Yes, but who is to decide what is important and what is crap? What makes it classic?
Some people think this is important, so I think it's great that they want to try and preserve these langauges.
Even if I were Emporer of the Word, God forbid that only those things I deemed important were preserved. I'm neither wise enough nor worldly enough to make such decisions, and I don't trust that anyone is.
I for one don't care much for professional sports, so I consider it a great waste of time, effort, and resources that we have these silly halls of fames and sports museums. Will anyone in 1000 years care who was inducted into the 2002 Baseball Hall of Fame? But, it's important to somebody and if they're willing to do it, then that's cool. If somebody actually finds some meaning in life from it, then it might actually be worthwhile.
Remember, though, that when that American worker spends that money, it's going into another business. That business hires workers, pays taxes, and buys materials from another business that hires...
Economic growth/strength does not just come from the amount of money in the system, but also from the amount that money changes hands. Having a pile of money is like having a lot of potential energy. Spend that money and it is like kinetic energy in the system.
If anything, though, hiring foreign workers is worse for the US economy, particularly if those workers send the money home. The American worker will *waste* that money by eating out, going to movies, etc. At least the money stays in the local economy for a few more iterations...
It explains why Einstein's Relativity says you can't exceed the speed of light, buut, it doesn't necessarily explain the reality of things! Though, if we're lucky, someone will discover that, just as Newton's work is a special case, maybe Einstein's work is also a special case.
Writing is an art. I want good writers writing our textbooks. I'm sure we've all had a class from a teacher who was brilliant in their field, but couldn't teach the material worth beans.
The facts and theories can be checked by experts throughout the writing process, but lets hire people who know how to write well to write the books.
If you've ever read Asimov's books like "The World of Carbon", and the "The World of Nitrogen", you have an idea of what I'm talking about. Asimov was an excellent writer, and he also happened to know science pretty well. I would argue that these books were good not so much because he knew science, but because he knew how to write.
No. Newton's laws are True Laws for the world in which Newton could observe. Einstein was able to observe a more complex world, and such reached more complex laws to fill in Newton's gaps.
I think it would be right to say that Newton's laws are special cases of Einstein's laws - where the velocities and such are limited to a very small fraction of the speed of light.
I don't remember the formulas exactly, but I seem to remember one of Einstein's formulas having some quantity divided by sqrt(1 - v/c), where v is velocity of the object in question, and c is the speed of light. Well, if v is small compared to c, this whole thing is really really close to 1. If you divide that top part I was talking about by 1, you get Newton's version of the same thing.
It was this little tidbit that is supposed to explain why you can't exceed (or acheieve) the speed of light - if v=c, you have sqrt(0), and then you're dividing by 0. If you have v>c, you have sqrt of a negative number, and then you're dividing by that.
So, I think Einstein's equations are a more "general case" version of Newton's.
A great teacher can make almost anyone want to learn, but a shitty teacher can suck the motivation out of almost anyone.
Yes, and the teachers' unions prevent you from firing the shitty teacher, and prevent you from paying the great teacher what they're worth.
This, IMHO, is one of the greatest problems in education. You can't reward those teachers who excel and do a good job, and you can't punish those who don't - everyone's the same. So, what motivation is there to improve? What if you're that shitty teacher? Why should you improve when you get paid just as much as that great teacher over there?
I recently quit a job as a systems administrator to pursue an MBA degree. If I'm not careful, and keep making mistakes like previewing my messages, they'll revoke my geek license all-together!
Stan Lee (Spiderman Creator) was interviewed last year on NPR's Fresh Air.
I don't remember the details, but Terri Gross asked him about changes in the movie, and this was one he brought up. I think in the end, he decided it didn't bother him very much. He figured that it would take up too much screen-time to go through the whole process of him inventing his web-shooters.
Well, considering how much the big channels repeat stuff over and over, why not send multiple versions?
The equipment on the remote end can build a high-quality version, but during the first run, use the "traditional mode" to get on the air right away.
Once that's done, it can be fixed up a bit and retransmitted using "real-time unidirectional" or "fast".
In the case of an interview type broadcast, the next step would be to put timing marks in the interview style stuff, so that once the high-quality stuff comes back from the field, it can be spliced in where the original "traditional" signal was.
This way, you get your stuff up fast, and on the 2nd or 3rd rotation, you have a higher quality broadcast.
Re:Tech support for your family??
on
Family Tech Support
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That's great for my parents - I'll fix their computers any time. But what about aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. No thanks!
I got in this trap a couple years ago and built some computers for relatives that lived 90 miles away. The computers worked well, but as mentioned before, they would install every little thing that came alog. I soon burned up days of time and $$ in gas - It would have been better if I had simply bought them the Dell.
Does anyone but America still use those wacky imperial measurements any more?
And now you've stumbled on the REAL reason for the impending war in Iraq. The US is determined to force the world back onto the "wacky imperial measurements". Iraq is only the first step! The whole deal about "rebuilding" will involve troops going along the roads of Iraq, changing km signs to miles signs!
This is why so many Europeans are against this whole Iraqi thing!
The Iraqi expats... and they speak better english than farsi.
This is no surprise really, considering Arabic is the predominant language in Iraq and not Farsi. Sure, some Iraqis will speak Farsi, but most of your Farsi speakers are from Iran.
You're confusing your Axis of Evil members! But don't worrry, as soon as we're done with N. Korea, we'll do Iran too... all in good time!
Hell, why stop at socks? If it could match my wardrobe, that would be way cool - kind of like Geranimals!
You could put a Tag reader on your door and as you step outside, it could give you helpful warnings like: "Hey you idiot - you've got the striped shirt and plaid pants again - WAYYY BAD!"
Or, you could grab your pants, and hold them up to each shirt in your closet (or laundry basket) and it will say "hey, that would look good", etc.
It's not just Walmart - it's the people of the town who choose to shop there. If a majority of the people in a town continued to shop at their normal places, rather than the new Walmart, the Walmart would not do well, and old places would do fine.
But, most people will chose to pay $1.00 for a loaf of bread instead of $1.50. In that case, they are giving up the "old way" for that $0.50. It's their choice. You can't blame it all on Walmart.
Term limits are not the answer. We recently swtiched to term limits in Oregon. The problem now is that nothing gets done because nobody really has an f*cking clue how to get anything done (procedurally and culturally). They go in as idealogues and don't understand how to compromise and negotiate.
Even worse, you end up with all the lobbyists having more "seniority" than the representatives. The lobbyists, simply by having greater institutional knowledge, end up being very powerful.
How effective would a corporation be if you fired everyone in it every two years?
The answer is to have an *educated* voting citizenry. Too many people simply vote party-line or without considering the issues thoughtfully.
When I was in the army, we decommissioned a whole bunch of those old hard-drives with 8" platters. We took them apart, removed each platter and and used a belt sander to destroy the surfaces. The sanded platters were then sent to a facility on base that would melt them down.
The bodies of the drives were mostly magnesium, and I came away with about $250 from the scrap metal dealer.
Of course, who knows what I breathed by sanding those platters...
As for my first memories, I only have fragments of when I was one. I remember Christmas, and handling some of the gifts. I remember climbing on the cabinet and finding my mom's watch on the fridge - she was at the door with a delivery-person. I do NOT remember climbing up and eating a bottle of aspirins or getting my stomach pumped. I remember sitting in front of the TV. I don't think I remember some of these things due to stories or pictures - some of the fragments are very insignificant and do not make up a story.
As for the ties between memory and language - that's interesting. I've studied French off and on for several years, and this summer, finally got to go to France. I talked with several people - in French - in fact, a couple people I talked to didn't speak English. Yet, as I recall the events, I can see the people's faces clearly, but in my head, the conversations are in English. I can quickly recount them in English, but I would have to work at translating them into French.
So, even though I conversed in French, my brain seemed to have done me the favor of storing it in English so I coulc remember it later!
Think of all the extra CO2 you're producing by all that physical activity of walking to the store.
It's much better for the environment to sit on the couch and train the dog to carry the dead DVD to the garbage can.
In fact, if I can get one of those biodegradable couches, I can just sit on it until until I'm dead, and my relatives can just haul the whole lot to the dump!
So, you're saying it's okay for one group of people to kill another group of people today because the ancestors of one killed the ancestors of the other? By that logic, it would be okay for the child of a murder victim to later go and kill the child of the murderer.
Suppose the Native Americans started their hypothetical revolution now. Would it be right for them to simply kill any non-Native Americans? Would that really be justice? Or just vengeance?
Going back to the Palestine-Israel situation, you can keep going back grandfather by grandfather and you'll see that each side has been involved in a very long cycle of violence. What about the people living there (Philistines) when the Jews found their "promised land"? The Old Testament is full of stories about the military exploits of the Israelites.
This situation will never be resolved if all sides are going to insist that they have suffered the most and that they were harmed first. If they can't get past that, then they'll just keep killing each other.
I may be wrong, but don't most artilery shells contain some kind of payload, such as explosives, leaflets, or chemical weapons?
If it contains explosives, then heating it with a laser so that it explodes in the air would probably be better than letting it exploding when it hits its target.
I agree - using Saudi Arabia as the bar for women's rights is pretty low. But things are not as bad in Kuwait (for citizens) as the original poster suggested.
The whole Bidoun (people without citizenship - not to be confused with Beduin, the nomadic people) is strange and sad, and needs to be dealt with. In fact while I was in Kuwait, we visited the legislature and they were debating this very issue. Unfortunately, the same conservative elements that are against equality of women are against rights for the Bidoun. There is more opposition, though, because opening up the rules for citizenship and incorporating the Bidoun will dilute the political power of those currently in power, while also stretching social-service dinars (dollars).
It is likewise sad to see what has happened in Iraq. For it is true that women there, before anywhere else in the modern Middle East, enjoyed a great amount of freedom in their personal lives. Iraq had the potential to be a very open and democratic society. It will be interesting to see how the country might recover from the fear and paranoia that are omnipresent, thanks to Saddam and his regime.
I disagree with you about Kuwait. Women are more free there than you might expect - and more free than they are in Saudi Arabia.
In 2000, I went to Kuwait and met several women who worked in various professions such as Bank Manager, Doctors, etc. They dressed just as the same professional would here in the US.
Women do not have political equality yet, but it's coming. Kuwait's only been an independent country for half a century. How long was the US a country before it allowed its women to vote? There are a lot of "conservative" past-looking men who don't want to see change. It will take time. The Amir of Kuwait clearly supports political equality for women. He just has to work with a legislature that has political infighting much like our own.
As for women's dress in Kuwait, it's more dictated by the families they come from than the government. I was puzzled when, during my first day in Kuwait we went to the very modern mall, Suq Sharq and saw a group of young women walking together. Two were completely covered in traditional dress, two were wearing what Americans would consider conservative - long sleeved dresses, and one was wearing a mini-skirt.
Come on. Do you really think he should voluntarily pay more taxes? Do you?
Most of us take every deduction possible, and make arrangements to pay the least possible.
If anything, many people see the government spending tax money inefficiently. Even if they felt they needed/wanted to contribute more, they would probably find some other way to do it than by paying extra taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but who is to decide what is important and what is crap? What makes it classic?
Some people think this is important, so I think it's great that they want to try and preserve these langauges.
Even if I were Emporer of the Word, God forbid that only those things I deemed important were preserved. I'm neither wise enough nor worldly enough to make such decisions, and I don't trust that anyone is.
I for one don't care much for professional sports, so I consider it a great waste of time, effort, and resources that we have these silly halls of fames and sports museums. Will anyone in 1000 years care who was inducted into the 2002 Baseball Hall of Fame? But, it's important to somebody and if they're willing to do it, then that's cool. If somebody actually finds some meaning in life from it, then it might actually be worthwhile.
Remember, though, that when that American worker spends that money, it's going into another business. That business hires workers, pays taxes, and buys materials from another business that hires...
Economic growth/strength does not just come from the amount of money in the system, but also from the amount that money changes hands. Having a pile of money is like having a lot of potential energy. Spend that money and it is like kinetic energy in the system.
If anything, though, hiring foreign workers is worse for the US economy, particularly if those workers send the money home. The American worker will *waste* that money by eating out, going to movies, etc. At least the money stays in the local economy for a few more iterations...
Good point.
It explains why Einstein's Relativity says you can't exceed the speed of light, buut, it doesn't necessarily explain the reality of things! Though, if we're lucky, someone will discover that, just as Newton's work is a special case, maybe Einstein's work is also a special case.
Writing is an art. I want good writers writing our textbooks. I'm sure we've all had a class from a teacher who was brilliant in their field, but couldn't teach the material worth beans.
The facts and theories can be checked by experts throughout the writing process, but lets hire people who know how to write well to write the books.
If you've ever read Asimov's books like "The World of Carbon", and the "The World of Nitrogen", you have an idea of what I'm talking about. Asimov was an excellent writer, and he also happened to know science pretty well. I would argue that these books were good not so much because he knew science, but because he knew how to write.
No. Newton's laws are True Laws for the world in which Newton could observe. Einstein was able to observe a more complex world, and such reached more complex laws to fill in Newton's gaps.
I think it would be right to say that Newton's laws are special cases of Einstein's laws - where the velocities and such are limited to a very small fraction of the speed of light.
I don't remember the formulas exactly, but I seem to remember one of Einstein's formulas having some quantity divided by sqrt(1 - v/c), where v is velocity of the object in question, and c is the speed of light. Well, if v is small compared to c, this whole thing is really really close to 1. If you divide that top part I was talking about by 1, you get Newton's version of the same thing.
It was this little tidbit that is supposed to explain why you can't exceed (or acheieve) the speed of light - if v=c, you have sqrt(0), and then you're dividing by 0. If you have v>c, you have sqrt of a negative number, and then you're dividing by that.
So, I think Einstein's equations are a more "general case" version of Newton's.
A great teacher can make almost anyone want to learn, but a shitty teacher can suck the motivation out of almost anyone.
Yes, and the teachers' unions prevent you from firing the shitty teacher, and prevent you from paying the great teacher what they're worth.
This, IMHO, is one of the greatest problems in education. You can't reward those teachers who excel and do a good job, and you can't punish those who don't - everyone's the same. So, what motivation is there to improve? What if you're that shitty teacher? Why should you improve when you get paid just as much as that great teacher over there?
I recently quit a job as a systems administrator to pursue an MBA degree. If I'm not careful, and keep making mistakes like previewing my messages, they'll revoke my geek license all-together!
Stan Lee (Spiderman Creator) was interviewed last year on NPR's Fresh Air.
2 002/stanlee
I don't remember the details, but Terri Gross asked him about changes in the movie, and this was one he brought up. I think in the end, he decided it didn't bother him very much. He figured that it would take up too much screen-time to go through the whole process of him inventing his web-shooters.
The interview can be heard at:
http://freshair.npr.org/guest_info_fa.jhtml?name=
(I see a space in the "2002" of the URL above when I preview this - is this a slashdot problem?)
Well, considering how much the big channels repeat stuff over and over, why not send multiple versions?
The equipment on the remote end can build a high-quality version, but during the first run, use the "traditional mode" to get on the air right away.
Once that's done, it can be fixed up a bit and retransmitted using "real-time unidirectional" or "fast".
In the case of an interview type broadcast, the next step would be to put timing marks in the interview style stuff, so that once the high-quality stuff comes back from the field, it can be spliced in where the original "traditional" signal was.
This way, you get your stuff up fast, and on the 2nd or 3rd rotation, you have a higher quality broadcast.
That's great for my parents - I'll fix their computers any time. But what about aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. No thanks!
I got in this trap a couple years ago and built some computers for relatives that lived 90 miles away. The computers worked well, but as mentioned before, they would install every little thing that came alog. I soon burned up days of time and $$ in gas - It would have been better if I had simply bought them the Dell.
And the Titanic, the pinacle of ship-building technology at the time, was unsinkable.
Does anyone but America still use those wacky imperial measurements any more?
And now you've stumbled on the REAL reason for the impending war in Iraq. The US is determined to force the world back onto the "wacky imperial measurements". Iraq is only the first step! The whole deal about "rebuilding" will involve troops going along the roads of Iraq, changing km signs to miles signs!
This is why so many Europeans are against this whole Iraqi thing!
The Iraqi expats... and they speak better english than farsi.
This is no surprise really, considering Arabic is the predominant language in Iraq and not Farsi. Sure, some Iraqis will speak Farsi, but most of your Farsi speakers are from Iran.
You're confusing your Axis of Evil members! But don't worrry, as soon as we're done with N. Korea, we'll do Iran too... all in good time!
Hell, why stop at socks? If it could match my wardrobe, that would be way cool - kind of like Geranimals!
You could put a Tag reader on your door and as you step outside, it could give you helpful warnings like: "Hey you idiot - you've got the striped shirt and plaid pants again - WAYYY BAD!"
Or, you could grab your pants, and hold them up to each shirt in your closet (or laundry basket) and it will say "hey, that would look good", etc.
I don't care for them much either. Unfortunately, most people put the cost issue as the most important.. and we get stuck like that.
It's not just Walmart - it's the people of the town who choose to shop there. If a majority of the people in a town continued to shop at their normal places, rather than the new Walmart, the Walmart would not do well, and old places would do fine.
But, most people will chose to pay $1.00 for a loaf of bread instead of $1.50. In that case, they are giving up the "old way" for that $0.50. It's their choice. You can't blame it all on Walmart.
Term limits are not the answer. We recently swtiched to term limits in Oregon. The problem now is that nothing gets done because nobody really has an f*cking clue how to get anything done (procedurally and culturally). They go in as idealogues and don't understand how to compromise and negotiate.
Even worse, you end up with all the lobbyists having more "seniority" than the representatives. The lobbyists, simply by having greater institutional knowledge, end up being very powerful.
How effective would a corporation be if you fired everyone in it every two years?
The answer is to have an *educated* voting citizenry. Too many people simply vote party-line or without considering the issues thoughtfully.
When I was in the army, we decommissioned a whole bunch of those old hard-drives with 8" platters. We took them apart, removed each platter and and used a belt sander to destroy the surfaces. The sanded platters were then sent to a facility on base that would melt them down.
The bodies of the drives were mostly magnesium, and I came away with about $250 from the scrap metal dealer.
Of course, who knows what I breathed by sanding those platters...
As for my first memories, I only have fragments of when I was one. I remember Christmas, and handling some of the gifts. I remember climbing on the cabinet and finding my mom's watch on the fridge - she was at the door with a delivery-person. I do NOT remember climbing up and eating a bottle of aspirins or getting my stomach pumped. I remember sitting in front of the TV. I don't think I remember some of these things due to stories or pictures - some of the fragments are very insignificant and do not make up a story.
As for the ties between memory and language - that's interesting. I've studied French off and on for several years, and this summer, finally got to go to France. I talked with several people - in French - in fact, a couple people I talked to didn't speak English. Yet, as I recall the events, I can see the people's faces clearly, but in my head, the conversations are in English. I can quickly recount them in English, but I would have to work at translating them into French.
So, even though I conversed in French, my brain seemed to have done me the favor of storing it in English so I coulc remember it later!
Think of all the extra CO2 you're producing by all that physical activity of walking to the store.
It's much better for the environment to sit on the couch and train the dog to carry the dead DVD to the garbage can.
In fact, if I can get one of those biodegradable couches, I can just sit on it until until I'm dead, and my relatives can just haul the whole lot to the dump!
So, you're saying it's okay for one group of people to kill another group of people today because the ancestors of one killed the ancestors of the other? By that logic, it would be okay for the child of a murder victim to later go and kill the child of the murderer.
Suppose the Native Americans started their hypothetical revolution now. Would it be right for them to simply kill any non-Native Americans? Would that really be justice? Or just vengeance?
Going back to the Palestine-Israel situation, you can keep going back grandfather by grandfather and you'll see that each side has been involved in a very long cycle of violence. What about the people living there (Philistines) when the Jews found their "promised land"? The Old Testament is full of stories about the military exploits of the Israelites.
This situation will never be resolved if all sides are going to insist that they have suffered the most and that they were harmed first. If they can't get past that, then they'll just keep killing each other.
The whole thing is very saddening, really.
I may be wrong, but don't most artilery shells contain some kind of payload, such as explosives, leaflets, or chemical weapons?
If it contains explosives, then heating it with a laser so that it explodes in the air would probably be better than letting it exploding when it hits its target.
I agree - using Saudi Arabia as the bar for women's rights is pretty low. But things are not as bad in Kuwait (for citizens) as the original poster suggested.
The whole Bidoun (people without citizenship - not to be confused with Beduin, the nomadic people) is strange and sad, and needs to be dealt with. In fact while I was in Kuwait, we visited the legislature and they were debating this very issue. Unfortunately, the same conservative elements that are against equality of women are against rights for the Bidoun. There is more opposition, though, because opening up the rules for citizenship and incorporating the Bidoun will dilute the political power of those currently in power, while also stretching social-service dinars (dollars).
It is likewise sad to see what has happened in Iraq. For it is true that women there, before anywhere else in the modern Middle East, enjoyed a great amount of freedom in their personal lives. Iraq had the potential to be a very open and democratic society. It will be interesting to see how the country might recover from the fear and paranoia that are omnipresent, thanks to Saddam and his regime.
I disagree with you about Kuwait. Women are more free there than you might expect - and more free than they are in Saudi Arabia.
In 2000, I went to Kuwait and met several women who worked in various professions such as Bank Manager, Doctors, etc. They dressed just as the same professional would here in the US.
Women do not have political equality yet, but it's coming. Kuwait's only been an independent country for half a century. How long was the US a country before it allowed its women to vote? There are a lot of "conservative" past-looking men who don't want to see change. It will take time. The Amir of Kuwait clearly supports political equality for women. He just has to work with a legislature that has political infighting much like our own.
As for women's dress in Kuwait, it's more dictated by the families they come from than the government. I was puzzled when, during my first day in Kuwait we went to the very modern mall, Suq Sharq and saw a group of young women walking together. Two were completely covered in traditional dress, two were wearing what Americans would consider conservative - long sleeved dresses, and one was wearing a mini-skirt.
Come on. Do you really think he should voluntarily pay more taxes? Do you?
Most of us take every deduction possible, and make arrangements to pay the least possible.
If anything, many people see the government spending tax money inefficiently. Even if they felt they needed/wanted to contribute more, they would probably find some other way to do it than by paying extra taxes.