First, the teacher was wrong for not knowing what FireFox is. Any teacher with a computer in the classroom should have AT LEAST that level of knowledge.
That's not even close to reasonable. Any computer teacher should know about Firefox, maybe, but there's no way I would expect any other teacher to know about open source or other alternatives to pre-installed software the school provides. It'd be nice if they did, and I'm sure some do, but I think it makes no sense to expect that knowledge.
You have a car, right? Do you know about all of the after-market parts available? Do you have a house, and do you know everything about water heater alternatives? Heck, if you have a bicycle, are you aware of Shimano's latest component group or Speedplay's latest pedals? And, if I've picked bad examples (that you do know about), you get the idea....
We can claim that computers are where the future lies, and everyone needs to know all about that. That is just not the case; name one technology revolution in which all users (successful or not, whatever "success" means) became experts. Heck, I bet that not everyone knew how to knap flint 15,000 years ago....
In our district, this is clearly not the case; at least in elementary school. The teachers all have laptops, but they're running some software that doesn't allow changes to the C: drive. I believe it keeps a copy & refreshes changes after every boot (and a boot is enforced every day). Idiots didn't put the teachers' home directory on the D: drive, so they can't even personalize their desktops -- no background, no color changes, nada. Nothing permanent, anyway.
Don't get me started about how married IT is to Microsoft....
I grew up reading Consumer Reports, and I've always been very impressed with their methodology & analysis of their test data for almost everything. Want to know which microwave meets its published wattage? CR is the way to go. Want to know which tires actually perform to their published specs? -- CR. Want to know if Zune battery life is as MS says? etc, etc, etc,
Except for computers. As another child poster says, they're writing for a different audience than the typical/. reader. I've no idea who evaluates computers for them, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's some Engineer -- not the train or Civil kind, but certainly not the computer kind either. They don't really know the state of the industry, and they come to many conclusions I think are in error.
But said error is only from my prospective as a Computer Geek, and as a professional who's programmed, supported, and cursed at computers for 30 years. From the standpoint of my Biology Geek father or my Teaching Geek wife -- both very knowledgeable in their fields, too -- CR's evals are fine. And since I'm the family Computer Guy anyway, what CR says in that area really doesn't matter.
No one organization can be expert in everything, even CR. Except, of course,/.
I did this morning exactly what I've been doing -- explaining that teachers, while important, aren't always right. Any more than any other source, including Wikipedia. Of course, he already knows that there's one source(1) that's never wrong, but other than that, he needs to think. I'll keep telling him that until he's too smart to need to listen to me(2)
As for the teacher(s): you ever heard the expression "You can't fight city hall" ?? I'll ask about it next time I'm in for conferences, but I don't really expect to make any headway. This example is hardly the first time a teacher has harmed one of my kids' education, and I don't really expect it to be the last. But that's not *all* bad -- it helps prepare him for the inevitable PHB sometime later in life.
(1) His mother, of course. Certainly not me; just ask his mother.;-)
(2) Based on previous experience, including my own teenage years, that should be any month now, unfortunately. The good news is that parents get really smart sometime around the kid's sophomore year of college.
Is there any evidence of teachers banning students from simply reading Wikipedia?
I have second-hand evidence. My youngest son (high school freshman) has come into the office several times while I was reading something on Wikipedia, and informed me that I shouldn't be reading it because it's always wrong. Granted, I wasn't in the room when the teacher was making his or her statement, so it's possible that my son misinterpreted. He sure as heck misinterprets way to many of *my* statements.:-)
The point, though, is that whatever verb the teacher(s) put into "don't Wikipedia", my son has the impression that he shouldn't it. I've tried to explain the difference; see the last sentence of my first paragraph for results.
He just came in the room, so I asked "What have your teachers told you about Wikipedia?" His answer was that people can put in anything they want, so it's always wrong, and you shouldn't look at it. Still second-hand evidence, but closer to first-hand than my first paragraph.
Plllleeeeeeaaaassssseeeeee. HW's a commodity, and what's cheaper today is more expensive next week. When are people going to quit just spouting this crap and actually do a bit of research?
Now, I admit that I don't know all the details of either of these, so maybe I'm not comparing apples to apples. Having said that, they seem pretty comparable based on other stuff on the respective sites, and they're all touted as "Enterprise class"...
From Sun's web site: 4-way M4000 with 16GB of memory. Has 5 card slots, 2 internal disk bays, 2 built-in GigE ports. Takes up 6U of rack space. $79K
From IBM's web site: 8-way 560Q with 16GB of memory. Has 6 card slots, 6 internal disk bays, 2 built-in GigE ports. 4U rack space. $34.8K
I didn't even bother to price a 4-way HP rx7640. At 17U, it can't possibly be worth the space.
Couldn't agree more. While my getting my RHCE was reasonably difficult, I had a co-worker who got his RHCE during the same class. I wouldn't have trusted him to properly empty the trash of one of the guys that didn't even qualify for a RHCT during the same test. And the guy next to me, that "only" got enough points for an RHCT? He was more capable than both of them put together. Strangely enough, he had more years of experience than the other two put together; I wonder if that has any bearing?
Years ago, I became a "Legato Certified" backup admin. After a 2-day course (from some Windows guy that didn't seem to know how to do basic Unix tasks), I took a 1-hour, open-book, test. That "certificate" never made the wall of my cube. May not have even made the file cabinet; I don't recall.
Anyone that thinks a certification should be the sole grounds for hiring someone, or is any indicator of someone's ability to do a technical job, only has the capability to be in...wait for it...HR or management. Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Nothing is more quick and effective as a mouse in my hands.
I'm not trying to slam you nor am I trolling -- this is a serious question. How often do you have to move your mouse hand back and forth between keyboard and mouse, and do you take that time into account in your evaluation of "quick and effective"?
I absolutely agree that there are applications for which a mouse can't be beat. I'm know people that use other interface devices say the same about those, for the appropriate app. I can't agree more about touchpads -- they have the same problem with forcing me to move my hand, and they aren't as precise (or maybe that's just because I refuse to work with them) as a mouse. I **much** prefer a forcestick for most things, although some applications make it worthwhile to move to the mouse.
otoh, being forced to use a mouse for some applications really ticks me off. For example: any text editor that lets me easily do normal operations without forcing me to resort to a mouse is, in my opinion, much more efficient. And no, I'm NOT going to even mention my favorite text editor; no need to start those flamewars.:-)
And on the third hand, I could care less what interface(s) someone else wants to use. As long as you're not slowing me and/or my team down, if it works, it works. As long as you don't expect that your solution must work for me, too.
As for your "old = 40+" comment -- I've been retrained and/or retrained myself many more times than years you've been alive, apparently. And I've run into way too many less-than-40 year olds that are too set in their ways & opinions to be useful. So quit sterotyping; your discussions will be much more effective.
Damn young whippersnappers, anyway. Now where did I put my teeth?
Ack, sorry -- I think I just tried to slam someone saying the same thing I am. I should have said "To anyone who believes this, let me know your address and I'll do my part....." Trying to be non-directed and all.
otoh, if I re-read your post incorrectly, and you do believe I should be unsecuring my wireless net, feel free to take the slam personally.:-)
Entertainment is what we want. If you want to do entertaining things, you ought to be required to provide this service to all.
By that logic, if you buy into Maslow's heirarchy, you have an even greater responsibility to be providing food, shelter, and sex to people too. After all, we want those more than entertainment.
Let me know your address; I'll do my part by personally bringing some homeless people to you so you can help out. I'll need to know which gender you prefer, too; I wouldn't want to stretch your responsibilities too far.
Nothing can protect you from having to deal with the police or the FBI. Reducing the probability of dealing with authorities by not opening your network, does not make the resulting still non-zero -- but smaller -- probability useless.
Whether the effort required to do so is worth your time is an cost-benefit analysis left as an exercise to the reader. If you choose to decide it's not worth your time, great. But don't expect everyone else to agree with you.
And no, my network isn't open. I have plenty of neighbors that take care of that "responsibility" to society.:-)
I don't know about other carriers, but you certainly can with Sprint. Assuming you want to pay extra, of course:-( They will sell you several apps that use your location info.
The weird thing is that the Sprint broadband card my company supplies me has access to the location data by default. I have access to a really nice search feature on any number of web mapping sites -- it can use my location & show me the closest whatever-I've-searched-for. I guess it could be just part of a separate package they've purchased; I don't know. But I don't think so.
Uh, "GPS" does not equal "determining location". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gps.... The phone & the company's system knowing where you are via the towers is hardly new -- that's necessary for a cell phone to work in the first place.
I don't understand your "...standard GPS does not do this." GPS doesn't do what -- give your location in lat/long? Or it doesn't work in the basement? If the latter, it sounds like your phone is either giving you the last location for which it had a GPS signal or it's giving you a estimate. Triangulation from the towers is nowhere near accurate enough to give a true lat/long.
Interesting. On my phone (Palm Centro from Sprint) I have the option of turning tracking on, or turning it on *only* for 911. In other words, I can't turn it totally off.
The phone (I suspect this is Sprint's text, not Palm's) tells me this when I select the "911 only" tracking: Turning location on will allow the network to detect your position using GPS technology, making some Sprint PCS applications and services easier to use. Turning location off will disable the GPS location function for all purposes except 911, but will not hid your general location based on the cell site serving your call. No applicatoin or service may use your location without your request or permission. GPS enhanced 911 is not available in all areas.
This seems quite clear -- Sprint is telling me that my "general location" is always known, and how that information is acquired (cell site). There doesn't seem to be any ambiguity.
otoh, I don't know if Sprint is one of the companies that have turned over location info to investigators without a proper warrant. If so, that would violate the "...without your request or permission." clause, of course.
If we all were created - then we all should be walking around having the same thoughts and opinions as well, in which case there would be only one religion.
Your logic was good -- because I agree, if nothing else:-) -- except for this (I'm ignoring the Huckabee paragraph; I haven't been following the Republicans enough to know). Depending on the flavor of Christianity (not to mention non-Christian religions) man's free will is an important part of our existence. Meaning we're free to make mistakes, like not believing in the One True Religion. You, know, the one that **I** (whomever "I" is, of course) believe in.
It never ceases to amaze me that the "Bible-is-literal" crowd can't be bothered to learn about the process by which the version of the Bible they believe in was developed. If you know what happened, there's NO WAY you should be able to take out the need for interpretation by the reader. Or maybe they just choose to ignore this; something about possible exploding heads?
Being an American, my providers charge me an arm and a leg for each text received or sent...
One quick look finds http://www.nextel.com/en/services/messaging/text_messaging.shtml If you really send/receive more than 1,000 text messages a month (for $10) you can go to $15 for unlimited. Personally, I never even come close to 300, so $5 would be pretty reasonable to be able to text the kids.
I support speed limits with moderate fines in residential areas, to protect pedestrians.
I'm glad I read this far down before blasting you above. While I agree that we don't need everyone to be mothered, there are way too many people that don't show proper judgement and we need some way to help control them.
Now, I guess you could say that the idiots that drive 50-60 MPH down the (VERY residential) street my house is on (speed limit 30) could be charged with reckless endangerment instead of speeding, and that'd be fine by me. All I know is that it's given me a small, joyful, satisfaction on the rare couple of occasions when a police car just happened to be in the right place in the neighborhood at the right time.
That's a 3/42 (7.14%) historical chance of a Senator being elected President with no executive experience.
Uh, no. That shows that 3 of 42 Presidents have been Senators with no executive experience. It says nothing about the probability of being elected.
You'll get closer to a "probability of being elected" number if you include the experience of the guys that lost the elections. To really analyze it, you'll also need to research the folks that ran but weren't on the final ballot. You also have to take into account that some of these guys were not elected as President....
otoh, it is an interesting list. Ignoring the whole probability thing, it'd also be interesting to include information like Truman really only being a Senator; his inclusion on FDR's last ticket as VP was a last-minute thing & Harry really didn't function much as a part of FDR's executive branch in the few months Truman was VP.
I think you'd find it quite rare to find a farmer that "grows food for a living", where "food" equals "all the stuff my family needs to eat". For the example given in the GP (dairy farmer) there's not much being done except care, feeding, and milking of dairy cows. You don't eat 'em, and you don't grow broccoli.
And mega-corporations are raking in cash, at the expense of the small farmer. I don't want to argue about right, wrong, or indifference of the industrialization of farms; my point is there's a huge difference between a family farm (small or large) that was "inherited" and a mega-corp farm.
Children, that is how to reply to folks that don't understand an obscure (to some) reference. Not "You're an idiot; everyone knows Fermat was a lawyer". Just a simple statement of fact that doesn't allow for an escalation into "oh, yeah?" and "your momma!" (or much, much, worse).
And it's so much fun to have the "you don't know as much as you think you do" implied instead of stating it explicitly.:-)
superwiz, I'm in awe. You've made my morning; thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
And we still won't know how to use the three shells.
That was quite entertaining and humorous.
And almost certainly true.
...I've no idea where you would find a postscript viewer for Windows.
http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+postscript+viewer+free
Hope that helps.
First, the teacher was wrong for not knowing what FireFox is. Any teacher with a computer in the classroom should have AT LEAST that level of knowledge.
That's not even close to reasonable. Any computer teacher should know about Firefox, maybe, but there's no way I would expect any other teacher to know about open source or other alternatives to pre-installed software the school provides. It'd be nice if they did, and I'm sure some do, but I think it makes no sense to expect that knowledge.
You have a car, right? Do you know about all of the after-market parts available? Do you have a house, and do you know everything about water heater alternatives? Heck, if you have a bicycle, are you aware of Shimano's latest component group or Speedplay's latest pedals? And, if I've picked bad examples (that you do know about), you get the idea....
We can claim that computers are where the future lies, and everyone needs to know all about that. That is just not the case; name one technology revolution in which all users (successful or not, whatever "success" means) became experts. Heck, I bet that not everyone knew how to knap flint 15,000 years ago....
In our district, this is clearly not the case; at least in elementary school. The teachers all have laptops, but they're running some software that doesn't allow changes to the C: drive. I believe it keeps a copy & refreshes changes after every boot (and a boot is enforced every day). Idiots didn't put the teachers' home directory on the D: drive, so they can't even personalize their desktops -- no background, no color changes, nada. Nothing permanent, anyway.
Don't get me started about how married IT is to Microsoft....
I grew up reading Consumer Reports, and I've always been very impressed with their methodology & analysis of their test data for almost everything. Want to know which microwave meets its published wattage? CR is the way to go. Want to know which tires actually perform to their published specs? -- CR. Want to know if Zune battery life is as MS says? etc, etc, etc,
/. reader. I've no idea who evaluates computers for them, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's some Engineer -- not the train or Civil kind, but certainly not the computer kind either. They don't really know the state of the industry, and they come to many conclusions I think are in error.
/.
Except for computers. As another child poster says, they're writing for a different audience than the typical
But said error is only from my prospective as a Computer Geek, and as a professional who's programmed, supported, and cursed at computers for 30 years. From the standpoint of my Biology Geek father or my Teaching Geek wife -- both very knowledgeable in their fields, too -- CR's evals are fine. And since I'm the family Computer Guy anyway, what CR says in that area really doesn't matter.
No one organization can be expert in everything, even CR. Except, of course,
I did this morning exactly what I've been doing -- explaining that teachers, while important, aren't always right. Any more than any other source, including Wikipedia. Of course, he already knows that there's one source(1) that's never wrong, but other than that, he needs to think. I'll keep telling him that until he's too smart to need to listen to me(2)
;-)
As for the teacher(s): you ever heard the expression "You can't fight city hall" ?? I'll ask about it next time I'm in for conferences, but I don't really expect to make any headway. This example is hardly the first time a teacher has harmed one of my kids' education, and I don't really expect it to be the last. But that's not *all* bad -- it helps prepare him for the inevitable PHB sometime later in life.
(1) His mother, of course. Certainly not me; just ask his mother.
(2) Based on previous experience, including my own teenage years, that should be any month now, unfortunately. The good news is that parents get really smart sometime around the kid's sophomore year of college.
Is there any evidence of teachers banning students from simply reading Wikipedia?
:-)
I have second-hand evidence. My youngest son (high school freshman) has come into the office several times while I was reading something on Wikipedia, and informed me that I shouldn't be reading it because it's always wrong. Granted, I wasn't in the room when the teacher was making his or her statement, so it's possible that my son misinterpreted. He sure as heck misinterprets way to many of *my* statements.
The point, though, is that whatever verb the teacher(s) put into "don't Wikipedia", my son has the impression that he shouldn't it. I've tried to explain the difference; see the last sentence of my first paragraph for results.
He just came in the room, so I asked "What have your teachers told you about Wikipedia?" His answer was that people can put in anything they want, so it's always wrong, and you shouldn't look at it. Still second-hand evidence, but closer to first-hand than my first paragraph.
IBM pSeries makes Sun look cheap.
Plllleeeeeeaaaassssseeeeee. HW's a commodity, and what's cheaper today is more expensive next week. When are people going to quit just spouting this crap and actually do a bit of research?
Now, I admit that I don't know all the details of either of these, so maybe I'm not comparing apples to apples. Having said that, they seem pretty comparable based on other stuff on the respective sites, and they're all touted as "Enterprise class"...
From Sun's web site: 4-way M4000 with 16GB of memory. Has 5 card slots, 2 internal disk bays, 2 built-in GigE ports. Takes up 6U of rack space. $79K
From IBM's web site: 8-way 560Q with 16GB of memory. Has 6 card slots, 6 internal disk bays, 2 built-in GigE ports. 4U rack space. $34.8K
I didn't even bother to price a 4-way HP rx7640. At 17U, it can't possibly be worth the space.
Couldn't agree more. While my getting my RHCE was reasonably difficult, I had a co-worker who got his RHCE during the same class. I wouldn't have trusted him to properly empty the trash of one of the guys that didn't even qualify for a RHCT during the same test. And the guy next to me, that "only" got enough points for an RHCT? He was more capable than both of them put together. Strangely enough, he had more years of experience than the other two put together; I wonder if that has any bearing?
Years ago, I became a "Legato Certified" backup admin. After a 2-day course (from some Windows guy that didn't seem to know how to do basic Unix tasks), I took a 1-hour, open-book, test. That "certificate" never made the wall of my cube. May not have even made the file cabinet; I don't recall.
Anyone that thinks a certification should be the sole grounds for hiring someone, or is any indicator of someone's ability to do a technical job, only has the capability to be in...wait for it...HR or management. Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Nothing is more quick and effective as a mouse in my hands.
:-)
I'm not trying to slam you nor am I trolling -- this is a serious question. How often do you have to move your mouse hand back and forth between keyboard and mouse, and do you take that time into account in your evaluation of "quick and effective"?
I absolutely agree that there are applications for which a mouse can't be beat. I'm know people that use other interface devices say the same about those, for the appropriate app. I can't agree more about touchpads -- they have the same problem with forcing me to move my hand, and they aren't as precise (or maybe that's just because I refuse to work with them) as a mouse. I **much** prefer a forcestick for most things, although some applications make it worthwhile to move to the mouse.
otoh, being forced to use a mouse for some applications really ticks me off. For example: any text editor that lets me easily do normal operations without forcing me to resort to a mouse is, in my opinion, much more efficient. And no, I'm NOT going to even mention my favorite text editor; no need to start those flamewars.
And on the third hand, I could care less what interface(s) someone else wants to use. As long as you're not slowing me and/or my team down, if it works, it works. As long as you don't expect that your solution must work for me, too.
As for your "old = 40+" comment -- I've been retrained and/or retrained myself many more times than years you've been alive, apparently. And I've run into way too many less-than-40 year olds that are too set in their ways & opinions to be useful. So quit sterotyping; your discussions will be much more effective.
Damn young whippersnappers, anyway. Now where did I put my teeth?
Ack, sorry -- I think I just tried to slam someone saying the same thing I am. I should have said "To anyone who believes this, let me know your address and I'll do my part....." Trying to be non-directed and all.
:-)
otoh, if I re-read your post incorrectly, and you do believe I should be unsecuring my wireless net, feel free to take the slam personally.
Entertainment is what we want. If you want to do entertaining things, you ought to be required to provide this service to all.
By that logic, if you buy into Maslow's heirarchy, you have an even greater responsibility to be providing food, shelter, and sex to people too. After all, we want those more than entertainment.
Let me know your address; I'll do my part by personally bringing some homeless people to you so you can help out. I'll need to know which gender you prefer, too; I wouldn't want to stretch your responsibilities too far.
Nothing can protect you from having to deal with the police or the FBI.
:-)
Reducing the probability of dealing with authorities by not opening your network, does not make the resulting still non-zero -- but smaller -- probability useless.
Whether the effort required to do so is worth your time is an cost-benefit analysis left as an exercise to the reader. If you choose to decide it's not worth your time, great. But don't expect everyone else to agree with you.
And no, my network isn't open. I have plenty of neighbors that take care of that "responsibility" to society.
I don't know about other carriers, but you certainly can with Sprint. Assuming you want to pay extra, of course :-( They will sell you several apps that use your location info.
The weird thing is that the Sprint broadband card my company supplies me has access to the location data by default. I have access to a really nice search feature on any number of web mapping sites -- it can use my location & show me the closest whatever-I've-searched-for. I guess it could be just part of a separate package they've purchased; I don't know. But I don't think so.
Uh, "GPS" does not equal "determining location". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gps.... The phone & the company's system knowing where you are via the towers is hardly new -- that's necessary for a cell phone to work in the first place.
I don't understand your "...standard GPS does not do this." GPS doesn't do what -- give your location in lat/long? Or it doesn't work in the basement? If the latter, it sounds like your phone is either giving you the last location for which it had a GPS signal or it's giving you a estimate. Triangulation from the towers is nowhere near accurate enough to give a true lat/long.
Interesting. On my phone (Palm Centro from Sprint) I have the option of turning tracking on, or turning it on *only* for 911. In other words, I can't turn it totally off.
The phone (I suspect this is Sprint's text, not Palm's) tells me this when I select the "911 only" tracking:
Turning location on will allow the network to detect your position using GPS technology, making some Sprint PCS applications and services easier to use. Turning location off will disable the GPS location function for all purposes except 911, but will not hid your general location based on the cell site serving your call. No applicatoin or service may use your location without your request or permission. GPS enhanced 911 is not available in all areas.
This seems quite clear -- Sprint is telling me that my "general location" is always known, and how that information is acquired (cell site). There doesn't seem to be any ambiguity.
otoh, I don't know if Sprint is one of the companies that have turned over location info to investigators without a proper warrant. If so, that would violate the "...without your request or permission." clause, of course.
If we all were created - then we all should be walking around having the same thoughts and opinions as well, in which case there would be only one religion.
:-) -- except for this (I'm ignoring the Huckabee paragraph; I haven't been following the Republicans enough to know). Depending on the flavor of Christianity (not to mention non-Christian religions) man's free will is an important part of our existence. Meaning we're free to make mistakes, like not believing in the One True Religion. You, know, the one that **I** (whomever "I" is, of course) believe in.
Your logic was good -- because I agree, if nothing else
It never ceases to amaze me that the "Bible-is-literal" crowd can't be bothered to learn about the process by which the version of the Bible they believe in was developed. If you know what happened, there's NO WAY you should be able to take out the need for interpretation by the reader. Or maybe they just choose to ignore this; something about possible exploding heads?
Being an American, my providers charge me an arm and a leg for each text received or sent...
One quick look finds http://www.nextel.com/en/services/messaging/text_messaging.shtml If you really send/receive more than 1,000 text messages a month (for $10) you can go to $15 for unlimited. Personally, I never even come close to 300, so $5 would be pretty reasonable to be able to text the kids.
I support speed limits with moderate fines in residential areas, to protect pedestrians.
I'm glad I read this far down before blasting you above. While I agree that we don't need everyone to be mothered, there are way too many people that don't show proper judgement and we need some way to help control them.
Now, I guess you could say that the idiots that drive 50-60 MPH down the (VERY residential) street my house is on (speed limit 30) could be charged with reckless endangerment instead of speeding, and that'd be fine by me. All I know is that it's given me a small, joyful, satisfaction on the rare couple of occasions when a police car just happened to be in the right place in the neighborhood at the right time.
That's a 3/42 (7.14%) historical chance of a Senator being elected President with no executive experience.
Uh, no. That shows that 3 of 42 Presidents have been Senators with no executive experience. It says nothing about the probability of being elected.
You'll get closer to a "probability of being elected" number if you include the experience of the guys that lost the elections. To really analyze it, you'll also need to research the folks that ran but weren't on the final ballot. You also have to take into account that some of these guys were not elected as President....
otoh, it is an interesting list. Ignoring the whole probability thing, it'd also be interesting to include information like Truman really only being a Senator; his inclusion on FDR's last ticket as VP was a last-minute thing & Harry really didn't function much as a part of FDR's executive branch in the few months Truman was VP.
I think you'd find it quite rare to find a farmer that "grows food for a living", where "food" equals "all the stuff my family needs to eat". For the example given in the GP (dairy farmer) there's not much being done except care, feeding, and milking of dairy cows. You don't eat 'em, and you don't grow broccoli.
And mega-corporations are raking in cash, at the expense of the small farmer. I don't want to argue about right, wrong, or indifference of the industrialization of farms; my point is there's a huge difference between a family farm (small or large) that was "inherited" and a mega-corp farm.
...hence the ridiculous percentages....
You didn't have enough space to put in the appropriate number of zeros after the decimal, before you started with the non-zero number(s)?
Zing!
:-)
Children, that is how to reply to folks that don't understand an obscure (to some) reference. Not "You're an idiot; everyone knows Fermat was a lawyer". Just a simple statement of fact that doesn't allow for an escalation into "oh, yeah?" and "your momma!" (or much, much, worse).
And it's so much fun to have the "you don't know as much as you think you do" implied instead of stating it explicitly.
superwiz, I'm in awe. You've made my morning; thank you.
As to what happened to the high point of Arabic culture, thats easy, we destroyed it in The Crusades.
One minor problem; The Crusades happened before 1492. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades.