Stephen Meyer got an ID paper published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington last year.
Skeptic had their take on it in the last issue. In a nutshell
The journal is in the bottom 20% of all journals for impact, but it is a legit peer-reviewed journal with a long history
The current head editor is a noted creationist who's on the editorial board of another journal that only publishes papers that are in agreement with a literal interpretation of Genesis.
The editor won't say who the reviewers were, only that they were biologists at well known institutions.
The paper's sponsoring society was not happy, and put out a press release saying that none of them would have agreed to publish if they had known.
I put my two sons on the list- they give you a little certificate you can print out with their name on it.
My 4-year-old will think it's neat. (The 8-month old might not really understand.) It gets them to think about science, and costs a few grams added to the probe. Why not?
Actually, it's questionable if GW can continue at the current pace. I've read that ArenaNet costs $9M/year to operate, and that's not counting the cost of development of the game. Sales have been good but not outstanding, and have been poor in Korea.
Unless they can get a large number of sales of expansion packs, GW is going to lose a lot of money.
do you really worry about those other people playing 18 hours a day?
In terms of being jealous, no, but it would be kind of nice to be able to play with a group over time.
Right now I'm in a guild in Guild Wars. Most of the members have more or less completed the single player game (or have significant progress with multiple classes) and thus have access to a huge set of skills and items I don't have. I'm not going to get any of them anytime soon, and thus I'm not a great teammate for them.
I had a great time doing a mission the other day with a bunch of other semi-newbies. We got along really well and had similar skill levels. But I know that the rest of them are young, unmarried and without kids. I won't be able to play with them again- the next time I log in they'll be max leveled and in game areas I won't see for months.
This was the sole reason I picked up Guild Wars- no online fees. I've got a job, a wife and two kids- I just can't play enough to justify paying the subscription fee to an MMORPG, nor can I play enough to keep up with the l33t uber players.
I'd consider playing something like WoW if I could get a $5/month account that allowed, say 20 hours of game play/month. Even better, why not put everyone on this account into their own server- those of us with lives outside of WoW could play and not worry about the kids living 18 hours a day online.
Seriously, GW was made by a bunch of ex-Blizzard folks and you can see a lot of the Diablo influence in it. It's much more focused on team gaming and PvP than Diablo was since it's really a quasi-MMORPG, but a lot of the basic gameplay feels the same even in a totally different environment.
It's not the connection- that's fine. Try using the GUI up2date. If you simply select every package the up2date program will hang on the "resolving dependencies" step, almost every time. It seems like any dependency at all will cause it to die- I've let it run for 24+ hours and it never completes.
And I won't regale you with the time up2date downloaded a bunch of somehow corrupt font files that broke xemacs totally. Never was able to fix that one, but at least the upgrade to FC4 did.
The latest version in FC4 has worked for me so far- we'll see if that bug got stomped.
I know, it pisses me off endlessly to have the redhat update agent hang over and over again since it can't manage to resolve a few dependencies, and trying to keep up on the enormous number of patches a simple webserver takes by hand is a royal pain.
I have to say there are a lot of people who clearly have no idea how to use them or why they might be valuable.
Speaking as an academic tech guy, anyone wanting to do graded quizzes with these is insane. (Although we run faculty meeting votes with them and see *none* of the problems everyone seems to have- we get votes for ~80 people in about 20 seconds, with clear "your vote is counted" feedback for every user. Replace the batteries every now and then and make sure you have enough receivers.) There's just no point- paper is easier.
Where they work is in "Just-in-time" teaching techniques and instant feedback. One great example- a physics prof where I work was teaching 101-level gravitation to a bunch of students. He asked a question about weightlessness, and every single student got it wrong. Not only did he know quickly that nobody had understood the last ten minutes of lecture, but he knew where the confusion was based on the answers.
Can you do this without them, just using hands? Well, actually no- he's tried that. Most of the students won't answer, those few that do just look for the hand of the girl in the front row with the 99.7% average and answer along with her. You need the anonymity to get effective use
~13 years old, 27" CRT with no frills. The only input is coax, although it does have two RCA jacks for audio out. Cheap VCR/DVD combo attached. Simple enough my 4-year old can play his Thomas the Tank Engine videos without Daddy's help.
HDTV? DVI? HDMI connections? I worry about none of these things, and frankly I can't see myself caring anytime in the near future at least as far as home entertainment goes. (I wouldn't mind some Blu-ray drives at work though)
Let them bicker and fight. I'll upgrade sometime in 2015 after the loser is dead and buried and when I can get a QXUABCDEFSVGA resolution screen for $50.
As explained in another part of this thread, I deserve to be paid for my labor, but not for the idea of the program.
<Manager> Hey great new idea! How much will it cost BigCorp to have you it up? Oh, that much? Can you do it for a quarter of that? No? Well, sorry, I'm going to get a bunch of guys in India to code it up for $1.50/hour. Got anything else of actual value, or should I just lay you off now?</Manager>
T+plus 33 minutes. A few seconds after solid rocket booster separation, a large chunk of something broke free from the external fuel tank. The onboard video camera mounted on the tank showed the object flying away from the vehicle without striking Discovery.
Want to bet that chunk of film is going to be looked at rather closely?
I recently built a computer for home (AMD64), and was disappointed in the noise level. It was still better than the noisy monster before it, but I've been working on getting it quieter.
Antec Sonata case with very quiet PSU, full fan control and vibration reduction for the drives
Zalman flower CPU fan
Zalman northbridge heatsink.
My biggest problems now are the CD-ROM and the hard drives- I was kind of surprised to find the video card fan (ASUS GeForce 6600) is literally slient even under heavy load. I'm debating if the hard drive silencing enclosures are worth it- you can still tell the thing is on if you're within 5 feet, but unless the CD-ROM spins up you tune out the noise in a few seconds.
I'd love to see a benchmark of "Quietest PC for a given performance level".
It *has* been studied, endlessly. Go visit an academic library and you'll find journal article after journal article about it.
So why don't we hear about it? For a couple of reasons
It's damn hard to measure an outcome. Sure, you can make sure that Johnny can add 2+2 using a standarized test. You might even be able to tell if he can do an algebra word problem. But can you tell if he'll still be able to do it in 10 years? Can he solve a real world problem on the construction site? Worse, can he construct a coherent argument about a local political issue and send it to a Congressman? (And can he do the algebra to figure out how much of a campaign contribution he needs to enclose?) Most things of any importance simply can't be measured on a standardized test.
Outcomes vary so much based on the learner. Some people can absorb lectures very well, others can't. Some can read a text effectively. Some need pictures to really have a concept sink in. (And before you disparage pictures, consider Fenyman diagrams. All they are are pictures. If you read his biographies that's how he thought.) One-size-fits-all teaching methods will always fail.
Outcomes vary so much based on the teacher. About the only constant is to demand high standards, but what after that? Two teachers I think of when I remember great ones of my youth were totally different- one was a happy-go-lucky clown type, the other a stern German disciplinarian. Their teaching styles and philosophies couldn't have been farther apart, but they were both great teachers.
Teaching critical thinking and the ability to synthesize and combine knowledge is the single hardest task imaginable. The vast majority of people today, yesterday and I dare say tomorrow will not master it, no matter what educational system you choose.
It's really hard to get any coherant strategy. Therefore, politicians pass things like No Child Left Behind and pat themselves on the back for "fixing" our educational system. Thanks guys- that really helped.
That's nice. I only got 1.5M DSL into my neighborhood six months ago. Before that my options were a modem or satellite- the cable company didn't even bother running cable out to our development until a year ago, and they still don't have cable modem service.
Maybe it comes down to how we are calculating the ammount we pay. I'm taking the ammount I pay in the year to the government in taxes (after filing me refund) and dividing that by the ammount I make in one year. It comes out close to 25%. I don't have many deductions. Sucks to be me.
That's exactly what I'm doing- $to feds/$earned. It's about 3%. You need to buy a house. The entire tax system is set up to encourage homeownership.
Why should the adoption credit be any more than the credit for having your own biological kid/dependant?
We still get the usual personal exemption for a kid, but the credit is designed to help with the up-front costs. It's a one-time $10k credit. (Bush raised it from the $5k introduced under Clinton) People with biological children don't have to pay those up front costs- health care&birth expenses get picked up either by insurance or Medicare. (And before you complain, if your health care costs go over ~$5k, you can deduct those- I do that too some years.)
Depending on the agency and situation, adoption will run $5- $40k, the former being domestic non-healthywhiteinfant, the latter being international for some of the more expensive countries. If you are careful about your agency you can do an adoption for free, and given the huge number of kids who need to be adopted right now anything we can do to remove obstacles is a good thing
Double or tripple? I'm in the 25% tax bracket right now and the max is 35%. According to you with a flat everyone would be paying 50-75% (including those currently paying 35%).
You don't understand how the current tax system works. I'm in the 25% bracket (for some of my income) but I pay nothing like 25% of my income to the feds.
The actual number is closer to 3%. Moderate income, two kids, house, state/property taxes, some charitable donations wipe out virtually all the tax for someone like me. (And I'm not uncommon- in fact, we're quite close to the median American family.)
The one area I'm really different is adopting my kids. The adoption tax credit is going to set my federal taxes to 0 for the next few years. The credit makes it possible for normal people to handle the expenses involved- eliminating it will seriously hurt adoption in the US, toss more kids into foster care and end up costing the taxpayers money in the long run.
As someone in a similar boat, I have to commend you on being willing to double or triple your taxes so that the super-rich can get another Gulfstream V.
Look carefully at your federal taxes and then pull out a calculator to see what's you'd owe under a flat tax. Under most proposals, I'd be paying somewhere between $3-8k more per year. I'm an exceptional case for a number of reasons, but a flat tax will absolutely screw most middle class americans.
Slashdot Mirror
Skeptic had their take on it in the last issue. In a nutshell
My 4-year-old will think it's neat. (The 8-month old might not really understand.) It gets them to think about science, and costs a few grams added to the probe. Why not?
Eric, who has actually used a mouse once with Emacs, but only once. I feel so dirty.
I've got an 1850 chemistry book that contains a proof for the existence of the luminous ether in it...
Unless they can get a large number of sales of expansion packs, GW is going to lose a lot of money.
do you really worry about those other people playing 18 hours a day?
In terms of being jealous, no, but it would be kind of nice to be able to play with a group over time.
Right now I'm in a guild in Guild Wars. Most of the members have more or less completed the single player game (or have significant progress with multiple classes) and thus have access to a huge set of skills and items I don't have. I'm not going to get any of them anytime soon, and thus I'm not a great teammate for them.
I had a great time doing a mission the other day with a bunch of other semi-newbies. We got along really well and had similar skill levels. But I know that the rest of them are young, unmarried and without kids. I won't be able to play with them again- the next time I log in they'll be max leveled and in game areas I won't see for months.
I'd consider playing something like WoW if I could get a $5/month account that allowed, say 20 hours of game play/month. Even better, why not put everyone on this account into their own server- those of us with lives outside of WoW could play and not worry about the kids living 18 hours a day online.
Seriously, GW was made by a bunch of ex-Blizzard folks and you can see a lot of the Diablo influence in it. It's much more focused on team gaming and PvP than Diablo was since it's really a quasi-MMORPG, but a lot of the basic gameplay feels the same even in a totally different environment.
It's by the same people. I've got some Zalman fans and heatsinks in my machine and they are really nicely done.
And I won't regale you with the time up2date downloaded a bunch of somehow corrupt font files that broke xemacs totally. Never was able to fix that one, but at least the upgrade to FC4 did.
The latest version in FC4 has worked for me so far- we'll see if that bug got stomped.
Oh wait, you were talking about Linux, right?
Speaking as an academic tech guy, anyone wanting to do graded quizzes with these is insane. (Although we run faculty meeting votes with them and see *none* of the problems everyone seems to have- we get votes for ~80 people in about 20 seconds, with clear "your vote is counted" feedback for every user. Replace the batteries every now and then and make sure you have enough receivers.) There's just no point- paper is easier.
Where they work is in "Just-in-time" teaching techniques and instant feedback. One great example- a physics prof where I work was teaching 101-level gravitation to a bunch of students. He asked a question about weightlessness, and every single student got it wrong. Not only did he know quickly that nobody had understood the last ten minutes of lecture, but he knew where the confusion was based on the answers.
Can you do this without them, just using hands? Well, actually no- he's tried that. Most of the students won't answer, those few that do just look for the hand of the girl in the front row with the 99.7% average and answer along with her. You need the anonymity to get effective use
HDTV? DVI? HDMI connections? I worry about none of these things, and frankly I can't see myself caring anytime in the near future at least as far as home entertainment goes. (I wouldn't mind some Blu-ray drives at work though)
Let them bicker and fight. I'll upgrade sometime in 2015 after the loser is dead and buried and when I can get a QXUABCDEFSVGA resolution screen for $50.
As explained in another part of this thread, I deserve to be paid for my labor, but not for the idea of the program.
<Manager> Hey great new idea! How much will it cost BigCorp to have you it up? Oh, that much? Can you do it for a quarter of that? No? Well, sorry, I'm going to get a bunch of guys in India to code it up for $1.50/hour. Got anything else of actual value, or should I just lay you off now?</Manager>
T+plus 33 minutes. A few seconds after solid rocket booster separation, a large chunk of something broke free from the external fuel tank. The onboard video camera mounted on the tank showed the object flying away from the vehicle without striking Discovery.
Want to bet that chunk of film is going to be looked at rather closely?
My biggest problems now are the CD-ROM and the hard drives- I was kind of surprised to find the video card fan (ASUS GeForce 6600) is literally slient even under heavy load. I'm debating if the hard drive silencing enclosures are worth it- you can still tell the thing is on if you're within 5 feet, but unless the CD-ROM spins up you tune out the noise in a few seconds.
I'd love to see a benchmark of "Quietest PC for a given performance level".
"Attention all planets in the Solar Federation."
"We have assumed control"
"We have assumed control"
"We have assumed control"
So why don't we hear about it? For a couple of reasons
It's really hard to get any coherant strategy. Therefore, politicians pass things like No Child Left Behind and pat themselves on the back for "fixing" our educational system. Thanks guys- that really helped.
"Exciting re-review and recommenting opportunity" for the /. editor's favorite activity.
That's nice. I only got 1.5M DSL into my neighborhood six months ago. Before that my options were a modem or satellite- the cable company didn't even bother running cable out to our development until a year ago, and they still don't have cable modem service.
Maybe it comes down to how we are calculating the ammount we pay. I'm taking the ammount I pay in the year to the government in taxes (after filing me refund) and dividing that by the ammount I make in one year. It comes out close to 25%. I don't have many deductions. Sucks to be me.
That's exactly what I'm doing- $to feds/$earned. It's about 3%. You need to buy a house. The entire tax system is set up to encourage homeownership.
Why should the adoption credit be any more than the credit for having your own biological kid/dependant?
We still get the usual personal exemption for a kid, but the credit is designed to help with the up-front costs. It's a one-time $10k credit. (Bush raised it from the $5k introduced under Clinton) People with biological children don't have to pay those up front costs- health care&birth expenses get picked up either by insurance or Medicare. (And before you complain, if your health care costs go over ~$5k, you can deduct those- I do that too some years.)
Depending on the agency and situation, adoption will run $5- $40k, the former being domestic non-healthywhiteinfant, the latter being international for some of the more expensive countries. If you are careful about your agency you can do an adoption for free, and given the huge number of kids who need to be adopted right now anything we can do to remove obstacles is a good thing
Double or tripple? I'm in the 25% tax bracket right now and the max is 35%. According to you with a flat everyone would be paying 50-75% (including those currently paying 35%).
You don't understand how the current tax system works. I'm in the 25% bracket (for some of my income) but I pay nothing like 25% of my income to the feds.
The actual number is closer to 3%. Moderate income, two kids, house, state/property taxes, some charitable donations wipe out virtually all the tax for someone like me. (And I'm not uncommon- in fact, we're quite close to the median American family.)
The one area I'm really different is adopting my kids. The adoption tax credit is going to set my federal taxes to 0 for the next few years. The credit makes it possible for normal people to handle the expenses involved- eliminating it will seriously hurt adoption in the US, toss more kids into foster care and end up costing the taxpayers money in the long run.
Well said; my effective tax rate was 12.8% for federal income tax. Not that bad. A flat tax would be in the 10-15% range.
Again, I'm an extreme, but mine is about 3%. (And adoption tax credits bring that to 0% for the next few years)
If you're middle class with a few kids and a house and some basic deductions you are paying very, very little federal tax.
Look carefully at your federal taxes and then pull out a calculator to see what's you'd owe under a flat tax. Under most proposals, I'd be paying somewhere between $3-8k more per year. I'm an exceptional case for a number of reasons, but a flat tax will absolutely screw most middle class americans.