They're talking about the cost of building the satellite, not the cost of launch... And, if they can cobble together a satellite for about 50k, then more power to them.
Interesting... I guess the point of his article is not to have better educated teachers teaching children, but that he's an elitist snob.
Idiot.
BTW (which is an acronym for "by the way"), "illiterate" can be used to describe someone who is unfamiliar in *ANY* subject area, not just reading related (i.e. "PhillipM is illiterate in the proper usage of words.").
Realistically, any educated person would *NEVER* admit to being unable to read and write, or admit to being unfamiliar with the works of Shakespeare, and yet, when asked to solve anything more complicated than the most elementary mathematics problem, they often reply with "I don't like math" or "I never learned" or quite simply, an indifferent shrug. If this isn't an indication of the state of affairs of mathematics (and science!) in the United States, then I don't know what is.
(Although this discussion follows the debate between Science and the Arts, mathematics is one of the foundations of science.)
An excellent book on mathematical illiteracy is John Allen Paulos' "Innumeracy".
I don't think that its coincidence that everyone who assumes that the HD for consoles will be used for patching, drivers, etc. are the same people who do not keep up with console gaming news. It's been announced that games will be using the HD for caching purposes only. They don't want to turn console gaming into the PC market because it just wouldn't be idiot proof (which is what most console designers try to do, aka Nintendo). Also, patching, drivers, etc. will be unfeasible because no games are actually installed onto the HD... the only thing that will be stored there are textures, background, etc. to keep the game running smoothly.
Console games have a much wider genre of playable games, unlike the PC market. Driving, fighting, sports, action/adventure, etc. games have a much better feel than their PC counterparts. PC games excel in strategy, fps, and mmorpg games, but consoles excel in every other area.
As you can see, I'm a big proponent of console gaming, but I also use my PC extensively for gaming as well, so I do know both sides of the issue, unlike other SlashDotters.
How come a crappy movie that doesn't hide it's lack of plot, dialogue, acting, etc. can get a good review as a "fun movie" whereas a bad movie that tries to make a good plot, have good acting, dialogue, etc. is "crap"?
The Tomb Raider games were much overrated. The only reason they did so well was because of the hormonal 15-30 year olds that bought them to "control a chick with big boobs".
Hrm, it seems to me that as intelligent as some of the posters on this board are, they all seem to fall into the mindset that a) big business is bad (which it is in many cases) and b) free is good.
No matter what the case, they tend to hold tightly to these truths and refuse to look at things from a different point of view. Since I am still new here and haven't been converted to the flock (zombie masses?) I'll go ahead and try to present the other point of view (the unpopular one).
IP protection is necessary!
The protection of IP is important because it ensures the continued livelihood of whoever came up with the idea. If the cook of a local burger stand developed a wonderful new ingredient to add to his hamburgers, would it be right for a large corporation to take the recipe and disseminate it without his consent? Thus, the cook would no longer have this edge in the market, and would potentially lose much of his business to the competitor(s). You may say, 'Well, of course it's wrong for the Big Bad Corp to do that to the little guy!' but what if the situations were reversed? Is it right for the little guy to do that to the Big Bad Corp?
Just because you steal from a faceless company doesn't make it right. It has been a disturbing trend that people feel that they can lie on their income taxes because they *think* they aren't stealing from a person, when in actuality they are stealing from all of us.
Ok, enough of my rant. Honestly, though, I have alot of *ahem* evaluation softwarez on my computer that I have little to no remorse of, uh, evaluating. I also applaud Dr. Felton's effort in trying to fight a company that would put a stranglehold on information (whatever it's forms may be). I just wanted to write this because rather than making valid arguments, it seems as though many slashdotters tend to disguise the same old prejudices (big company bad, free thing good) in different words every time this sort of topic comes up.
Slashdot Mirror
They're talking about the cost of building the satellite, not the cost of launch... And, if they can cobble together a satellite for about 50k, then more power to them.
If the study conducted was about the most/least trusted internet companies, why was Microsoft included in the survey?
Competition to the schools subsidized by the federal government are known as private schools...
Interesting... I guess the point of his article is not to have better educated teachers teaching children, but that he's an elitist snob.
Idiot.
BTW (which is an acronym for "by the way"), "illiterate" can be used to describe someone who is unfamiliar in *ANY* subject area, not just reading related (i.e. "PhillipM is illiterate in the proper usage of words.").
Realistically, any educated person would *NEVER* admit to being unable to read and write, or admit to being unfamiliar with the works of Shakespeare, and yet, when asked to solve anything more complicated than the most elementary mathematics problem, they often reply with "I don't like math" or "I never learned" or quite simply, an indifferent shrug. If this isn't an indication of the state of affairs of mathematics (and science!) in the United States, then I don't know what is.
(Although this discussion follows the debate between Science and the Arts, mathematics is one of the foundations of science.)
An excellent book on mathematical illiteracy is John Allen Paulos' "Innumeracy".
I don't think that its coincidence that everyone who assumes that the HD for consoles will be used for patching, drivers, etc. are the same people who do not keep up with console gaming news. It's been announced that games will be using the HD for caching purposes only. They don't want to turn console gaming into the PC market because it just wouldn't be idiot proof (which is what most console designers try to do, aka Nintendo). Also, patching, drivers, etc. will be unfeasible because no games are actually installed onto the HD... the only thing that will be stored there are textures, background, etc. to keep the game running smoothly. Console games have a much wider genre of playable games, unlike the PC market. Driving, fighting, sports, action/adventure, etc. games have a much better feel than their PC counterparts. PC games excel in strategy, fps, and mmorpg games, but consoles excel in every other area. As you can see, I'm a big proponent of console gaming, but I also use my PC extensively for gaming as well, so I do know both sides of the issue, unlike other SlashDotters.
Oh, heaven forbid that programmers want [i]money[/i] for their efforts...
Heh... leave it up to most SlashDot posters to automatically take an Orwellian stance on the situation without first looking at all the facts...
How come a crappy movie that doesn't hide it's lack of plot, dialogue, acting, etc. can get a good review as a "fun movie" whereas a bad movie that tries to make a good plot, have good acting, dialogue, etc. is "crap"? The Tomb Raider games were much overrated. The only reason they did so well was because of the hormonal 15-30 year olds that bought them to "control a chick with big boobs".
Hrm, it seems to me that as intelligent as some of the posters on this board are, they all seem to fall into the mindset that a) big business is bad (which it is in many cases) and b) free is good.
No matter what the case, they tend to hold tightly to these truths and refuse to look at things from a different point of view. Since I am still new here and haven't been converted to the flock (zombie masses?) I'll go ahead and try to present the other point of view (the unpopular one).
IP protection is necessary!
The protection of IP is important because it ensures the continued livelihood of whoever came up with the idea. If the cook of a local burger stand developed a wonderful new ingredient to add to his hamburgers, would it be right for a large corporation to take the recipe and disseminate it without his consent? Thus, the cook would no longer have this edge in the market, and would potentially lose much of his business to the competitor(s). You may say, 'Well, of course it's wrong for the Big Bad Corp to do that to the little guy!' but what if the situations were reversed? Is it right for the little guy to do that to the Big Bad Corp?
Just because you steal from a faceless company doesn't make it right. It has been a disturbing trend that people feel that they can lie on their income taxes because they *think* they aren't stealing from a person, when in actuality they are stealing from all of us.
Ok, enough of my rant. Honestly, though, I have alot of *ahem* evaluation softwarez on my computer that I have little to no remorse of, uh, evaluating. I also applaud Dr. Felton's effort in trying to fight a company that would put a stranglehold on information (whatever it's forms may be). I just wanted to write this because rather than making valid arguments, it seems as though many slashdotters tend to disguise the same old prejudices (big company bad, free thing good) in different words every time this sort of topic comes up.