I've tried taking the items up to the "courtesy" area and asking someone to convert the unit prices for me. It was fun for a while. Until it wasn't. Of course, the way they unit priced things never changed a whit.
The worse one though was two identically sized cans of Foster's - one was the Special Bitter, the other the standard (if I remember correctly) with identical prices and different unit prices. I pointed that one out - don't know if they ever changed it (US Safeway, Washington State).
I used to think this was a good idea and then realized why it was not. Obvious problems include :
people will pick stuff that benefits them directly and things that might benefit them indirectly will fall off.
people will also pick stuff that they just like - so in the US you'd probably see much more funding for creationist museums and the like
Less obvious :
doing this would then involve all those government agencies in lobbying to be exempt from the rules (who, after all, would want to pay for the IRS
worst of all, all the agencies would spend a major chunk of their budgets on advertising to persuade people to fund them. If this were prohibited, they'd probably still find ways to do the same thing.
I was using linux when winmodems arrived on the market. It took rather a while to get drivers for them working. For quite a while I just had a serial line going out to a Hayes (or something) box which worked quite nicely and had the extra advantage of not eating your cpu while working.
Firstly, you cant judge a "generation". (And yes, I've read this.) You can only judge the individuals in that generation. And while I can see differences between people my age and those younger (and older) I don't know that I see the kinds major differences that would justify the kinds of contempt and scorn for baby boomers that the posts here would indicate.
Yes, I protested the Vietnam war, spent quite a bit of time reading about the history of French Indochina, and took a perfectly legal student deferment until the draft lottery spun my way. Criticizing that while the Iraq fiasco is underway would be hypocritical (unless you're in the army now yourself).
I smoked some weed and while I don't indulge any more I fully support tossing the ridiculous war on drugs down the toilet - but don't blame the boomers for that - it predated us by quite a while and was further intensified by Nixon and his friends - and most boomers were not old enough to vote for them.
I've advocated environmental laws for years and most of the SUVs I see around here are driven by 30 somethings and younger.
As for the war on terrorism, that may well have been instituted by people in the baby boom generation, and if you like, I apologize for the idiots who happened to be born around the same time I was who pushed it on us. But the militaristic mentality that really produced it is much more a product of the folks who fought in the second world war and built up the massive defense industries that are a major problem in the US.
I could just as easily heap scorn on the generations I see following me, but I don't think it is particularly meaningful and I don't think it is helpful. You want to change things? Great! I'll do what I can to support you. You want to be a "nattering nabob of negativity"? Thats fine too - but it doesn't translate to anything more than blogriping.
But sometimes it isn't just a question of compiling drivers, it may be more like writing drivers. Worse yet, it may involve reverse engineering the hardware in order to figure out how to write the drivers.
Then too, there may be hardware out there that works like the "winmodems" where you not only need to write a hardware driver, but also a pile of software to do much of the work.
They seem to be using flash to display images. Who knows why - it is surely simple enough to just load the image into the browser (img tag, anyone?). Does anyone know of any other sources for the images that doesn't require flash? For some reason on my machine about half the flash stuff I try to load doesn't load at all. I think I have the right flash, but it still occurs.
The first thing this article brought to my mind is the China Mieville novel "The Scar" which deals with a decidedly dystopian floating city (complete with vampires and other goodies) in a decidedly dystopian world. Quite a fun read but probably not resembling at all what anyone has in mind to try to build.
It doesn't need to be illegal - it is probably sufficient to ensure that it will not happen through other means - restricting publication, fear... Here is an interesting read on the topic.
The airlines would love this. I'm sure you can squeeze a few more naked, hogtied people into a plane than you can currently carry by making passengers "comfortable". And no need for food or anything.
First class passengers would get foam pads and blankets.
Of course they do - but even if you do speed up, they'll still tailgate you, and if you get out of the way and let them pass, they'll tailgate the person in front of you, then the person in front of them and so on.
Don't you realize? They're special, and their needs and wants trump all those of the people driving around them.
I'll usually try to get out of the way when I reach a break in the slower lane - or if they're particularly insistant, I'll slow down until I can merge right (US) safely, then move back to the faster lane when I get a chance.
The funny thing, of course, is that often enough if we're going to the same place they manage (over 5 miles or so) to get there and then get stuck at the same red light as me (a couple cars back).
But that counts, because they're special and everyone else should be (rightfully) subordinate to their desires.
Indeed. But XML is also very flexible and powerful. By the time you add in the flexibility and power to almost any other markup language you'll have something just as ugly - but in another syntax. If it gives more power than XML, great. Otherwise, why bother?
Really the next step up is a web based on an embedded programming (rather than markup) language. Hey look: Flex, Silverlight.....
Actually that sounds rather more like the original Turing Test ( PDF version here and a very good read) and that is why it is an important operational test. Does it define intelligence? Probably not - it is certainly possible that there are intelligent beings who would not even recognize us as potentially intelligent or if they did, want to talk to us. Worse yet, we might not pass their Turing Test. But if we define intelligence as somehow being essential to humanness then the Turing Test is pretty good.
Perhaps/. should try using this software as an automatic editor. The CNITTER (Cowboy Neal Intelligent Turing Test Editor Replacement). The C should be silent, so it would sound like the slashdot knitter.
What is likely to happen is that more and more sites will go to flash/silverlight and the like. They'll likely say it is because it offers browser independence, and an enriched user experience, but I suspect that it will be mostly because then they control your content - and will be able to add ads wherever they want and you'll have little choice but to watch them (until someone invents an ad skipper, of course). Already there are lots of flash sites that make you sit through ads before and while you view the content.
I'm an inclusionist (mostly) myself. In particular, there have been more than a few articles that have been of interest, but somehow then been deleted. One notable (especially here) one was on "slashdot trolling" with fairly detailed discussions of a number of trolls seen here. For me, this wasn't just interesting because it was about slashdot (I'd seen most of the trolls at least minimally) but because it gave a number of interesting examples of the type of trolls that show up in all kinds of internet forums - just adapted for the slashdot ecosystem. That article in itself could have been a good foundation for research by someone interested in trolls, flames and internet wars.
I still use wikipedia for initial research on a wide variety of things, but it is no longer a place I just go to browse to find interesting stuff.
I teach CS. I don't give exams as I think that the kind of exams that you can do in CS are typically superficial memory exercises that do not really demonstrate understanding. Instead I give assignments that fall into one of two types - skill assignments which are done by one person (but with the rule that you can discuss your problem with others, even write code with others, but the final code must be your own work (so if you wrote it with someone else you must discard the code and rewrite from scratch)) and assignments that I encourage people to do in groups. Of course, when assignments are short enough, it is possible that two students will find exactly the same solution (modulo code layout and variable names), but for programs over about 30 lines this becomes seriously unlikely. Usually the group problems are difficult enough that one person (except perhaps the best programmers) would have trouble doing them, but a group should be able to easily finish in time (that they often do not says more about study habits than the problems). Same kinds of rules apply - one group can consult with another, but the work needs to be done independently.
I've found that the group problems typically lead to much better results in terms of understanding - students need to not only be able to do something, they need to explain it to others. Group problems also tend to allow weaker students to weed themselves out (or sometimes they're dropped by teams for the next assignment) as they realize that they really aren't getting it in the way that the stronger students are. (Everyone in a group gets the same grade.)
Someone above mentioned having each student do a viva - I've thought seriously about this, but except in the smallest courses (where class participation is required and so amounts to a running viva) this would take a huge amount of time and would probably conflict with the trends I'm seeing in universities where very specific "objective" criteria for grading are required.
Slashdot Mirror
The online encyclopedia of integer sequences says "I am sorry, but the terms do not match anything in the table."
I've tried taking the items up to the "courtesy" area and asking someone to convert the unit prices for me. It was fun for a while. Until it wasn't. Of course, the way they unit priced things never changed a whit.
The worse one though was two identically sized cans of Foster's - one was the Special Bitter, the other the standard (if I remember correctly) with identical prices and different unit prices. I pointed that one out - don't know if they ever changed it (US Safeway, Washington State).
Gravity's Rainbow?
I used to think this was a good idea and then realized why it was not. Obvious problems include :
Less obvious :
You have triggered a mandatory reference to Baby's Named a Bad Bad Thing . No other penalties accrue at this time.
I was using linux when winmodems arrived on the market. It took rather a while to get drivers for them working. For quite a while I just had a serial line going out to a Hayes (or something) box which worked quite nicely and had the extra advantage of not eating your cpu while working.
So it will be a very useful tool to control dissidents of all sorts. Not a terribly surprising move by this administration.
I'm a baby boomer and I respectfully disagree.
Firstly, you cant judge a "generation". (And yes, I've read this.) You can only judge the individuals in that generation. And while I can see differences between people my age and those younger (and older) I don't know that I see the kinds major differences that would justify the kinds of contempt and scorn for baby boomers that the posts here would indicate.
Yes, I protested the Vietnam war, spent quite a bit of time reading about the history of French Indochina, and took a perfectly legal student deferment until the draft lottery spun my way. Criticizing that while the Iraq fiasco is underway would be hypocritical (unless you're in the army now yourself).
I smoked some weed and while I don't indulge any more I fully support tossing the ridiculous war on drugs down the toilet - but don't blame the boomers for that - it predated us by quite a while and was further intensified by Nixon and his friends - and most boomers were not old enough to vote for them.
I've advocated environmental laws for years and most of the SUVs I see around here are driven by 30 somethings and younger.
As for the war on terrorism, that may well have been instituted by people in the baby boom generation, and if you like, I apologize for the idiots who happened to be born around the same time I was who pushed it on us. But the militaristic mentality that really produced it is much more a product of the folks who fought in the second world war and built up the massive defense industries that are a major problem in the US.
I could just as easily heap scorn on the generations I see following me, but I don't think it is particularly meaningful and I don't think it is helpful. You want to change things? Great! I'll do what I can to support you. You want to be a "nattering nabob of negativity"? Thats fine too - but it doesn't translate to anything more than blogriping.
With luck, the recent court decision will make it legal to resell your windows license.
On the other hand, that is likely to let everyone know just what those are worth (probably in the $10 and change range).
But sometimes it isn't just a question of compiling drivers, it may be more like writing drivers. Worse yet, it may involve reverse engineering the hardware in order to figure out how to write the drivers.
Then too, there may be hardware out there that works like the "winmodems" where you not only need to write a hardware driver, but also a pile of software to do much of the work.
They seem to be using flash to display images. Who knows why - it is surely simple enough to just load the image into the browser (img tag, anyone?). Does anyone know of any other sources for the images that doesn't require flash? For some reason on my machine about half the flash stuff I try to load doesn't load at all. I think I have the right flash, but it still occurs.
The first thing this article brought to my mind is the China Mieville novel "The Scar" which deals with a decidedly dystopian floating city (complete with vampires and other goodies) in a decidedly dystopian world. Quite a fun read but probably not resembling at all what anyone has in mind to try to build.
It doesn't need to be illegal - it is probably sufficient to ensure that it will not happen through other means - restricting publication, fear... Here is an interesting read on the topic.
And, if you've watched PBS recently, you can add the "illicit" trade in counterfeit handbags....
The airlines would love this. I'm sure you can squeeze a few more naked, hogtied people into a plane than you can currently carry by making passengers "comfortable". And no need for food or anything.
First class passengers would get foam pads and blankets.
Of course they do - but even if you do speed up, they'll still tailgate you, and if you get out of the way and let them pass, they'll tailgate the person in front of you, then the person in front of them and so on.
Don't you realize? They're special, and their needs and wants trump all those of the people driving around them.
I'll usually try to get out of the way when I reach a break in the slower lane - or if they're particularly insistant, I'll slow down until I can merge right (US) safely, then move back to the faster lane when I get a chance.
The funny thing, of course, is that often enough if we're going to the same place they manage (over 5 miles or so) to get there and then get stuck at the same red light as me (a couple cars back).
But that counts, because they're special and everyone else should be (rightfully) subordinate to their desires.
Really the next step up is a web based on an embedded programming (rather than markup) language. Hey look: Flex, Silverlight.....
So, it is ok to kill a person and not riot and burn flags? Or am I misreading you?
"Overhead, and without any fuss, the stars were going out.
Actually that sounds rather more like the original Turing Test ( PDF version here and a very good read) and that is why it is an important operational test. Does it define intelligence? Probably not - it is certainly possible that there are intelligent beings who would not even recognize us as potentially intelligent or if they did, want to talk to us. Worse yet, we might not pass their Turing Test. But if we define intelligence as somehow being essential to humanness then the Turing Test is pretty good.
Perhaps /. should try using this software as an automatic editor. The CNITTER (Cowboy Neal Intelligent Turing Test Editor Replacement). The C should be silent, so it would sound like the slashdot knitter.
What is likely to happen is that more and more sites will go to flash/silverlight and the like. They'll likely say it is because it offers browser independence, and an enriched user experience, but I suspect that it will be mostly because then they control your content - and will be able to add ads wherever they want and you'll have little choice but to watch them (until someone invents an ad skipper, of course). Already there are lots of flash sites that make you sit through ads before and while you view the content.
I'm an inclusionist (mostly) myself. In particular, there have been more than a few articles that have been of interest, but somehow then been deleted. One notable (especially here) one was on "slashdot trolling" with fairly detailed discussions of a number of trolls seen here. For me, this wasn't just interesting because it was about slashdot (I'd seen most of the trolls at least minimally) but because it gave a number of interesting examples of the type of trolls that show up in all kinds of internet forums - just adapted for the slashdot ecosystem. That article in itself could have been a good foundation for research by someone interested in trolls, flames and internet wars.
I still use wikipedia for initial research on a wide variety of things, but it is no longer a place I just go to browse to find interesting stuff.
I teach CS. I don't give exams as I think that the kind of exams that you can do in CS are typically superficial memory exercises that do not really demonstrate understanding. Instead I give assignments that fall into one of two types - skill assignments which are done by one person (but with the rule that you can discuss your problem with others, even write code with others, but the final code must be your own work (so if you wrote it with someone else you must discard the code and rewrite from scratch)) and assignments that I encourage people to do in groups. Of course, when assignments are short enough, it is possible that two students will find exactly the same solution (modulo code layout and variable names), but for programs over about 30 lines this becomes seriously unlikely. Usually the group problems are difficult enough that one person (except perhaps the best programmers) would have trouble doing them, but a group should be able to easily finish in time (that they often do not says more about study habits than the problems). Same kinds of rules apply - one group can consult with another, but the work needs to be done independently.
I've found that the group problems typically lead to much better results in terms of understanding - students need to not only be able to do something, they need to explain it to others. Group problems also tend to allow weaker students to weed themselves out (or sometimes they're dropped by teams for the next assignment) as they realize that they really aren't getting it in the way that the stronger students are. (Everyone in a group gets the same grade.)
Someone above mentioned having each student do a viva - I've thought seriously about this, but except in the smallest courses (where class participation is required and so amounts to a running viva) this would take a huge amount of time and would probably conflict with the trends I'm seeing in universities where very specific "objective" criteria for grading are required.