that the author of this article has something that would work for me, but I'd prefer a FOSS solution to the dreamweaver templates we're using now.
I wonder why it is that they spent so much time working on Ewan McGreggor, but apparently none on Hayden Christianson.
I doubt "they" spent much time on Ewan McGregor. I'm betting Ewan McGregor took the time to work on the accent because he takes his craft seriously. Hayden Christianson... well, we've seen the performances he's turned in.
I think (based on talking to my friends and family around the state) that the measure in Mississippi served the function of getting the christian right out to the polls. I'm not saying that it made a huge difference in terms of raw numbers, but I'd fully expected Mississippi to swing back to a Democrat state this year; They are, after all, approaching "Minority Majority" status at a pretty brisk pace and Kerry easily carried the minority vote. Add that to the Pro-union tendencies of many Mississippians and it could have worked.
The fear of "the other", however, is a pretty strong motivator for some folks.
The courts have been pretty damned clear on this. The Miller test may not be as free speech friendly as I'd like it to be, but it does say that to regulate speech the work must be considered "as a whole" and be found "obscene". I have a hard time believing that a Per Incident fine structure would stand up as constitutional.
a coma is what their webserver just lapsed into... thank god for the cache...
1. Patent the taste of chicken
2. Sue everyone (because we all know that everything tastes like chicken)
3. Profit!!!!!!!
I think I have to come down with the View Askew news folks on this one. I can see him writing for the show (and maybe directing an episode or two), but I really would hate to see him tie his career to this thing (for a number of reasons).
I'm currently on a committee tasked with evaluating synchronous distance learning software and with very few exceptions, they all seem to have the same failings as Blackboard, but promote them as features.
I've been floored by how many of the products are based on the PowerPoint model (if not on PowerPoint itself). This sort of reductive epistemology may be OK for conducting corporate training seminars, but I can't imagine teaching Shakespeare by bullet-pointing Hamlet.
We as a society have seemed to accept over the last few years that "learning" means being able to recite a Cliff's Notes version of a given set of facts. If this is how we are going to continue to define education, then perhaps we don't need better tools. If not, I'm not sure this guy has a better solution, but at least he appears to be trying something different.
Justa so longo as meesa no have to read it...
King Arthur : Look if he was dying he wouldn't have bothered to carve 'Aaaaauuuggghhh' on the rock he would of just said it.
Galahad : Maybe he was dictating?
King Arthur : Oh Shut up.
King Arthur : Well does it say anything else?
Brother Maynard : No, just 'Aaaaauuuugggghhh'
[knights making groaning sounds]
Sir Bedevere : Do you think he could have mean, 'Camaaaauuuuggghhhh'?
Galahad : Where's that?
Sir Bedevere : France I think.
Sir Lancelot : Isn't there a Saint 'Iiiiivvvveeeesss' in Condor?
King Arthur : No that's Saint 'Ives'
Sir Bedevere : Whooooouuuuaaa!
Sir Lancelot : No it's 'Aaaaauuuugggghhhh' from the back of the throat.
Sir Bedevere : No I mean, 'Whoooouuuuaaa!' as in surprise and alarm.
Sir Lancelot : Oh you mean like, 'Auuuuhhhhh!'
Sir Bedevere : Yes that's it. Auuuuuhhhhhaaa!
Sir Lancelot : Auuuuhhhhhaaa!
Brother Maynard : It's the legendary black beast of Aaaaauuuugghhhh!
King Arthur : Run Away! RUN AWAY!
Sir Lancelot : RUN AWAY!
...won't necissarily keep this guy out of trouble. He's still distributing copies of a copyrighted work (the underlying composition has a copyright separate from the recorded performance). While the bootlegging law seems pretty stupid, it would stand to reason that they'll just come back after him for the usual statutory damages since I seriously doubt he's passed the life +70 time limit.
When will people stop repeating this obviously false information?
I for one will stop today, now that I stand corrected. However, there are more effective ways of correcting someone than calling them a blatant liar, you know.
What makes this 'obviously false'?
Answer: nothing but refuting evidence of which I was, until now, unaware.
Besides, Iraqi or not, my original premise stands... 9/11 was not the first attack against Americans on American soil in the modern era.
because there weren't any attacks on the U.S. before he came along.
Oh really? You mean the world trade center bombing by a man with ties to Iraq in 1993 that killed 6 people was just a figment of our national imagination?
or maybe you just didn't care because it didn't affect your nations bottom line...