What varies even more from school to school than the GPA?
Class Ranks. While the SAT's are certainly a flawed system, they're also constant in what they test. The value of GPA's, as Timothy noted, varies from school to school. A GPA, however, is at least a general indicator of average grades (hence the name).
A class rank, on the other hand, merely shows where a student is in relation to the rest of his or her graduating class. I'm in a "gifted" high school. My GPA is 93.3 out of 100. And my class rank is 73 out of 120. In a case like mine (which is not really that uncommon), the class rank is more damaging to the student than helpful.
I can see both sides of this one. I mean, sure, I'd be pretty pissed-off if I was constantly getting nagged to upgrade, but as a designer, I can't count the number of times when I've been ready to kill over the way older browsers screw up my designs.
A lot of good design work is held back by the need to support older browsers.
Isn't this what the last William Gibson novel was about? As I recall, it was about widespread use of nanotech assemblers (in convenience stores or something)...
Is there anything yet on what kind of performance gain you'll get if you're upgrading from RH 7 or Mandrake 7.x? I used the Caldera 2.4 Preview a couple months back, and it seemed to be faster...
Wow. It seems to me that this'd really be a huge boon to people whose phones are monitored (ie, drug lords, mafiosos, etc) -- they just have to buy one of these suckers, then toss it away in a few hours.
I mean, Akira was definitely a good movie, and it helped attract a lot of people to anime...but really, it pales in comparison to a lot of today's stuff, especially, say, Miyazaki-san'a [Mononoke Hime], or (in the cyberpunk vein) [Serial Experiments Lain].
Besides that, it was either two hours too long or several hours too short. The problem with condensing a huge manga into a movie is that it just plain doesn't work most of the time.
What *I* want to see is a port of Quake (hell, even of Wolfenstein) for the graphing calculator, so that I can sit and play it in my Trig class and still look like I'm doing work.
But that would really make Mandarin aesthetically inferior, not linguistically inferior... Of course, I know no Cantonese and only a bit of Mandarin, so I'm not the most qualified person to speak about the two.
Isn't Mandarin the most popular language, since it's the "official" dialect of Chinese in China? I know that Cantonese is more common with overseas Chinese, but...
Actually, a deal where farmers could grow a few acres of weed or coca and then sell it to the government for processing would be *great* for the farmers...Thing is, there'd probably have to be some kind of government regulation of potency/THC content.
Re:Why is the war still raging?
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 1
The Drug War is one of the last vestiges of institutional racism in our country. A black or hispanic kid with pot is something like seven times as likely to do jail time as a white kid with the same amount of pot.
It benefits the prison industry; people busted for drug possession - a nonviolent crime - do serious time for it.
It benefits politicians by allowing them to make sententious, self-aggrandizing statements about "cleaning up the streets." Never mind the fact that both major presidential candidates, Bush and Gore, did drugs; when a rich white kid does it, it's a "youthful indiscretion," or an "experiment." When a poor minority kid does it, it's seven years or more in jail.
Criminalization of addiction
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 1
Once again, I'm in basic agreement with JonKatz. Nice upgrates on the Katzbot, guys.
But I thought that one of the most important things about this movie is the way it deals with the addicts; Douglas says in his final speech that the "War on Drugs" is in many cases a war on family. *That* seemed to me to be the essence of the movie; drug addicts aren't criminals. They're exactly the same as alcoholics, or smokers, or shopaholics. What the War on Drugs has done, in addition to criminalizing the sale and traffic of drugs, is criminalize addiction, which is nothing more than a health problem.
The ease of restriction in China is due largely to the fact that internet access is really avaliable only on a limited basis, in large urban areas. It's not at all like the States.
My first thought when I asw this was that it was a publicity stunt by Apple - like that ad for Last Action Hero on the Space Shuttle. We all know how well *that* one worked.
I mean, really; this could be kind of near as a proof-of-concept thing, but this guy's career will be pretty much over if it doesn't work out. I really hope that Apple is paying him enough that he can retire comfortably....
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is, in a nutshell, Star Wars remade as a Chinese martial arts fantasy. It is strange and beautiful and everyone should go see it. (In the unusual event that there are parents reading this, the film is rated PG-13 but is completely appropriate for any child old enough to read subtitles.)"
How does the movie bear any similarity whatsoever to Star Wars? Just because it includes a desert and a wise master doesn't necessarily make it derivative, you know.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is not Matrix-inspired, Jon. It has kung-fu in it. The kung-fu was choreographed by Yuen Wo-ping. The similarities end there.
Fansubbing isn't necessarily illegal; if the anime isn't released in the States, it seems to be basically OK. If you order tapes from a fansubber, then (I think) you can only pay for postage.
It's kind of in a grey area. It's not really popular enough to attract the attention of the studios, so for the moment, it's a great way to get anime that (a) isn't available in the States or (b) isn't available in the original Japanese.
I think the main claim people make is that the characters are poorly drawn, but that doesn't stand up; anime characters are all drawn in a very stylized way. Even Hayao Miyazaki's films (eg Mononoke Hime and Grave of the Fireflies) have the trademark anime-style characters.
But a small historical correction; Confucius lived during the Zhou dynasty, if memory serves; the movie is set during the Qing dinasty. There's a minor difference of about 2500 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, it's not *size* that matters, it's how you use it!
What varies even more from school to school than the GPA?
Class Ranks. While the SAT's are certainly a flawed system, they're also constant in what they test. The value of GPA's, as Timothy noted, varies from school to school. A GPA, however, is at least a general indicator of average grades (hence the name).
A class rank, on the other hand, merely shows where a student is in relation to the rest of his or her graduating class. I'm in a "gifted" high school. My GPA is 93.3 out of 100. And my class rank is 73 out of 120. In a case like mine (which is not really that uncommon), the class rank is more damaging to the student than helpful.
Of course, maybe I'm just being bitter here.
I can see both sides of this one. I mean, sure, I'd be pretty pissed-off if I was constantly getting nagged to upgrade, but as a designer, I can't count the number of times when I've been ready to kill over the way older browsers screw up my designs.
A lot of good design work is held back by the need to support older browsers.
It's amazing, actually, how much better Mozilla 0.8 is than Netscape 6.0.
A testament, I guess, either to the power of open-source or to the incompetence of AOL/Time-Warner/Satan/Netscape.
(shrug)
Isn't this what the last William Gibson novel was about? As I recall, it was about widespread use of nanotech assemblers (in convenience stores or something)...
Pant legs? Geez, just wear a bikini. Couldn't you tell from the photo on the page?
Is there anything yet on what kind of performance gain you'll get if you're upgrading from RH 7 or Mandrake 7.x? I used the Caldera 2.4 Preview a couple months back, and it seemed to be faster...
Wow. It seems to me that this'd really be a huge boon to people whose phones are monitored (ie, drug lords, mafiosos, etc) -- they just have to buy one of these suckers, then toss it away in a few hours.
I mean, Akira was definitely a good movie, and it helped attract a lot of people to anime...but really, it pales in comparison to a lot of today's stuff, especially, say, Miyazaki-san'a [Mononoke Hime], or (in the cyberpunk vein) [Serial Experiments Lain].
Besides that, it was either two hours too long or several hours too short. The problem with condensing a huge manga into a movie is that it just plain doesn't work most of the time.
Yeah, it's a good, well-written brief...but come on; PERL isn't a language! It's line noise!
(just a joke; don't fear the humor, moderators.)
What *I* want to see is a port of Quake (hell, even of Wolfenstein) for the graphing calculator, so that I can sit and play it in my Trig class and still look like I'm doing work.
But that would really make Mandarin aesthetically inferior, not linguistically inferior... Of course, I know no Cantonese and only a bit of Mandarin, so I'm not the most qualified person to speak about the two.
"Personally I think it's a shame that Mandarin got elected as the official language, because it's linguistically inferior."
How so? I know that Mandarin only has four tones, as opposed to Cantonese's seven, but still...what is it that's inferior?
Isn't Mandarin the most popular language, since it's the "official" dialect of Chinese in China? I know that Cantonese is more common with overseas Chinese, but...
Actually, a deal where farmers could grow a few acres of weed or coca and then sell it to the government for processing would be *great* for the farmers...Thing is, there'd probably have to be some kind of government regulation of potency/THC content.
The Drug War is one of the last vestiges of institutional racism in our country. A black or hispanic kid with pot is something like seven times as likely to do jail time as a white kid with the same amount of pot.
It benefits the prison industry; people busted for drug possession - a nonviolent crime - do serious time for it.
It benefits politicians by allowing them to make sententious, self-aggrandizing statements about "cleaning up the streets." Never mind the fact that both major presidential candidates, Bush and Gore, did drugs; when a rich white kid does it, it's a "youthful indiscretion," or an "experiment." When a poor minority kid does it, it's seven years or more in jail.
Actually, it came in under Johnson and Nixon.
Once again, I'm in basic agreement with JonKatz. Nice upgrates on the Katzbot, guys.
But I thought that one of the most important things about this movie is the way it deals with the addicts; Douglas says in his final speech that the "War on Drugs" is in many cases a war on family. *That* seemed to me to be the essence of the movie; drug addicts aren't criminals. They're exactly the same as alcoholics, or smokers, or shopaholics. What the War on Drugs has done, in addition to criminalizing the sale and traffic of drugs, is criminalize addiction, which is nothing more than a health problem.
The ease of restriction in China is due largely to the fact that internet access is really avaliable only on a limited basis, in large urban areas. It's not at all like the States.
My first thought when I asw this was that it was a publicity stunt by Apple - like that ad for Last Action Hero on the Space Shuttle. We all know how well *that* one worked.
I mean, really; this could be kind of near as a proof-of-concept thing, but this guy's career will be pretty much over if it doesn't work out. I really hope that Apple is paying him enough that he can retire comfortably....
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is, in a nutshell, Star Wars remade as a Chinese martial arts fantasy. It is strange and beautiful and everyone should go see it. (In the unusual event that there are parents reading this, the film is rated PG-13 but is completely appropriate for any child old enough to read subtitles.)"
How does the movie bear any similarity whatsoever to Star Wars? Just because it includes a desert and a wise master doesn't necessarily make it derivative, you know.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is not Matrix-inspired, Jon. It has kung-fu in it. The kung-fu was choreographed by Yuen Wo-ping. The similarities end there.
Fansubbing isn't necessarily illegal; if the anime isn't released in the States, it seems to be basically OK. If you order tapes from a fansubber, then (I think) you can only pay for postage.
It's kind of in a grey area. It's not really popular enough to attract the attention of the studios, so for the moment, it's a great way to get anime that (a) isn't available in the States or (b) isn't available in the original Japanese.
I think the main claim people make is that the characters are poorly drawn, but that doesn't stand up; anime characters are all drawn in a very stylized way. Even Hayao Miyazaki's films (eg Mononoke Hime and Grave of the Fireflies) have the trademark anime-style characters.
But a small historical correction; Confucius lived during the Zhou dynasty, if memory serves; the movie is set during the Qing dinasty. There's a minor difference of about 2500 years.