Actually never underestimate dropping out, getting a GED, and hitting up 2 years of community college instead. I actually found myself giving this advice to kids lately. Smart kids are bored by our schools, therefore we medicate them, right now the only solution is to escape, and go find your own level.
A GED wipes your high school GPA from the books. Sure you might not be able to hit Harvard or MIT, but most schools really don't care. And really our community colleges are a godsend, they don't deserve the bad rep they get. Some of the best professors I've ever had we are comm. college, they just got sick of the university milieu and politics as they got older, but still loved teaching. Granted, one should never really go for an AA if one wants to actually go to a University, its a waste of credits.
Leaving high school (junior year) my GPA was... It was low. Leaving comm. college, I had a 4.0. Had no prob finding a non-prestige university to accept me.
If you want a prestige university, you have ulterior motives, and not just academic advancement.
But if we told little Billy that he downright sucks at algebra, it would hurt his self-esteem. We'd be limiting his horizons, since we all know that 90% of action is the WILL to do it, not some high falutin' concept like "knowing how to do it", or "doing it well". Our children should feel good about themselves, and education should be FUN, not some grueling, boring, and painful time.
Math, it so happens, makes Billy feel dumb. Dumb isn't a positive thing to feel, it leads to depression. He should play football, then he'll learn useful social skills, and learn to have a good self esteem.
Ugh. Actually my old college roommate was in for primary ed., and this is pretty much how it goes. That and the teachers who DO try, and give kids bad grades for bad performance (IMAGINE!) get screamed at by administrators who receive snarky letters from parents who KNOW that their kid really is smart (smart is anecdotal, not something based on performance, it seems). Everyone thinks their kid is special. This, to some extent, is the legacy of the 60's.
We add to this the exit testing, where you teach the test, and nothing more, to make your school look successful, and ensuring better funding. Adding more onus to administrators to hammer "rogue" teachers back into line.
To make this more fun, I live in Arizona, which is rock bottom as far as education goes. Where part of the problem is linguistic, to many limited resources are directed towards teaching kids how to speak English. Immersion made this worse, since now teachers need to focus on teaching classes to mixed groups who can't even speak the same damn language. Regardless of the partisan stance on immigration you wish to take, this is a bad thing.
As unpopular as this will be here, drugs too are a massive issues in secondary education. In my highschool over 60% of my freshman class dropped out (the highest in Arizona history then), thats 60% of 900 students. Not a drop in the bucket. This mostly was do to methamphetamine and other drugs, from my anecdotal experience. Granted I think this is a symptom of a larger cultural problem, rather than a cause in-it-self. Probably springing from the same think causing young girls to dress like whores, an utter (and willful) lack of parental discipline, enabled by our culture condoning, or at least fatalistically accepting this.
We are the new barbarians. I hate to say that, but I fear it might just be increasingly true.
Also, looking back in history, we really haven't been a scientific power-house for a VERY long time. Most of our influential scientists from the 40's onward were Europeans who fled Europe. Actually, how many of the Manhattan Project scientists were children of the American education system? Not saying that American scientists aren't good, but I think the idea of a previous America-as-Science-Superpower era, might be rather fallacious.
I've always wondered why our (American) heroes are steroidal, semi-moronic, sports people, or idiotic pretty Hollywood people. I was reading a book on 20th century French philosophy, and Foucault was treated like a rockstar, and Sartre had a parade for his funeral. Sure, these aren't scientific (per se) figures, but they are intellectuals. Ask the average American to identify ONE thinker?
Looking at our universities, 80% of the people are entering them as a trade school, getting their fast-track MBA or such, and completely ignoring the fields irrelevant to making money (science, the humanities, history). They want money, they want a career, curiosity come second to that. Greed over knowledge. They want application, and not the ability to think of new things, a ready made body of knowledge is safe, all you need to do is follow the steps.
The problem, in part, is greed. The odds of you getting rich as a public scientist (the most valuable and productive, in my eyes) is pretty slim.
We want the status quo and wealth, not innovation. Hell science doesn't even fall into the other American value, ambition. Sure you can be determined to find x, but really, you might not. It's up to nature to decide, not you. Science is too humble for our tastes. As we can see by the rise of scientism preachers (Dawkins and co.), science needs to be sexier.
We also are a country that venerates morons. Not to enter the realm of flamebait, but look what got Bush elected. Not his wit, or astute knowledge of foreign affairs, but his "folksy" ways of expression.
WoW did have some embryonic elements of the "chosen one" aspect of RPGs. I remember when WoW was new, doing the Onyxia quest chain, and getting the huge procession through Stormwind. 10 lowbies (genuine newbs at the time, not just some 70's alt like you'd get now) followed me to see the big fight. It was a pretty awesome experience, and very well done. Just like getting the dragon's head in the middle of the main Horde city. It was rather small, and other people have done it before, and will later, but it made you feel important. Unlike most everything else in the game now. You go kill big massive raid boss x, and all you get is some silly gear to link in general trade, and hope someone actually cares, as if it won't become crap the next expansion.
But then again I've done the predecessor of MMO's (MUDs), and never really found one where you had the illusion of making a difference either. Granted they were more exploration based, as a whole. I guess the big goal was to hit the level cap, and schmooze up to the admins, and become a poobah of some sort so you could make the player base miserable.
I always had the idea of a game where you work towards the cap, like most MMOs, but the higher you get the more power over the game itself you get. Eventually become an admin of sorts, with the ability to create zones, or such. RP wise it would be justified as you getting more godlike as you level. It would help eliminate the power creep issue in most RPGs, where you get uber kill the boss, then BAM something more uber comes along. Of course it would need a massive world, to have a massive level cap to keep it from stagnating. Or perhaps have some form of really special quest chain that would allow advancement of special powers.
Yes. Even paranoiacs are right some percentage of the time. But, probably not this time. Or at least I haven't seen any reason to dust off my tin-foil hat yet. Its just the usual election SNAFU action, there is no need to confuse gross incompetence for conspiracy, the former covers most things pretty well.
What gets me is that the media is choosing yet another president. No conspiracy there, just morons voting. Democracy depends on an informed public, which is antithetical to the modern American way of life.
Didn't RTFA, but I have a hard time seeing how this would actually lead to finding who is distributing illegal copies if it isn't on a per individual watermark/fingerprint per unit. If it is on a per-batch basis all the RIAA could do is narrow it down to which area/time/batch is being most distributed, but all individuals purchasing that batch would have deniability. The only real utility I could see if gather statistics "the watermark representing batch x, and East Asia is most distributed", or such.
The only way this would be useful is if it was on a per-unit basis. Then they could tag ANY duplicate watermark as representative of hinkey behavior.
The unsecured connection I'm using to write this has a networked printer. I really am not tempted to do anything nefarious to it, though I could see someone printing goatse, if they were slightly less scrupulous. I AM tempted to print something to the effect of "your wifi connection is open, and I can use your printer. " then attach my email address to it.
I don't think this person is a novice though, since it is a named network, and pretty well secured (outside the printer issue).
As a sideline, I also have a theory that it is majorly extroverts that call humans "social creatures", while introverts are less likely to use that phrase, preferring "intelligent creature" or something similar (note: I am absolutely not implying that introverts are smarter).
I think its more a matter of "social thresholds", not that any of us aren't inherently social. I think introverts can be chopped into two groups, those who are actually alienated, and those who are actually very comfortable with themselves. Sometimes I'm of the thought that we all chatter way to damn much, and being that we aren't actually saying anything, it must just because we're afraid of silence (i.e. the sounds of our own thoughts), either that or a majority of us are playing some form of Marco Polo, announcing our existence to others because of some irrational fear that we may not exist. Introverts, I find, are far better conversationalists, ironically. What do you gain from lack of social skills, more time to read, think, and try to understand things. Of course these are groundless hypotheses. Tangent aside, even introverts need to talk to people, just less often than some.
For the record, I consider myself mainly an introvert, but not to the point where I am completely antisocial. I was reading some lay descriptions of the Meyer-Briggs' personality test, and the simplified I-E matrix description summed it up: Introverts feel drained by social interaction and need solitude to recharge, Extroverts feel drained by solitude, and need groups to recharge.
I still don't know if a book is the answer. These books mostly deal with using people for your ends, and not the basics of "normal" interaction. I really don't think you CAN be taught normal social interaction, its one of those things you pick up and incorporate way back in your youth while being originally socialized. What these books teach are to interaction, what "networking" is to genuine relationships, shallow, fictional, and purely pragmatic. It boils down to "how do I fool this person into thinking I'm someone I'm not".
I, for some reason, doubt that anything of lasting value can come of that. Building relationships (even of the temporary business type)is constructing things on a false foundation.
These books are not about teaching those of us outside the mainstream culture how to fit in, their teaching how to get what you want. For this reason reading a couple good books on actual social-psychology (especially of sales) would have far more merit than something watered down into feel good, corporate speak, psychobabble. As for forging genuine relations I doubt even that the most pathetic basement dwellers among us need help, it still is a natural thing. Not everyone natters on about Brittany Hilton, or whatnot, and not everyone expects you to be slicker than owl shit in your communication skills.
Really, here is the text of my self help book, I was going to publish it and make billions, but I feel generous:
They might be happier for it though. Which is what really matters. The job market is only a SMALL aspect of life, and not the most important thing in the world. I always giggled at the entering freshmen who were doing the overachiever track, only to end up getting mediocre grades, or dropping out, later on due to burn out. Life is a balance.
But then again I was in college for philosophy, so I never had to worry about job prospects.
Do people really need a book to get along with people? That is, no offense, kind of sad. Learning to pretend to be friendly is just base manipulation, and most people can see through it. It makes people look sleazy, in the real world. The best way to get along with others is to be self-assured, and utterly yourself, and mostly, treat them as you want to be treated (as has been known long enough to be a cliche). Not a bunch of silly, manipulative, social-psycho-babble. Going by a book just makes you look like middle management, or a used car salesman.
Furthermore its completely unnecessary. We're hardwired to be social primates, unless of course your a sociopath, or such, but then I doubt you'd be on Slashdot anyways (being a social site). Even being a geek isn't an excuse, I've spent more time poking at a keyboard that talking to people, and still have no real problem interacting with others.
To relate this to college experience, find a peer group, go to a pub with them, flirt up the opposite sex, act like a human being.
This might be getting more and more awkward to youth these days, I suppose, with the growing lack of real social interaction, with communications moving to impersonal, and indirect means.
I agree about Vista needing more RAM, but not about XP. I ran XP Pro on 512-768MB for years with no problems what-so-ever. Granted it wasn't a heavy gaming rig, but it would handle UT2k3 with no serious problems. Granted I ran a clean ship, only essential processes and services, but there wasn't much a noticible slow down. At least not as noticeably as my old iBook running OS X (10.3, I think) on 512MB (painfully slow).
But last month I grabbed a cheap laptop to see if Vista is as bad as/. says. With the 1GB it shipped with, it was. With 4GB in it, I don't mind it too much. Odd thing, with 1GB, it would boot at 600MB used, with 4GB, it boots with just over 1GB used. I know RAM is cheap, but using 1GB AT BOOT is rather iffy in my book. Granted the windows manager (dwm.exe) is using around 50MB, and explorer runs around 20MB. My inner geek screams "bloat" everytime I open taskman.
I don't understand retailing computers that don't have the specs to run their OS. Its like selling a semi with a 4-banger. Perhaps they'd sell more if the entry point was actually useful, if I like Joe Six-Pack and scared to play with hardware, my "Vista Experience", or such, would have been abysmal, ditto with my first Mac experience, all due to underpowered boxes. Its rather inexcusable, when your dealing with $600 hardware, how bad would throwing $50 worth of extra RAM in be?
On the whole though, Vista isn't too bad. I still prefer my Mac, but I have no glaring complaints yet, once you turn off all the stupid security options (accept|cancel). It makes me rather mad that there is a hardware lock in, though, from all accounts there can be no downgrading Vista to XP on this laptop.
Not many, from what I noticed. The only modern concept albums off the top of my head are by The Mars Volta. The rest seem to be just a random collection of singles (though the new Nine Inch Nails album comes kinda close). Though some bands do like their CDs to have a them, which wouldn't work well with release one of two tracks whenever, some of the modern stuff by Tool is like this, it wouldn't stand alone to well, as well as some of the "post-rock" bands, like Godspeed! You Black Emperor.
I don't collect CDs anymore, but I do generally listen to albums, in order, on itunes. I think "shuffling" can degrade the experience for some albums. Imagine listening to Pink Floyd out of order, and jumbled with whatever else? It stops being music, and starts being noise. This is the strength of the monolithic album. Yes, pop might be different, but I wouldn't know.
As for feedback... As a person who likes music, I hope not. National bestseller lists have done nothing but made music more shitty. More feedback won't improve things at all. The only good thing that purely digital music has the potential of doing, is to bring the smaller bands more even with the larger, since it removes some of the more costly elements of music production, and also removes the "distribution" imbalance, since everything will be available everywhere, and not only in Walmart, who wouldn't carry an obscure title if their life depended on it.
I've gone to school for a long time for Philosophy, so it would be in my self-interest to disagree. Pondering imponderables have influenced the course of knowledge, and have allowed us to develop intellectual "tool kits" to work around them. Think of what Turing's work on so-called "halting problems" have brought us today, also the contributions to cognitive science that the "brain-in-a-vat" questions has been slowly leading to.
Yes the "can god make a ditch so big he can't jump across it" class of arguments might be rather futile, and trite. But even those have lead to advances in theology (Augustine, Anselm, etc...).
Granted these arguments will probably never lead to any form of truth, by their very nature, I still think their worth following, as long as the parties involved realize the fact that the nature of their arguments make their truth value irrelevant.
My favorite one is the currently en vogue freewill/determinism argument. Neither proposition being true would make on lick of difference in our everyday (existential) lives. I dare someone to choose to live their life as if it was deterministic.
I think you missed the point here. This is a box sold at Walmart, meaning it isn't for the typical slashbot. Yes, me might go out and grab one for parts, or for a quickly home server/firewall/whatnot, but that's not who this is marketed too. This is for your mom, not the nerd dwelling in her basement.
If your just getting a PC "to browse the internet", and only want to cough up $200 for it, I doubt your going to want to spend $50/mo for broadband. I doubt as well you want to rip it open and stick in some extra RAM. Your probably going to be like my folks, and scared to death of its internals. I also doubt the person this is marketed to knows a distro from a disco.
Think average Walmart customer here.
On this metric, I think it might deserve its review. Linux is still rather far from being as idiot friendly as the big two. To be honest my folks have had Windows PCs for around 8 years now (not counting the ones I commandeered as a child)and still have no clue how to do anything beyond "open firefox, click on things", and I am doubtful that they actually care to know more.
Actually I don't see how competition is bad. We all generally agree that Wikipedia is a great idea on paper, but in practice it falls rather short of its potential. Wikipedia can be the home to groupthink, petty elitism, and obvious political or philosophical agendas (NPOV be damned). Perhaps having another fish in the sea will make Wikipedia reevaluate their practices. Also I find having to OWN your righting better, I'm rather know that Professor of X John Smith wrote an article on x, rather than Sxxybunny16. The ability to vote on the verisimilitude, accuracy, or lack of bias, would be a massive plus.
Of course this depends on implementation.
As for the ad based model, my opinion is mixed. Things need to be funded, this is true for corporate projects, and non-profit projects. Wikipedia generally has a LARGE banner-ad asking for donations, which really is no different than ads. One thing that does bother me, if what power would advertisers have over content in the encyclopedia? And how tasteful would the ads be.
It's been awhile since I've actually SEEN a Google ad (adblock), but if I remember right, they were rather tasteful.
But I think the term "datum" would fit the bill fine though. It being the singular (latin plural at least, no matter what m-w.com says) for data, and all. Actually I'm sure there are plenty preexisting words that would work just fine, without having to invent moronic neologisms for no reason other to make a "buzz".
Please, the language has seen enough abuse, leave it alone.
Your reason confuses me, and its sad I see it so much here on/.
It seems the average slashbot has decided regression equals progress. I don't see how increasing employer culpability, and the environment of the worker was an undesirable, nor do I see how the opposite is in any way a good thing (unless you some sociopath only concerned with the bottom line, and not the stuff that matters).
Yes we've had workers rights for a small period of time, but I don't see that as a reason for its desired transience. Most cultures, too, have only seen the abolition of slavery, suffrage, and the germ theory of disease for a short period of time too, would be be so apathetic about losing them too?
Actually politics is like religion, most people default to the view of their parents/household. Well "most" is relative, being that only around 40-50% of eligible voters actually vote.
I think though, that you are somewhat correct, and possibly growing more and more correct as things go on. I think that the family alignment is going away slowly, as is evident in the apparent increasing polarization of voting blocs (red and blue, or whatnot). I say apparent because I think the polarization idea is fallacious, I think the voters are growing more centrist, or moderated, which would also show the same polarization, as people moving to the extremes of the party. This is backed by the fact that most of the "red vs. blue" margins in the last Presidential election were around 10%, or under, between the victor and the loser. This would seem to indicate that people are voting less along party lines. (Yes, congress and the house still do, but thats another story).
I think this just shows that both parties are broken, and have ceased, at some recent point, to represent the people. Looking at the current crop of presidential hopefuls, I can see this. They all fail, no one is really satisfied with any of them.
Even permanently linking potentially flawed information is a rather bad source. The problem (which is increasingly evident) is that there is no real accountability on Wikipedia. Yes I can find out that SexyJohn69 wrote this current article, but really that means nothing, whereas in a real book, or article, I can evaluate the credibility of the author based on his credentials. Sure, SexyJohn69 can claim any credential he has (or wants, or decided he should have) on his personal page, but that is about as useful as the text he wrote.
More news like this makes me kind of depressed, I had some actual hope for the Wikipedia project, but as time goes on it just keeps proving how fatally flawed the idea is. I first got a whiff of this while doing a quicky search of Ayn Rand, and quickly got sucked into the 300 pages of argument, and flames by "pro Rand", and "anti Rand" Wikipedians. 300 pages of name calling hardly surrounds anything written there with an aura of respectability or veracity. You pro/anti stances shouldn't matter to an overview of written content, sure you can disagree or agree, but the text remains the same.
Part of the problem, I think, is the idea of "nonbiased". NO ONE, in their own mind, is biased. Everyone, in their own minds is completely objective and correct, and thus everyone dissenting is biased. And when you develop an editorial system like Wikipedia, which seems purposely adjusted to group-think and editorial territoriality you end up with a biased, politically influence pile of steaming fallaciousness.
Should we just do away with any pay scales and just start paying people whatever they need to live on? We'd have an entire society trying to flip hamburgers and stocking shelves...
Have you ever actually held either job? Neither of them are fun, nor easy. Even if I could make a decent wage making fries for morons, I'd rather make the same wage doing something interesting, or entertaining, or even easier. All of the janitors at your office are probably working harder than you, and doing a job much more taxing than yours, and being paid much much less.
The rich just want to look out for themselves, the rest of the society that allows them to be elitist be damned. If it wasn't for the stock boys and janitors, you probably would be where they are.
I know psychologically anecdotal evidence is rather hard to bypass, but it really (in an argument) means nothing. My family was on welfare briefly (hard luck), and then got off. See, now our anecdotes have fought each other, and equal appox. nothing.
Seriously though, I think some form of welfare is needed. There is a certain point where your circumstances stop being conductive to improvement (see how living in a cardboard box without a shower improves your ability to get a job), and there are also (increasingly) circumstances outside of an individuals control that can throw them outside of a viable means to support themselves.
Also, I find it reprehensible that we really want people to suffer instead of losing a small bit of our own money. When you value money above humanity, you have become a truly despicable person. If greed outweighs your compassion, I see no problem with an outside force taking your money, and forcing you to do what decent people would do. Why shouldn't we help people? I don't think anyone can find a valid answer to that question./rant
I do think we need some welfare reform, though, to keep it from habitualizing the system. It should have an emphasis on bringing people back in line with mainstream society, less than just supporting them. Teach a man to fish, etc...
Would we be so quick to ascribe "good intentions" to the perpetrators of this travesty if they were foreigners?
Actually, yes. I think most people who do evil actions do so with the best of intentions, American or not. Yes, I can point to some exceptions, serial killers, perhaps the portion of evangelicals who want to bring on the end of the world, etc... But I am a firm believer in Hanna Arndt's idea of the "banality of evil".
The problem is that people get stuck in their ideology, and it becomes more real than the real world. They lose sight of the human impact of their actions. People really enjoying using people as a means to an end, and not as and ends to themselves. More people should go read their Kant.
I really don't know how to got America-centricism from this. People are people, Americans are subject to the same flaws as Europeans, Iraqis, and everyone else, and visa versa.
Wow, an insightful comment connected to Iraq. I was about to propose some sort of neo-Godwin's Rule pertaining to Iraq too.
I think you absolutely right, the war is proof of the old adage about what the path to hell is paved with.
I've noticed that most of the anti-war crowd like to turn the world into some episode of Captain Planet, or any other cartoon, with definite villains out there doing conscious evil. I can see them picturing Dick Cheney wearing a metal gauntlet, petting his cat, saying "Next time inspector Liberty, next time", and flying away in the White House. I guess it is an easier world view, than having to contemplate that our leaders are just overly idealistic men, no different than us in their foibles, and just as prone to hubris as the next.
Iraq is a complex beast, and not prone to simple logic or characterizations (as are most things).
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Actually never underestimate dropping out, getting a GED, and hitting up 2 years of community college instead. I actually found myself giving this advice to kids lately. Smart kids are bored by our schools, therefore we medicate them, right now the only solution is to escape, and go find your own level.
A GED wipes your high school GPA from the books. Sure you might not be able to hit Harvard or MIT, but most schools really don't care. And really our community colleges are a godsend, they don't deserve the bad rep they get. Some of the best professors I've ever had we are comm. college, they just got sick of the university milieu and politics as they got older, but still loved teaching. Granted, one should never really go for an AA if one wants to actually go to a University, its a waste of credits.
Leaving high school (junior year) my GPA was... It was low. Leaving comm. college, I had a 4.0. Had no prob finding a non-prestige university to accept me.
If you want a prestige university, you have ulterior motives, and not just academic advancement.
But if we told little Billy that he downright sucks at algebra, it would hurt his self-esteem. We'd be limiting his horizons, since we all know that 90% of action is the WILL to do it, not some high falutin' concept like "knowing how to do it", or "doing it well". Our children should feel good about themselves, and education should be FUN, not some grueling, boring, and painful time.
Math, it so happens, makes Billy feel dumb. Dumb isn't a positive thing to feel, it leads to depression. He should play football, then he'll learn useful social skills, and learn to have a good self esteem.
Ugh. Actually my old college roommate was in for primary ed., and this is pretty much how it goes. That and the teachers who DO try, and give kids bad grades for bad performance (IMAGINE!) get screamed at by administrators who receive snarky letters from parents who KNOW that their kid really is smart (smart is anecdotal, not something based on performance, it seems). Everyone thinks their kid is special. This, to some extent, is the legacy of the 60's.
We add to this the exit testing, where you teach the test, and nothing more, to make your school look successful, and ensuring better funding. Adding more onus to administrators to hammer "rogue" teachers back into line.
To make this more fun, I live in Arizona, which is rock bottom as far as education goes. Where part of the problem is linguistic, to many limited resources are directed towards teaching kids how to speak English. Immersion made this worse, since now teachers need to focus on teaching classes to mixed groups who can't even speak the same damn language. Regardless of the partisan stance on immigration you wish to take, this is a bad thing.
As unpopular as this will be here, drugs too are a massive issues in secondary education. In my highschool over 60% of my freshman class dropped out (the highest in Arizona history then), thats 60% of 900 students. Not a drop in the bucket. This mostly was do to methamphetamine and other drugs, from my anecdotal experience. Granted I think this is a symptom of a larger cultural problem, rather than a cause in-it-self. Probably springing from the same think causing young girls to dress like whores, an utter (and willful) lack of parental discipline, enabled by our culture condoning, or at least fatalistically accepting this.
We are the new barbarians. I hate to say that, but I fear it might just be increasingly true.
Also, looking back in history, we really haven't been a scientific power-house for a VERY long time. Most of our influential scientists from the 40's onward were Europeans who fled Europe. Actually, how many of the Manhattan Project scientists were children of the American education system? Not saying that American scientists aren't good, but I think the idea of a previous America-as-Science-Superpower era, might be rather fallacious.
I know I'm going to get bashed for this.
I've always wondered why our (American) heroes are steroidal, semi-moronic, sports people, or idiotic pretty Hollywood people. I was reading a book on 20th century French philosophy, and Foucault was treated like a rockstar, and Sartre had a parade for his funeral. Sure, these aren't scientific (per se) figures, but they are intellectuals. Ask the average American to identify ONE thinker?
Looking at our universities, 80% of the people are entering them as a trade school, getting their fast-track MBA or such, and completely ignoring the fields irrelevant to making money (science, the humanities, history). They want money, they want a career, curiosity come second to that. Greed over knowledge. They want application, and not the ability to think of new things, a ready made body of knowledge is safe, all you need to do is follow the steps.
The problem, in part, is greed. The odds of you getting rich as a public scientist (the most valuable and productive, in my eyes) is pretty slim.
We want the status quo and wealth, not innovation. Hell science doesn't even fall into the other American value, ambition. Sure you can be determined to find x, but really, you might not. It's up to nature to decide, not you. Science is too humble for our tastes. As we can see by the rise of scientism preachers (Dawkins and co.), science needs to be sexier.
We also are a country that venerates morons. Not to enter the realm of flamebait, but look what got Bush elected. Not his wit, or astute knowledge of foreign affairs, but his "folksy" ways of expression.
WoW did have some embryonic elements of the "chosen one" aspect of RPGs. I remember when WoW was new, doing the Onyxia quest chain, and getting the huge procession through Stormwind. 10 lowbies (genuine newbs at the time, not just some 70's alt like you'd get now) followed me to see the big fight. It was a pretty awesome experience, and very well done. Just like getting the dragon's head in the middle of the main Horde city. It was rather small, and other people have done it before, and will later, but it made you feel important. Unlike most everything else in the game now. You go kill big massive raid boss x, and all you get is some silly gear to link in general trade, and hope someone actually cares, as if it won't become crap the next expansion.
But then again I've done the predecessor of MMO's (MUDs), and never really found one where you had the illusion of making a difference either. Granted they were more exploration based, as a whole. I guess the big goal was to hit the level cap, and schmooze up to the admins, and become a poobah of some sort so you could make the player base miserable.
I always had the idea of a game where you work towards the cap, like most MMOs, but the higher you get the more power over the game itself you get. Eventually become an admin of sorts, with the ability to create zones, or such. RP wise it would be justified as you getting more godlike as you level. It would help eliminate the power creep issue in most RPGs, where you get uber kill the boss, then BAM something more uber comes along. Of course it would need a massive world, to have a massive level cap to keep it from stagnating. Or perhaps have some form of really special quest chain that would allow advancement of special powers.
Yes. Even paranoiacs are right some percentage of the time. But, probably not this time. Or at least I haven't seen any reason to dust off my tin-foil hat yet. Its just the usual election SNAFU action, there is no need to confuse gross incompetence for conspiracy, the former covers most things pretty well.
What gets me is that the media is choosing yet another president. No conspiracy there, just morons voting. Democracy depends on an informed public, which is antithetical to the modern American way of life.
Didn't RTFA, but I have a hard time seeing how this would actually lead to finding who is distributing illegal copies if it isn't on a per individual watermark/fingerprint per unit. If it is on a per-batch basis all the RIAA could do is narrow it down to which area/time/batch is being most distributed, but all individuals purchasing that batch would have deniability. The only real utility I could see if gather statistics "the watermark representing batch x, and East Asia is most distributed", or such.
The only way this would be useful is if it was on a per-unit basis. Then they could tag ANY duplicate watermark as representative of hinkey behavior.
The unsecured connection I'm using to write this has a networked printer. I really am not tempted to do anything nefarious to it, though I could see someone printing goatse, if they were slightly less scrupulous. I AM tempted to print something to the effect of "your wifi connection is open, and I can use your printer. " then attach my email address to it.
I don't think this person is a novice though, since it is a named network, and pretty well secured (outside the printer issue).
Parent is refering to Volkwagen, which means "People's Car" in German. They were Hitler's idea. (wow, I can mention Hitler and not pull a Godwin).
For more see: Wikipedia.
As a sideline, I also have a theory that it is majorly extroverts that call humans "social creatures", while introverts are less likely to use that phrase, preferring "intelligent creature" or something similar (note: I am absolutely not implying that introverts are smarter).
I think its more a matter of "social thresholds", not that any of us aren't inherently social. I think introverts can be chopped into two groups, those who are actually alienated, and those who are actually very comfortable with themselves. Sometimes I'm of the thought that we all chatter way to damn much, and being that we aren't actually saying anything, it must just because we're afraid of silence (i.e. the sounds of our own thoughts), either that or a majority of us are playing some form of Marco Polo, announcing our existence to others because of some irrational fear that we may not exist. Introverts, I find, are far better conversationalists, ironically. What do you gain from lack of social skills, more time to read, think, and try to understand things. Of course these are groundless hypotheses. Tangent aside, even introverts need to talk to people, just less often than some.
For the record, I consider myself mainly an introvert, but not to the point where I am completely antisocial. I was reading some lay descriptions of the Meyer-Briggs' personality test, and the simplified I-E matrix description summed it up: Introverts feel drained by social interaction and need solitude to recharge, Extroverts feel drained by solitude, and need groups to recharge.
I still don't know if a book is the answer. These books mostly deal with using people for your ends, and not the basics of "normal" interaction. I really don't think you CAN be taught normal social interaction, its one of those things you pick up and incorporate way back in your youth while being originally socialized. What these books teach are to interaction, what "networking" is to genuine relationships, shallow, fictional, and purely pragmatic. It boils down to "how do I fool this person into thinking I'm someone I'm not".
/rant
I, for some reason, doubt that anything of lasting value can come of that. Building relationships (even of the temporary business type)is constructing things on a false foundation.
These books are not about teaching those of us outside the mainstream culture how to fit in, their teaching how to get what you want. For this reason reading a couple good books on actual social-psychology (especially of sales) would have far more merit than something watered down into feel good, corporate speak, psychobabble. As for forging genuine relations I doubt even that the most pathetic basement dwellers among us need help, it still is a natural thing. Not everyone natters on about Brittany Hilton, or whatnot, and not everyone expects you to be slicker than owl shit in your communication skills.
Really, here is the text of my self help book, I was going to publish it and make billions, but I feel generous:
"BE YOURSELF"
They might be happier for it though. Which is what really matters. The job market is only a SMALL aspect of life, and not the most important thing in the world. I always giggled at the entering freshmen who were doing the overachiever track, only to end up getting mediocre grades, or dropping out, later on due to burn out. Life is a balance.
But then again I was in college for philosophy, so I never had to worry about job prospects.
Do people really need a book to get along with people? That is, no offense, kind of sad. Learning to pretend to be friendly is just base manipulation, and most people can see through it. It makes people look sleazy, in the real world. The best way to get along with others is to be self-assured, and utterly yourself, and mostly, treat them as you want to be treated (as has been known long enough to be a cliche). Not a bunch of silly, manipulative, social-psycho-babble. Going by a book just makes you look like middle management, or a used car salesman.
Furthermore its completely unnecessary. We're hardwired to be social primates, unless of course your a sociopath, or such, but then I doubt you'd be on Slashdot anyways (being a social site). Even being a geek isn't an excuse, I've spent more time poking at a keyboard that talking to people, and still have no real problem interacting with others.
To relate this to college experience, find a peer group, go to a pub with them, flirt up the opposite sex, act like a human being.
This might be getting more and more awkward to youth these days, I suppose, with the growing lack of real social interaction, with communications moving to impersonal, and indirect means.
I agree about Vista needing more RAM, but not about XP. I ran XP Pro on 512-768MB for years with no problems what-so-ever. Granted it wasn't a heavy gaming rig, but it would handle UT2k3 with no serious problems. Granted I ran a clean ship, only essential processes and services, but there wasn't much a noticible slow down. At least not as noticeably as my old iBook running OS X (10.3, I think) on 512MB (painfully slow).
/. says. With the 1GB it shipped with, it was. With 4GB in it, I don't mind it too much. Odd thing, with 1GB, it would boot at 600MB used, with 4GB, it boots with just over 1GB used. I know RAM is cheap, but using 1GB AT BOOT is rather iffy in my book. Granted the windows manager (dwm.exe) is using around 50MB, and explorer runs around 20MB. My inner geek screams "bloat" everytime I open taskman.
But last month I grabbed a cheap laptop to see if Vista is as bad as
I don't understand retailing computers that don't have the specs to run their OS. Its like selling a semi with a 4-banger. Perhaps they'd sell more if the entry point was actually useful, if I like Joe Six-Pack and scared to play with hardware, my "Vista Experience", or such, would have been abysmal, ditto with my first Mac experience, all due to underpowered boxes. Its rather inexcusable, when your dealing with $600 hardware, how bad would throwing $50 worth of extra RAM in be?
On the whole though, Vista isn't too bad. I still prefer my Mac, but I have no glaring complaints yet, once you turn off all the stupid security options (accept|cancel). It makes me rather mad that there is a hardware lock in, though, from all accounts there can be no downgrading Vista to XP on this laptop.
Not many, from what I noticed. The only modern concept albums off the top of my head are by The Mars Volta. The rest seem to be just a random collection of singles (though the new Nine Inch Nails album comes kinda close). Though some bands do like their CDs to have a them, which wouldn't work well with release one of two tracks whenever, some of the modern stuff by Tool is like this, it wouldn't stand alone to well, as well as some of the "post-rock" bands, like Godspeed! You Black Emperor.
I don't collect CDs anymore, but I do generally listen to albums, in order, on itunes. I think "shuffling" can degrade the experience for some albums. Imagine listening to Pink Floyd out of order, and jumbled with whatever else? It stops being music, and starts being noise. This is the strength of the monolithic album. Yes, pop might be different, but I wouldn't know.
As for feedback... As a person who likes music, I hope not. National bestseller lists have done nothing but made music more shitty. More feedback won't improve things at all. The only good thing that purely digital music has the potential of doing, is to bring the smaller bands more even with the larger, since it removes some of the more costly elements of music production, and also removes the "distribution" imbalance, since everything will be available everywhere, and not only in Walmart, who wouldn't carry an obscure title if their life depended on it.
I've gone to school for a long time for Philosophy, so it would be in my self-interest to disagree. Pondering imponderables have influenced the course of knowledge, and have allowed us to develop intellectual "tool kits" to work around them. Think of what Turing's work on so-called "halting problems" have brought us today, also the contributions to cognitive science that the "brain-in-a-vat" questions has been slowly leading to.
Yes the "can god make a ditch so big he can't jump across it" class of arguments might be rather futile, and trite. But even those have lead to advances in theology (Augustine, Anselm, etc...).
Granted these arguments will probably never lead to any form of truth, by their very nature, I still think their worth following, as long as the parties involved realize the fact that the nature of their arguments make their truth value irrelevant.
My favorite one is the currently en vogue freewill/determinism argument. Neither proposition being true would make on lick of difference in our everyday (existential) lives. I dare someone to choose to live their life as if it was deterministic.
I think you missed the point here. This is a box sold at Walmart, meaning it isn't for the typical slashbot. Yes, me might go out and grab one for parts, or for a quickly home server/firewall/whatnot, but that's not who this is marketed too. This is for your mom, not the nerd dwelling in her basement.
If your just getting a PC "to browse the internet", and only want to cough up $200 for it, I doubt your going to want to spend $50/mo for broadband. I doubt as well you want to rip it open and stick in some extra RAM. Your probably going to be like my folks, and scared to death of its internals. I also doubt the person this is marketed to knows a distro from a disco.
Think average Walmart customer here.
On this metric, I think it might deserve its review. Linux is still rather far from being as idiot friendly as the big two. To be honest my folks have had Windows PCs for around 8 years now (not counting the ones I commandeered as a child)and still have no clue how to do anything beyond "open firefox, click on things", and I am doubtful that they actually care to know more.
Actually I don't see how competition is bad. We all generally agree that Wikipedia is a great idea on paper, but in practice it falls rather short of its potential. Wikipedia can be the home to groupthink, petty elitism, and obvious political or philosophical agendas (NPOV be damned). Perhaps having another fish in the sea will make Wikipedia reevaluate their practices. Also I find having to OWN your righting better, I'm rather know that Professor of X John Smith wrote an article on x, rather than Sxxybunny16. The ability to vote on the verisimilitude, accuracy, or lack of bias, would be a massive plus.
Of course this depends on implementation.
As for the ad based model, my opinion is mixed. Things need to be funded, this is true for corporate projects, and non-profit projects. Wikipedia generally has a LARGE banner-ad asking for donations, which really is no different than ads. One thing that does bother me, if what power would advertisers have over content in the encyclopedia? And how tasteful would the ads be.
It's been awhile since I've actually SEEN a Google ad (adblock), but if I remember right, they were rather tasteful.
Nope.
But I think the term "datum" would fit the bill fine though. It being the singular (latin plural at least, no matter what m-w.com says) for data, and all. Actually I'm sure there are plenty preexisting words that would work just fine, without having to invent moronic neologisms for no reason other to make a "buzz".
Please, the language has seen enough abuse, leave it alone.
Your reason confuses me, and its sad I see it so much here on /.
It seems the average slashbot has decided regression equals progress. I don't see how increasing employer culpability, and the environment of the worker was an undesirable, nor do I see how the opposite is in any way a good thing (unless you some sociopath only concerned with the bottom line, and not the stuff that matters).
Yes we've had workers rights for a small period of time, but I don't see that as a reason for its desired transience. Most cultures, too, have only seen the abolition of slavery, suffrage, and the germ theory of disease for a short period of time too, would be be so apathetic about losing them too?
Actually politics is like religion, most people default to the view of their parents/household. Well "most" is relative, being that only around 40-50% of eligible voters actually vote.
I think though, that you are somewhat correct, and possibly growing more and more correct as things go on. I think that the family alignment is going away slowly, as is evident in the apparent increasing polarization of voting blocs (red and blue, or whatnot). I say apparent because I think the polarization idea is fallacious, I think the voters are growing more centrist, or moderated, which would also show the same polarization, as people moving to the extremes of the party. This is backed by the fact that most of the "red vs. blue" margins in the last Presidential election were around 10%, or under, between the victor and the loser. This would seem to indicate that people are voting less along party lines. (Yes, congress and the house still do, but thats another story).
I think this just shows that both parties are broken, and have ceased, at some recent point, to represent the people. Looking at the current crop of presidential hopefuls, I can see this. They all fail, no one is really satisfied with any of them.
Even permanently linking potentially flawed information is a rather bad source. The problem (which is increasingly evident) is that there is no real accountability on Wikipedia. Yes I can find out that SexyJohn69 wrote this current article, but really that means nothing, whereas in a real book, or article, I can evaluate the credibility of the author based on his credentials. Sure, SexyJohn69 can claim any credential he has (or wants, or decided he should have) on his personal page, but that is about as useful as the text he wrote.
More news like this makes me kind of depressed, I had some actual hope for the Wikipedia project, but as time goes on it just keeps proving how fatally flawed the idea is. I first got a whiff of this while doing a quicky search of Ayn Rand, and quickly got sucked into the 300 pages of argument, and flames by "pro Rand", and "anti Rand" Wikipedians. 300 pages of name calling hardly surrounds anything written there with an aura of respectability or veracity. You pro/anti stances shouldn't matter to an overview of written content, sure you can disagree or agree, but the text remains the same.
Part of the problem, I think, is the idea of "nonbiased". NO ONE, in their own mind, is biased. Everyone, in their own minds is completely objective and correct, and thus everyone dissenting is biased. And when you develop an editorial system like Wikipedia, which seems purposely adjusted to group-think and editorial territoriality you end up with a biased, politically influence pile of steaming fallaciousness.
Should we just do away with any pay scales and just start paying people whatever they need to live on? We'd have an entire society trying to flip hamburgers and stocking shelves...
Have you ever actually held either job? Neither of them are fun, nor easy. Even if I could make a decent wage making fries for morons, I'd rather make the same wage doing something interesting, or entertaining, or even easier. All of the janitors at your office are probably working harder than you, and doing a job much more taxing than yours, and being paid much much less.
The rich just want to look out for themselves, the rest of the society that allows them to be elitist be damned. If it wasn't for the stock boys and janitors, you probably would be where they are.
1 person /= everyone
/rant
I know psychologically anecdotal evidence is rather hard to bypass, but it really (in an argument) means nothing. My family was on welfare briefly (hard luck), and then got off. See, now our anecdotes have fought each other, and equal appox. nothing.
Seriously though, I think some form of welfare is needed. There is a certain point where your circumstances stop being conductive to improvement (see how living in a cardboard box without a shower improves your ability to get a job), and there are also (increasingly) circumstances outside of an individuals control that can throw them outside of a viable means to support themselves.
Also, I find it reprehensible that we really want people to suffer instead of losing a small bit of our own money. When you value money above humanity, you have become a truly despicable person. If greed outweighs your compassion, I see no problem with an outside force taking your money, and forcing you to do what decent people would do. Why shouldn't we help people? I don't think anyone can find a valid answer to that question.
I do think we need some welfare reform, though, to keep it from habitualizing the system. It should have an emphasis on bringing people back in line with mainstream society, less than just supporting them. Teach a man to fish, etc...
Would we be so quick to ascribe "good intentions" to the perpetrators of this travesty if they were foreigners?
Actually, yes. I think most people who do evil actions do so with the best of intentions, American or not. Yes, I can point to some exceptions, serial killers, perhaps the portion of evangelicals who want to bring on the end of the world, etc... But I am a firm believer in Hanna Arndt's idea of the "banality of evil".
The problem is that people get stuck in their ideology, and it becomes more real than the real world. They lose sight of the human impact of their actions. People really enjoying using people as a means to an end, and not as and ends to themselves. More people should go read their Kant.
I really don't know how to got America-centricism from this. People are people, Americans are subject to the same flaws as Europeans, Iraqis, and everyone else, and visa versa.
Wow, an insightful comment connected to Iraq. I was about to propose some sort of neo-Godwin's Rule pertaining to Iraq too.
I think you absolutely right, the war is proof of the old adage about what the path to hell is paved with.
I've noticed that most of the anti-war crowd like to turn the world into some episode of Captain Planet, or any other cartoon, with definite villains out there doing conscious evil. I can see them picturing Dick Cheney wearing a metal gauntlet, petting his cat, saying "Next time inspector Liberty, next time", and flying away in the White House. I guess it is an easier world view, than having to contemplate that our leaders are just overly idealistic men, no different than us in their foibles, and just as prone to hubris as the next.
Iraq is a complex beast, and not prone to simple logic or characterizations (as are most things).