By purposefully ignoring grammar and/or spelling when communicating, you're making things easier for yourself at the expense of requiring more effort from your readers. That's at the very least impolite and quite possibly arrogant and downright rude.
i've volunteered with adhd kids, and i don't think it's fake. these kids have fast... everything. fast minds, fast metabolisms, an inability to do things that require extended concentration, so contemporary methods of teaching are wasted on them, which is why they tend to underperform.
It isn't a massive impediment, but there are less inroads made into teaching adhd kids as there are for dyslexic kids. Also, the difference with dyslexia and adhd, is that schools developed methods so they could effectively teach dyslexics. Adhd kids just get medicated and stuck in classes with regular kids.
In this volunteer program, the adhd kids get physical activity at least two times a day. They get early morning recess, usually a semi-coordinated activity to burn off all that extra energy and another session after lunch. They usually drag out of school, fatigued. Parents rave at how their kids get home and need a nap from school. The upside is that the adhd bunch is a way leaner bunch than the fat kids that populate the rest of the school. The other upside is that they are more receptive in class, more cooperative with one another (adhd kids fight all the time), and better students in general.
I'll play devil's advocate. The purpose of language is communication, and the standardization of such is to ensure against ambiguity, right? If someone's written work is devoid of some common rules of grammar and usage, does it matter if you completely and unambiguously understand what they are saying/writing?
I try to use the rules, but if I understand you, what else matters?
In new york, most street bootleggers get their stuff off the internet. At 5 bucks a pop, they do brisk business, especially in poorer neighborhoods where going to the movies and/or buying a full price dvd is a costly proposition.
a lot of these movies aren't cam either. A good number of films, especially blockbusters, are files leaked from somewhere in the post production pipeline. In other words, while there is an appreciable loss of quality, it's akin to VHS/DVD as opposed to cam/DVD.
that's the other issue about piracy, is that a lot of it is coming from home turf. It actually seems like they should pay more attention to that aspect of it, since most cams are damn near unwatchable. But one seed of a good file, and I can see how it might cut into the revenue stream.
not sure what that says though. it would seem that capital hill is behind the curve as far as payola is concerned. it implies a corrupt government that is resistant to changing its own corrupt policies. *shudders*
i agree with you about the GC. It's an interesting thing about marketing though. I hate to say that I fall victim to marketing ploys, but I fell victim to this one.
I assumed that the GC would be the worst of the three. Much of that assumption came from aesthetics and design. The GC looks and feels like a toy that should be tucked into a child's cubbyhole. Playing games on it proved me wrong as both the graphics and gameplay exceeded my expectations and the capabilities of the much better looking and marketed PS2.
marketing is so important man. I think Nintendo needs a ramped up marketing strategy. I think being the console with the least penetration works in its favor this time around because the audience is always looking for something new. The revolution can be that new thing.
it isn't about comparing architectures. it's about the visual quality of games and gameplay.
I've played games on all three consoles and the PS2 by far is the worst visual experience.
When playing games on a PS2, I actually notice that its games are inferior visually. It's a case of not knowing what you're missing until it's gone. The X-Box far exceeds the other two.
it's pretty much a given that any game on both the xbox and playstation 2 will look much better and play much smoother on the x-box. that said, the PS2's library is awesome.
This seems to me the kind of acquisition that microsoft might have wanted to keep under wraps. They have a shoddy reputation as a company, and buying an adware company just doesn't seem like a good PR move on paper. Even with the best spin you can put on it, it just gives the general user less reason to trust what it already feels is shoddy software. And that 500 million might be seen as rewarding the efforts of adware and spam outfits.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. They are fighting too many battles on too many fronts with cash from a now mature monopoly.
It's often the way when companies get too big and too unwieldy that they split up into more efficient entities. Like everything else in the universe, there seems to be a "sweet spot" for how big a company can get and still be healthy. They just seem too big, with too many products being developed by too many teams with this one borg-like monoculture.
someone posted earlier about their culture. A company's culture has so much to do with the kind of product it produces. Google's culture is directly responsible for it's successes, and in as much as they offer new services, they've never really deviated from their core business, which all are variations of information search.
They don't have a culture - a mantra that they run things by. And that monopoly cash won't last forever when all your businesses are hemorrhaging cash.
that's exactly it. IIRC, telecom companies has been resistant to the idea of an itunes phone because they get cut out of the revenue stream. Additional surcharges diminish the appeal of itunes, so hence the impasse.
Ringtones are a market in which the telecoms are making a killing. I think the worldwide market for ringtones was valued at around 4 billion. They also sell ringtones for 3 bucks, whereas you can get an entire song for a dollar with apple. so there are some issues about cannibalizing revenue streams when dealing with itunes. less apparent is the upside. Since telecoms subsidize units for usage contracts, a best selling unit won't necessarily translate to the bottom line.
Also, I'd be interested in buying a song i heard at a concert or show with my phone and bluetoothing it to my ipod on the fly.
completely off topic, but in school I was a research associate on a study testing the effects of benzodiazepines on movement disorders like tourette's. All our subjects submitted to two MRIs, one before the study and one after.
We had a good number of ecstasy users in our grouping. ALL of them had brain lesions. Most were small black dots; some were a bit bigger. Correlation does not imply causation, and we assumed the brain lesions to be consistent amongst the other subjects, all of whom had tourette's. No dice.
Ipod is to DAPs what Google is to search. In popular culture its tough to separate the two.
I freelance in the film industry. a couple of weeks ago I was going to this reception for an independent film premiere here in NY. there was a rush at the door, a bottleneck as invitations were checked. I was there with a friend of mine who does OK with the ladies, but has a Rio (notice I said BUT, as in it is not a good thing to socially own a Rio DAP). Earbuds are in... so he bumps into a rather attractive girl who turns and looks receptive. She notices him so he takes out his rio to turn down the volume. She's like, "What's that? Your Ipod?" He responds, "No, It's a Rio, it's just like an Ipod..."
It doesn't matter what he said after that. Her face slackened, any interest she might have had was gone. It was such a crushing blow that I went and got myself an Ipod the next day.
Never underestimate the power of popular culture. The IPOD will not be unseated. The WALKMAN was never unseated as the premiere mobile music player in the 80s and that's despite the million clones that came thereafter. Sony lost footing because they couldn't anticipate portable CD players. Any DAP company needs to invest in the next gen device, the next evolution in the movement of personal music.
Don't throw rocks at the throne. Build your own throne; people will come and worship.
I'm reminded of something from one of the Star Trek flicks, one of the ones with the borg. In it, Picard is about to be assimilated, and the Borg woman says: "I will add your distinctiveness to my own", or something like that.
It's this idea of distinctiveness as the quality with value (disturbiing in our environment of assimilationist culture) in the universe. The unique.
On the other side, there are arguments that life cannot survive its own technology. People against projects like SETI argue that it's a waste of time. They don't think any civilization has ever survived its own machines (where are the machines then?) There is no life as we know it on the other side of that event horizon, which is why we've never heard from them. They'd be telling us that our civilization, by its very inception, is doomed. Other than that, because there wouldn't be much to talk about, they've passed on making that call to talk to us.
As far as chess, I can't help but feel that white has this inherent advantage that cannot be taken from the game. It can be overcome, but to overcome something is to acknowledge an inferior position or disadvantage to begin with.
EXACTLY!!!! I agree with you completely. Who cares? That's the really interesting thing the AI argument investigates, this idea of human self-worth through attributes as opposed to mere existence and uniqueness. Our society and economic structure isn't geared toward a more progressive way of thinking about the individual, and about humans on a whole.
Exactly. There is no suspense. Machines will be better at us at these things because that is their purpose. It's what they've been designed to do.
Given enough time, machines will be better than us at EVERYTHING.
To me, it isn't amazing that machines designed to excel at chess beat the best humans. It's amazing to me that humans can still beat and/or draw games with machines designed to be brute force unbeatable.
It's like Steven Hawking beating Shaq at basketball. It's amazing, be glad that you were around to witness it. Don't expect it to happen again.
The irony in your statement is that I've had friends killed because they ran their mouths for less.
I was borned and raised in New York, first in a welfare hotel until the age of 14, then a housing projects in Harlem. I lived in a foster home for two years. I'd have to count on two hands the number of childhood friends who'd been killed by the time I got into college, many for much less than snitching on somebody. Someone posted about survival tactics; silence is first and foremost. Snitching is the only cardinal sin where I come from. Everything else is fair.
So your idea of trumpeting the horns of justice whenever someone jaywalks is somewhat of a luxury for me. As a matter of fact, survival was a luxury until school. Whether it makes me pond scum or not, I'll leave up to moral superiors like yourself to decide.
Notwithstanding all of that, I never intimated that they were my "buddies". They were guys I knew. My point in posting was just to show how easy it was to turn such information into revenue and how prevalent it was in my experience.
Regardless of the rather *overkill* nature of your personal attack, I wish you well. In my experience, I've never met a human being with the solid footing to ever make a moral call on another. I guess you could be the first though. Nice to meet you.
That's exactly what the government is saying. It why we're sending them to fight optional wars "for the cause of freedom". One has to imagine one's surroundings when joining the military and potentially going to war are legitimate options for improving one's condition.
i don't gp meant to insinuate that fraud was legal in India, merely that it was possible that the causal link to the perpetrator between the crime and punishment is tenuous and not as clear as it is here in the states.
my mom always used to say that when someone gets caught doing something, they've probably been doing it a long time. It's possible that this has been going on forever, and the Indian government, and by extension the companies outsourcing, are just getting wind of it. Which would mean that Indian officials are behind the curve on it.
Also, another thing to note... there are a billion + people over there. Less than a 100 million have ever used a computer. Less than 35 million use them regularly. It's quite possible that the government, independent of extenral pressure, quite frankly isn't pushing up so hard on white collar crime affecting a small fraction of 3 percent of its population.
the search correlation is that they can now separate the link-clickers from the product buyers. Further, they can gauge your spending habits and further target ads to maximize effectiveness. Your mom's birthday is in august, let's say, and you always buy something online around that time to get over to her. They can target mom-like gifts around that time, increasing the liklihood of the purchase, and they get cash off the transaction, the clickthrough, and the sale. I think anyway.
Then they start creating a database of faithful online shoppers and start charging premium prices to advertise to that crowd.
You're totally right. It all has to do with the information. The don't actually handle money, they assume none of the liability, and they don't have to expand into a core business that is not an intrinsic strength.
I knew two guys in college who got by on credit card scams. Those were the days when the nameless university (NYU, cough) thought it cool to put part of your social security number in your student ID number. The smart guys could derive the rest, and everyone is but a drunken night away from divulging their whole life story, so, guy #1 was caught and convicted to 11 years for credit card fraud.
The second guy had a girlfriend who worked at a neurologist's office. Most of the patients are old with degenerative conditions. When a patient would die, the girlfriend would pass on the info, and he'd get some cards, max em out, and throw them away. He's actually a pretty successful guy now. don't think he's with the girl anymore though.
All of which is to say - the problem is ubiquitious. Corruption is inherent with the humans dealing with the data, but I can't help but think that there must be a better way of dealing with financial data to prevent theft.
I'm torn, because with increased attempts at security come fewer freedoms. Pretty soon you'll have to give up the Gattaca drop of blood in order to buy movie tickets. I'm not sure if that makes the world a better place.
Slashdot Mirror
By purposefully ignoring grammar and/or spelling when communicating, you're making things easier for yourself at the expense of requiring more effort from your readers. That's at the very least impolite and quite possibly arrogant and downright rude.
Well said. I'll buy that.
i've volunteered with adhd kids, and i don't think it's fake. these kids have fast... everything. fast minds, fast metabolisms, an inability to do things that require extended concentration, so contemporary methods of teaching are wasted on them, which is why they tend to underperform.
It isn't a massive impediment, but there are less inroads made into teaching adhd kids as there are for dyslexic kids. Also, the difference with dyslexia and adhd, is that schools developed methods so they could effectively teach dyslexics. Adhd kids just get medicated and stuck in classes with regular kids.
In this volunteer program, the adhd kids get physical activity at least two times a day. They get early morning recess, usually a semi-coordinated activity to burn off all that extra energy and another session after lunch. They usually drag out of school, fatigued. Parents rave at how their kids get home and need a nap from school. The upside is that the adhd bunch is a way leaner bunch than the fat kids that populate the rest of the school. The other upside is that they are more receptive in class, more cooperative with one another (adhd kids fight all the time), and better students in general.
I'll play devil's advocate. The purpose of language is communication, and the standardization of such is to ensure against ambiguity, right? If someone's written work is devoid of some common rules of grammar and usage, does it matter if you completely and unambiguously understand what they are saying/writing?
I try to use the rules, but if I understand you, what else matters?
In new york, most street bootleggers get their stuff off the internet. At 5 bucks a pop, they do brisk business, especially in poorer neighborhoods where going to the movies and/or buying a full price dvd is a costly proposition.
a lot of these movies aren't cam either. A good number of films, especially blockbusters, are files leaked from somewhere in the post production pipeline. In other words, while there is an appreciable loss of quality, it's akin to VHS/DVD as opposed to cam/DVD.
that's the other issue about piracy, is that a lot of it is coming from home turf. It actually seems like they should pay more attention to that aspect of it, since most cams are damn near unwatchable. But one seed of a good file, and I can see how it might cut into the revenue stream.
..... and I approve this message!!!!!
*cough* Jessica Alba *cough*
*cough* Jessica Biel *cough*
agreed.
not sure what that says though. it would seem that capital hill is behind the curve as far as payola is concerned. it implies a corrupt government that is resistant to changing its own corrupt policies. *shudders*
i agree with you about the GC. It's an interesting thing about marketing though. I hate to say that I fall victim to marketing ploys, but I fell victim to this one.
I assumed that the GC would be the worst of the three. Much of that assumption came from aesthetics and design. The GC looks and feels like a toy that should be tucked into a child's cubbyhole. Playing games on it proved me wrong as both the graphics and gameplay exceeded my expectations and the capabilities of the much better looking and marketed PS2.
marketing is so important man. I think Nintendo needs a ramped up marketing strategy. I think being the console with the least penetration works in its favor this time around because the audience is always looking for something new. The revolution can be that new thing.
it isn't about comparing architectures. it's about the visual quality of games and gameplay.
I've played games on all three consoles and the PS2 by far is the worst visual experience.
When playing games on a PS2, I actually notice that its games are inferior visually. It's a case of not knowing what you're missing until it's gone. The X-Box far exceeds the other two.
it's pretty much a given that any game on both the xbox and playstation 2 will look much better and play much smoother on the x-box. that said, the PS2's library is awesome.
This seems to me the kind of acquisition that microsoft might have wanted to keep under wraps. They have a shoddy reputation as a company, and buying an adware company just doesn't seem like a good PR move on paper. Even with the best spin you can put on it, it just gives the general user less reason to trust what it already feels is shoddy software. And that 500 million might be seen as rewarding the efforts of adware and spam outfits.
Keep in mind that I didn't read the article.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. They are fighting too many battles on too many fronts with cash from a now mature monopoly.
It's often the way when companies get too big and too unwieldy that they split up into more efficient entities. Like everything else in the universe, there seems to be a "sweet spot" for how big a company can get and still be healthy. They just seem too big, with too many products being developed by too many teams with this one borg-like monoculture.
someone posted earlier about their culture. A company's culture has so much to do with the kind of product it produces. Google's culture is directly responsible for it's successes, and in as much as they offer new services, they've never really deviated from their core business, which all are variations of information search.
They don't have a culture - a mantra that they run things by. And that monopoly cash won't last forever when all your businesses are hemorrhaging cash.
that's exactly it. IIRC, telecom companies has been resistant to the idea of an itunes phone because they get cut out of the revenue stream. Additional surcharges diminish the appeal of itunes, so hence the impasse.
Ringtones are a market in which the telecoms are making a killing. I think the worldwide market for ringtones was valued at around 4 billion. They also sell ringtones for 3 bucks, whereas you can get an entire song for a dollar with apple. so there are some issues about cannibalizing revenue streams when dealing with itunes. less apparent is the upside. Since telecoms subsidize units for usage contracts, a best selling unit won't necessarily translate to the bottom line.
Also, I'd be interested in buying a song i heard at a concert or show with my phone and bluetoothing it to my ipod on the fly.
completely off topic, but in school I was a research associate on a study testing the effects of benzodiazepines on movement disorders like tourette's. All our subjects submitted to two MRIs, one before the study and one after.
We had a good number of ecstasy users in our grouping. ALL of them had brain lesions. Most were small black dots; some were a bit bigger. Correlation does not imply causation, and we assumed the brain lesions to be consistent amongst the other subjects, all of whom had tourette's. No dice.
I thought it was phony too. Googled the center and Dr. Safar.
c le/2005/04/21/AR2005042101262_2.html
a r0331fnp2.asp The doctor exists and he's done some cool shit. Or did. He's passed on.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
The center exists and they do this kind of science.
http://www.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20020331saf
This sounds like intriguing science.
I agree with you and will take it to the next level. Looking cool drives *MOST* of consumer buying.
Ipod is to DAPs what Google is to search. In popular culture its tough to separate the two.
I freelance in the film industry. a couple of weeks ago I was going to this reception for an independent film premiere here in NY. there was a rush at the door, a bottleneck as invitations were checked. I was there with a friend of mine who does OK with the ladies, but has a Rio (notice I said BUT, as in it is not a good thing to socially own a Rio DAP). Earbuds are in... so he bumps into a rather attractive girl who turns and looks receptive. She notices him so he takes out his rio to turn down the volume. She's like, "What's that? Your Ipod?" He responds, "No, It's a Rio, it's just like an Ipod..."
It doesn't matter what he said after that. Her face slackened, any interest she might have had was gone. It was such a crushing blow that I went and got myself an Ipod the next day.
Never underestimate the power of popular culture. The IPOD will not be unseated. The WALKMAN was never unseated as the premiere mobile music player in the 80s and that's despite the million clones that came thereafter. Sony lost footing because they couldn't anticipate portable CD players. Any DAP company needs to invest in the next gen device, the next evolution in the movement of personal music.
Don't throw rocks at the throne. Build your own throne; people will come and worship.
I'm reminded of something from one of the Star Trek flicks, one of the ones with the borg. In it, Picard is about to be assimilated, and the Borg woman says: "I will add your distinctiveness to my own", or something like that.
It's this idea of distinctiveness as the quality with value (disturbiing in our environment of assimilationist culture) in the universe. The unique.
On the other side, there are arguments that life cannot survive its own technology. People against projects like SETI argue that it's a waste of time. They don't think any civilization has ever survived its own machines (where are the machines then?) There is no life as we know it on the other side of that event horizon, which is why we've never heard from them. They'd be telling us that our civilization, by its very inception, is doomed. Other than that, because there wouldn't be much to talk about, they've passed on making that call to talk to us.
As far as chess, I can't help but feel that white has this inherent advantage that cannot be taken from the game. It can be overcome, but to overcome something is to acknowledge an inferior position or disadvantage to begin with.
EXACTLY!!!! I agree with you completely. Who cares? That's the really interesting thing the AI argument investigates, this idea of human self-worth through attributes as opposed to mere existence and uniqueness. Our society and economic structure isn't geared toward a more progressive way of thinking about the individual, and about humans on a whole.
Exactly. There is no suspense. Machines will be better at us at these things because that is their purpose. It's what they've been designed to do.
Given enough time, machines will be better than us at EVERYTHING.
To me, it isn't amazing that machines designed to excel at chess beat the best humans. It's amazing to me that humans can still beat and/or draw games with machines designed to be brute force unbeatable.
It's like Steven Hawking beating Shaq at basketball. It's amazing, be glad that you were around to witness it. Don't expect it to happen again.
The irony in your statement is that I've had friends killed because they ran their mouths for less.
I was borned and raised in New York, first in a welfare hotel until the age of 14, then a housing projects in Harlem. I lived in a foster home for two years. I'd have to count on two hands the number of childhood friends who'd been killed by the time I got into college, many for much less than snitching on somebody. Someone posted about survival tactics; silence is first and foremost. Snitching is the only cardinal sin where I come from. Everything else is fair.
So your idea of trumpeting the horns of justice whenever someone jaywalks is somewhat of a luxury for me. As a matter of fact, survival was a luxury until school. Whether it makes me pond scum or not, I'll leave up to moral superiors like yourself to decide.
Notwithstanding all of that, I never intimated that they were my "buddies". They were guys I knew. My point in posting was just to show how easy it was to turn such information into revenue and how prevalent it was in my experience.
Regardless of the rather *overkill* nature of your personal attack, I wish you well. In my experience, I've never met a human being with the solid footing to ever make a moral call on another. I guess you could be the first though. Nice to meet you.
that is amazing. btw, i did grow up in new york, and you don't run your mouth about anything.
all of which is to say, it's a great thing you did.
That's exactly what the government is saying. It why we're sending them to fight optional wars "for the cause of freedom". One has to imagine one's surroundings when joining the military and potentially going to war are legitimate options for improving one's condition.
i don't gp meant to insinuate that fraud was legal in India, merely that it was possible that the causal link to the perpetrator between the crime and punishment is tenuous and not as clear as it is here in the states.
my mom always used to say that when someone gets caught doing something, they've probably been doing it a long time. It's possible that this has been going on forever, and the Indian government, and by extension the companies outsourcing, are just getting wind of it. Which would mean that Indian officials are behind the curve on it.
Also, another thing to note... there are a billion + people over there. Less than a 100 million have ever used a computer. Less than 35 million use them regularly. It's quite possible that the government, independent of extenral pressure, quite frankly isn't pushing up so hard on white collar crime affecting a small fraction of 3 percent of its population.
My morals are suspect? LOL
Right on, snitchy. I'll just run on down and ring the town bell on that.
interesting point. very.
the search correlation is that they can now separate the link-clickers from the product buyers. Further, they can gauge your spending habits and further target ads to maximize effectiveness. Your mom's birthday is in august, let's say, and you always buy something online around that time to get over to her. They can target mom-like gifts around that time, increasing the liklihood of the purchase, and they get cash off the transaction, the clickthrough, and the sale. I think anyway.
Then they start creating a database of faithful online shoppers and start charging premium prices to advertise to that crowd.
You're totally right. It all has to do with the information. The don't actually handle money, they assume none of the liability, and they don't have to expand into a core business that is not an intrinsic strength.
Shit, man.
I knew two guys in college who got by on credit card scams. Those were the days when the nameless university (NYU, cough) thought it cool to put part of your social security number in your student ID number. The smart guys could derive the rest, and everyone is but a drunken night away from divulging their whole life story, so, guy #1 was caught and convicted to 11 years for credit card fraud.
The second guy had a girlfriend who worked at a neurologist's office. Most of the patients are old with degenerative conditions. When a patient would die, the girlfriend would pass on the info, and he'd get some cards, max em out, and throw them away. He's actually a pretty successful guy now. don't think he's with the girl anymore though.
All of which is to say - the problem is ubiquitious. Corruption is inherent with the humans dealing with the data, but I can't help but think that there must be a better way of dealing with financial data to prevent theft.
I'm torn, because with increased attempts at security come fewer freedoms. Pretty soon you'll have to give up the Gattaca drop of blood in order to buy movie tickets. I'm not sure if that makes the world a better place.