I had a similiar idea about the SCO problem. I was wondering if (the royal) we could all mail 1 letter a week to SCO.
The letters would be totally legit, requests for pricing information, comments on the situation, etc. It would be sort of a distributed DOS attack using the post office (I'm sure someone has done this before).
hehe, everything you've just said is complete bullshit. I don't need you to tell me about *my* educational experience, I lived it, and BTW, I graduated.
My ultimate statement was that schools and text books sometimes have a vested interest in discouraging students, which you agree with.
Lastly, we don't *need* to have an adversarial educational system, that's nonsense.
I can't speak to high school, but at my university courses like calculus, physics and chemistry were "flunk courses". Courses designed to fail a maximum number of students. The professors had *NO* interest in making the subject interesting or accessable. As a whole the university (UCR) had a graduation rate of 60%, whereas the engineering college had an horrific graduation rate of 30%.
There are several reasons for wanting to fail students, the most frequently mentioned is that theres "not enough room" in the upper courses. But the real reason is they are simply elitist bastards, they figure, "I had to go through it, you do to." The worst abuse I ever saw was a chemistry course I was in. 250 Students, the teacher spent the entire quarter lecturing about the heart medicine he was working on, and how steel refineries worked (his other interest). No problem -- if the tests are on heart medicines and steel production, but, he gave standardized tests and flunked 90% of the class.
Flunk courses also create some strange strange acedemic relationships. For instance, I was getting 15s and 16s (out of 100) on my physics tests and, with the curve I was getting a nice fat C. The problem with this is two fold... It sounds great right? get a 15 and get a C? First problem, I'm not getting the education I paid for. Secondly, it encourages cheating because all you have to do is "beat the curve". The thrid and most intriguing problem deserves its own paragraph.
For me to get a C with 15 out of 100 points. That means, about HALF of the students scored worse then me. The students who scored WORSE then me *financed* my C by getting D's and F's. If they weren't the cannon fodder, *I* would have failed the course. Now here's where things get tricky. Sometimes, you are the sacrifical lamb, and sometimes you are the priest. If you are the lamb, you take the course over -- but this time you're the priest because you've taken the course before and it's finally starting to make sense. So the first timers are competing on a curve with people who have taken the course before. This wouldn't be a problem with a normal distribution of scores, but with poor instruction causing scores to center around 15%, that advantadge *REALLY* counts.
So now that I've written a diseratation here, what I really mean is, in your post you assume that mathbooks are even designed to help students, when most of the time, they aren't.
Actually, you'd be horrified if you knew the reason you can't do this. Car companies are *legally prevented* (in the US) from selling their cars directly. I don't know the rationale for this, but if it ever made sense it doesn't now.
I too have felt the frustration of car shopping. You goto a dealership and they don't have the color you want, or the options, and the car they do have is 5000$ more expensive because it has a bunch of useless crap.
I've been told the best advice is to goto carsdirect.com, or call the fleet manager at your dealership. He can order you the exact car you want, and while it's true they're not clearing inventory, they are still making a sale they wouldn't have otherwise.
If you want to read an intersting and scary store about car salesmen, click here:)
Yea, because realistic weather has always been a challenge for game designers... please, stop being a Sony fanboy. Sony's claims about the PS3 are *rediculous*.
Indicentally, I tried completly going off sugar a while back and reducing my carbohydrates
You could be diabetic or pre-diabetic. One of the symptoms of diabetes you don't usually hear about is irrability and an inability to concentrate. Relief of the symptoms of diabetes would corespond to lower sugar/carb intake.
You're mostly right, but you're completley wrong. The fact of the matter is, SETI probably won't find anything like you say, and it will take too long to talk to anyone we do find, but SETI isn't hurting anybody, and it might help. End of story man. I don't see you doing anything to answer the mysteries of the universe.
The lawyers dont come across as black hearted bastards but people who are truely passionate about the field they work in and seem to want to make a diffrence.
I think he still missed the point though. I think people are unhappy that a handfull of companies control music, movies, video games, television and news. And these companies are determined to provide the least usefull solutions and the least value to their customers.
How many times have you bought a DVD only to have several special edition versions issued later? Why not pirate the dvd now, and wait for the special edition? I have several DVD's which have died of "dvd rot". What is the Warner Brothers solution to this problem? Go buy another one!
The XBOX modding situation -- Emulation and XBOX Media Player on the xbox are *killer apps*. Yet people are *GOING TO JAIL* for selling chips which let you do this? Why doesn't Nintendo sell all their NES games on a cd with an emulator for 60$? What a killer app that would be!
Bush gutted the Microsoft settlement, and the issue of their massive financial fraud is still unaddressed.
Lastly, price fixing and payola, by the music industry is legendary, and what was the remedy? A 15$ rebate for people who were affected?
Piracy is an expression of peoples disatisfaction with the current state of affairs. But instead of fixing the *cause of the problem* these companies have convinced everyone that the nasty pirates are the problem, when they aer infact the symptoms of a broken system.
actually, Reductio ad Absurdum is a method of indirect proof where one seeks to prove a statement by proving that accepting or rejecting the statement is absurd. Now we both agree that flying monkeys are absurd. But can you prove that there has been no prior art for a patent with the same logic?
No, you can't even prove that. The basic supposition of logic is that facts will tend to point to a correct answer. This is why you can't prove a negative, because your non-event has no facts associated with it. Your monkey doesn't exist, therefore there are no facts that lead to the conclusion that he doesn't exist, therefore there is nothing to base a decision on.
I realize that is a bit theoretical in this absurd case, but, goto Mexico and prove you *didn't* commit a crime you're charged with, and you'll understand the difference.
Bush's "Where's my fiddle? Rome is burning!" Economic policy is responsible for most of that debt.
Do you know that during the california power crisis, Bush had the legal power to order FIRC to cap electricity rates -- and he didnt? Guess why? Because Enron whose shit stink he is myred in made something like *8 billion* dollars from the California crisis.
The power crisis cost something like 14B dollars, which is *half* the debt right there. This combined with the Bush/Cheney recession is the cause of debt.
I don't give a shit about davis, but he's guilty of not TELLING us about the debt until after his election, not creating it.
purchased equipment that could do the job, if only they
I think you hit the nail on the head here:) The reason the flipping machine is so important is he put the cart before the horse and purchased it already. Now he's gotta dig himself out of a hole and steve balmers ass is holding him down:)
I think that accuratley describes the situation here. This guy refuses to believe the government doesn't want us to know about ceartin projects? Whats hard to believe about that ? And he says "black projects don't exist" point blank when I have friends who work on them, and have interviewed for them myself...
is called a variety of things, and you don't know any of them.
I'm not claiming to be an expert, just telling slashdotters what I know... I only know what I was told at my interview, which obviously is very not-secret but still might be interesting.
You don't need to worry about what congress approves, you need to worry about what congress doesn't know about.
The top level super secret shit is called "black projects". Funding for black projects doesn't come through washington, and isn't controlled by congress. Nobody knows *where* the funding for a black projects come from, but there is a ton of it. I have a few friends who work on them, and have interviewed for jobs at places that do black projects (which is how I became aware of them). So my answer to you is, you don't need to be worried about things congress funds, because congress doesn't even know about the good stuff.
Actually, the thing is, I *DO* pay the 19.95 per year AND another 25$ for the personal hosting, and I still have adverts in my webmail. I *COULD* use smtp to not have ads, but that really does defeat the convenance...
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if we never built a bomb or a tank we'd be hungry and cold and speaking japanese, or german, because they would have kicked our asses.
The letters would be totally legit, requests for pricing information, comments on the situation, etc. It would be sort of a distributed DOS attack using the post office (I'm sure someone has done this before).
no!! Those ass pennies will give him the upper hand (UCB Reference).
My ultimate statement was that schools and text books sometimes have a vested interest in discouraging students, which you agree with.
Lastly, we don't *need* to have an adversarial educational system, that's nonsense.
My question is, can I get the Icom in cornflower blue?
There are several reasons for wanting to fail students, the most frequently mentioned is that theres "not enough room" in the upper courses. But the real reason is they are simply elitist bastards, they figure, "I had to go through it, you do to." The worst abuse I ever saw was a chemistry course I was in. 250 Students, the teacher spent the entire quarter lecturing about the heart medicine he was working on, and how steel refineries worked (his other interest). No problem -- if the tests are on heart medicines and steel production, but, he gave standardized tests and flunked 90% of the class.
Flunk courses also create some strange strange acedemic relationships. For instance, I was getting 15s and 16s (out of 100) on my physics tests and, with the curve I was getting a nice fat C. The problem with this is two fold ... It sounds great right? get a 15 and get a C? First problem, I'm not getting the education I paid for. Secondly, it encourages cheating because all you have to do is "beat the curve". The thrid and most intriguing problem deserves its own paragraph.
For me to get a C with 15 out of 100 points. That means, about HALF of the students scored worse then me. The students who scored WORSE then me *financed* my C by getting D's and F's. If they weren't the cannon fodder, *I* would have failed the course. Now here's where things get tricky. Sometimes, you are the sacrifical lamb, and sometimes you are the priest. If you are the lamb, you take the course over -- but this time you're the priest because you've taken the course before and it's finally starting to make sense. So the first timers are competing on a curve with people who have taken the course before. This wouldn't be a problem with a normal distribution of scores, but with poor instruction causing scores to center around 15%, that advantadge *REALLY* counts.
So now that I've written a diseratation here, what I really mean is, in your post you assume that mathbooks are even designed to help students, when most of the time, they aren't.
I too have felt the frustration of car shopping. You goto a dealership and they don't have the color you want, or the options, and the car they do have is 5000$ more expensive because it has a bunch of useless crap.
I've been told the best advice is to goto carsdirect.com, or call the fleet manager at your dealership. He can order you the exact car you want, and while it's true they're not clearing inventory, they are still making a sale they wouldn't have otherwise.
If you want to read an intersting and scary store about car salesmen, click here :)
Yea, because realistic weather has always been a challenge for game designers ... please, stop being a Sony fanboy. Sony's claims about the PS3 are *rediculous*.
Tell that to the indians ... or I will, when I'm done gambling
Could you explain what is illegal about that stuff for those of us who can't afford toothpaste let alone stocks? :)
You could be diabetic or pre-diabetic. One of the symptoms of diabetes you don't usually hear about is irrability and an inability to concentrate. Relief of the symptoms of diabetes would corespond to lower sugar/carb intake.
You're mostly right, but you're completley wrong. The fact of the matter is, SETI probably won't find anything like you say, and it will take too long to talk to anyone we do find, but SETI isn't hurting anybody, and it might help. End of story man. I don't see you doing anything to answer the mysteries of the universe.
I think he still missed the point though. I think people are unhappy that a handfull of companies control music, movies, video games, television and news. And these companies are determined to provide the least usefull solutions and the least value to their customers.
How many times have you bought a DVD only to have several special edition versions issued later? Why not pirate the dvd now, and wait for the special edition? I have several DVD's which have died of "dvd rot". What is the Warner Brothers solution to this problem? Go buy another one!
The XBOX modding situation -- Emulation and XBOX Media Player on the xbox are *killer apps*. Yet people are *GOING TO JAIL* for selling chips which let you do this? Why doesn't Nintendo sell all their NES games on a cd with an emulator for 60$? What a killer app that would be!
Bush gutted the Microsoft settlement, and the issue of their massive financial fraud is still unaddressed.
Lastly, price fixing and payola, by the music industry is legendary, and what was the remedy? A 15$ rebate for people who were affected?
Piracy is an expression of peoples disatisfaction with the current state of affairs. But instead of fixing the *cause of the problem* these companies have convinced everyone that the nasty pirates are the problem, when they aer infact the symptoms of a broken system.
Oops ... wrong site :D
actually, Reductio ad Absurdum is a method of indirect proof where one seeks to prove a statement by proving that accepting or rejecting the statement is absurd. Now we both agree that flying monkeys are absurd. But can you prove that there has been no prior art for a patent with the same logic?
I realize that is a bit theoretical in this absurd case, but, goto Mexico and prove you *didn't* commit a crime you're charged with, and you'll understand the difference.
Basic rule of logic, It is impossible to prove a negative.
Bush's "Where's my fiddle? Rome is burning!" Economic policy is responsible for most of that debt.
Do you know that during the california power crisis, Bush had the legal power to order FIRC to cap electricity rates -- and he didnt? Guess why? Because Enron whose shit stink he is myred in made something like *8 billion* dollars from the California crisis.
The power crisis cost something like 14B dollars, which is *half* the debt right there. This combined with the Bush/Cheney recession is the cause of debt.
I don't give a shit about davis, but he's guilty of not TELLING us about the debt until after his election, not creating it.
I think you hit the nail on the head here :) The reason the flipping machine is so important is he put the cart before the horse and purchased it already. Now he's gotta dig himself out of a hole and steve balmers ass is holding him down :)
This replaces the old mantra right? "I refuse to patch, for patches deny faith, and without faith I am nothing." (Douglas Adams)
Keep in mind SUN *does* sell linux products such as the cobalt raq. Under a worse case scenario, they could be liable for that.
I think that accuratley describes the situation here. This guy refuses to believe the government doesn't want us to know about ceartin projects? Whats hard to believe about that ? And he says "black projects don't exist" point blank when I have friends who work on them, and have interviewed for them myself...
I'm not claiming to be an expert, just telling slashdotters what I know ... I only know what I was told at my interview, which obviously is very not-secret but still might be interesting.
You don't need to worry about what congress approves, you need to worry about what congress doesn't know about.
The top level super secret shit is called "black projects". Funding for black projects doesn't come through washington, and isn't controlled by congress. Nobody knows *where* the funding for a black projects come from, but there is a ton of it. I have a few friends who work on them, and have interviewed for jobs at places that do black projects (which is how I became aware of them). So my answer to you is, you don't need to be worried about things congress funds, because congress doesn't even know about the good stuff.
Actually, the thing is, I *DO* pay the 19.95 per year AND another 25$ for the personal hosting, and I still have adverts in my webmail. I *COULD* use smtp to not have ads, but that really does defeat the convenance...