It's not about how old she is, buddy. It's about how hot she is. While there is a correlation, you'd be surprised how many 30 yr. old women are very beautiful.
BTW, name a few of your favorite actresses, and we'll discuss their age. They might be older than you realize.
The median age in the US is 33 yrs. old: see this site http://www.adherents.com/adh_dem.html for details.
That is why I chose that age. Did you look at the site I originally quoted? Let's say you are interested in datin 20yr old women. The median height is about 64.5 inches (5 ft, 4.5 in). The median weight is about 130 lbs. So we are talking two std. deviations above the mean in terms of IQ. This means you are ruling out everyone that is NOT two std. deviations above the mean. Given this, we eliminate about (IIRC) 65% of the female population. Going back to a website I found earlier, here's what that leaves you:
females in US: 145,532,800. 65% of 145,532,800: 94,596,320. leaves you with: 50,936,480. not too shabby, yet. Now we eliminate everyone not between 18 and say 24 (a group which only represents 9.3% of the total female population). (go to this link for my source).
This leaves us with 9.3% of 50,936,480: 4,737,092.64. This isn't looking so good for you.
Based on another page, approximately 4% of them aren't going to be interested in dating a male--leaves you with: 4,737,092.64-4,737,092.64(.04)=4,547,608.9344.
This isn't a sizeable portion of the population, even if it seems like a large number. If you want more depressing news, consider this: the population of the US is not evenly distributed. People in your selected age group are only going to comprise 9.3% of your locales population (on average). 4547608.9344 is only 1.5967728% of the US population. Good luck!
The gap between efficiency and power cars/SUV's is growing all the time. When I first started driving, I had a VW rabbit (5speed) with a deisel engine. It got close to 40 mpg. Now I have a minivan (~23 to ~26 mpg) and a grand am (92) (~20mpg). The car could do better, but I have a couple of leaks in the fuel system... (only leaks when its running, so fumes (the dangerous part of gas) can't build up).
Here in Clemson, there are a lot of SUV's, especially on campus. Sad thing is that 90% of the owners are students, and we can all guess where they got the money for one of those.
If mommies and daddies weren't so anxious to spend a gazillion dollars on jr., there wouldn't be so many cars on the road. Personally I think any parent that buys their child a car made within the past 5 years is crazy. Kid don't need it! IF they REALLY need any car at all, I think it should be an older vehicle, and they should be required to do all maintenance.
The trouble is that these days, you can't. I _barely_ understand the more complicated systems on my car. I can change the brakes, alternator, etc, but if the tranny ever goes, I'm up a creek. A lot of people can't do that much.
As an example of how bad its getting, I recently overheard some individuals saying how they had had trouble the first time they were on their own because they didn't know how to pump the gas! Sheesh! It's very sad.
Also, I would gladly trade my grand am in for a hybrid--efficiency is important. Unfortunately it also seems to come at the price of easy maintenance. Maybe the two will converge at some point.
Re:talk about heresy
on
SimChurch
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· Score: 2, Interesting
interesting sig.
Now, I don't know your gender, but lets make some suppositions:
If you are male, then you are asking females to either be rather petite (or anorexic), or pretty smart (IQ 145? That's pretty high.). Despite what some mags make you think, 100 lbs isn't the average weight a white female. Try 140 lbs for a 30 yr. old woman Halls Md. (this is the 50th percentile). This means that if you are male, then you are looking for a woman with an IQ of at least 140. 145 would put her at THREE standard deviations above the mean of the population (by definition), which only something like 0.01% of the population. Not bloody likely.
Now, if you are female, then this is even more unlikely--the 50th percentile of men at age 30 are 170 lbs; in order to surpass this mark they would need to have an IQ at LEAST 4.67 std. deviations above the mean. Percentage wise this is less than 0.0001% of the population. Even less bloody likely!
For information the current US population is about 270,000,000 (give or take). Assuming an even gender split, and saying 50% are over 18 (making it legal), if you are male, you are saying you will only date about 675,000 of the people in the US. While this is a large number, you have to realize that some of them will be older, and some younger. Also, you have to consider that many of them are probably already married or dating. Your numbers are dwindling.
If you are female, then that number drops to 6,750, which is also high due to married ones, etc. You are being very selective here.
So my final question is: how do you plan to meet them? Good luck.
(BTW, my post fails to account for the possibility that you might be male looking for a male, or female looking for a female. Let's just say that the available population dwindles even further in that case.)
You will recall, if you are Christian, that Christ himself was included in that group you mention so tenderly. Hence the reason that they crucified him.
Okay, I hadn't seen it from that perspective. Like the sibling post, you argue that satelite is a broadcast signal.
While I can certainly agree that it is broadcast, I think th similarities between cable and satelite are deeper than your sibling poster thinks (of course I could be wrong--it happens).
First, satelite does go to great lengths to establish a physical infrastructure. Just because there aren't wires to your home doesn't mean that they haven't spent a lot of money trying to make a service (which they sell) available in your home. This is similar to a wireless internet access. I don't think you could reasonably argue that just because someone has placed a set of AP's in your area, you therefore have a right to use them without paying for it.
I think the way in which this differs from a rock concert is this: At a rock concert it does not cost the band extra money if someone at a nearby house happens to listen in. It might annoy them, but they don't have to spend extra money just because someone else is listening.
With cable, it definitely can cost more, and even more so with wireless internet (bandwidth ain't free for any ISP). Satelite probably doesn't cost more, but they still have put a lot of money into a system.
Think of this though: if you pay taxes (yes you do) and steal satelite, what are you going to say the next time DirectTV says: Help, we're losing money to pirates!? Give us money, MR. Congressman. Are you going to say, well those idiots shouldn't be broadcasting it?
Somehow I think you are more likely to say, Hey, that's my tax money you're taking. To which they appropriately respond: that was our signal you borrowed.
IF you like TV without commercials, you need to pay for it. At one time (I know its not now), cable/satelite was much lighter on the commercials.
In the end, I'm sure I've made some logical/factual errors, but I can live with that. I just can't justify not paying the satelite company if I want their service (which, FWIW, I don't have). So, if I ever decide to use cable/satelite, I will pay for it. In the mean time, I do without.
The replies are already copious, but I feel that it's necessary to put my opinion in:
Every one would be MUCH better off if we all had a much better grasp of more advanced math. You state that people should be taught statistics, but not calculus. You are aware, aren't you, that the more advanced statistics (indeed all of statistics that uses a distribution) relies on calculus for its foundation.
I never took calculus, but now that I am in graduate school trying to learn some more advanced stats, I REALLY wish I had had calc in high school or college.
(For those who want to gainsay me and say stats doesn't use calc--let me ask you this: when was the last time you looked at the equation for the cumulative distribution function? It involves integrals. So does the formula for Item Response Theory (being based on the cumulative distribution), which is what we use to measure adverse impact in tests. Not convinced? I'm surprised.
My point is that I NEVER learned integrals in pre-calc or algebra, but at this point REALLY wish I understood them. I think if our society had a better understanding of math and probability, we would be much better and avoiding marketing traps, hollywood glitz, and make better voting decisions. If we understood Chemistry and Biology better, we would probably be healthier and drive more efficient cars. If we understood physics properly, there would be less car accidents. But all this would have to start at the earliest level.)
My personal goal is for all of my children (I have two now) to be able to do math such as addition/subtraction/multiplication and division before they hit kindergarten. If at all possible, I would like them to also understand algebra at some level. Sound impossible? You're not thinking openly enough. The kids can do it, and do it well. It's absolutely possible for 3rd graders to do fairly advanced algebra, but they don't because teachers don't have the mindset that that is a goal. Parents are equally to blame.
If I can get my kids to understand binary by the 4th grade, I'll be happy. To those who say kids can't be that well informed about math and still be social--you're wrong! I know some really cool people here at the uni who are extremely popular, but understand math and physics much better than I ever have. These are kids who are acing statics and dynamics, but still hang out with the other frat guys (not that that's the pinnacle of social desirability, but hey, who's judging?).
My point is that people use math a lot, but they would use it more if they understood it. Maybe if kids had a better grounding in math at an early age, they would grow up and actually use it! This would change our society, because then we wouldn't have so many ppl who could have had a good education wasting their life away working for minimum wage.
My favorite example of this is those people who are content to work at Joe's Corner Shop for the rest of their life, because they feel that they are academically unable to do anything else. They always got mad when I told them that it wasn't the place for me--I didn't want to work there for the rest of my life. Frankly, I still don't understand why they would. 10 years from now, I can go back, and it will be the same folks--still making $8 - $10 an hour. But maybe if they had had better math/science grounding at an early age, they would be more interested in doing better in life.
Sorry for the rant, but I get steamed about this::WE NEED A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF MATH && SCIENCE!!!! Thank you.
If that's true (got proof?), then you are right: the crux of the problem is in requiring people to travel. If you commit a crime in a certain area, then you should only be liable for it in that area in terms of court. No court should have jurisdiction over a crime that occurred outside its normal area.
I think the same should apply for civil lawsuits. Did someone do something to make you mad? Then you have to sue them in the county where that occurred. This would, I know, hit corps especially hard, since it would mean they would be sending lawyers all over the country--since most offenses would occur in the individuals county/city of residence.
This would help end frivolous lawsuits.
That said, I am generally against piracy of cable. I don't think that the arguments that apply to music apply to cable in even the smallest regard. If you steal cable/satelite access, then you deserve to be punished if you are caught. end of story. At the same time, this means that if you are accused of it, but are really innocent, then the cable/satelite company should have to pay your court costs.
Since I don't steal cable, I would take it to court if accused by the local moronopoly company, then counter-sue for my court costs, time lost in court, and probably even mental anguish and damage to character (and anything else that might work). Why? Because I think they need to learn a lesson--don't prosecute unless you are dead certain that its true.
Yes, but on the topic of malleability, the original IQ tests accounted for age. Originally the equation was mental age divided by chronological age, and the test was really measuring "mental" age. Binet didn't realize (neither did Stanford) that mental age didn't increase linearly across a person's lifetime, and thereby penalized older people automatically (that is if you don't get substantially smarter past 20, then anyone who is 80 will look much less intelligent than anyone who is 20, with the possible exception of the extreme tails of the distribution).
Another point to remember is that intelligence is not the equivalent of knowledge. Thus stating that someone is more intelligent as an adult (generally speaking, barring accidents and whatnot), is not necessarily true. In fact I generally disagree--we learn and absorb information at a much faster rate as a child, we just don't have the framework to understand everything the way we do as an adult.
So the real question is this: can we use knowledge, frameworks, and the like as a surrogate for cognitive ability? I personally don't think so. We are truly interested in the person's ability to learn/process new information. I don't think this is accurately captured by canned tests, especially as regards to tests such as the ACT/GRE.
However, I do think intelligence is malleable, and does tend to increase with age (despite my earlier assertion), but I think that this is a matter of practice, which (as you state), opens nueral pathways, etc. However, I don't think this is a direct result of aging, but rather of deliberate attempts to learn. It is the utilization of intelligence that promotes intelligence.
Unfortunately, many people disagree (even very respected psychologists), and feel that intelligence is innate. This leads to some very poor political and philosophical choices, such as what was seen in "The Bell Curve" (a book from the 60's). If you want a good refutation of the theories set forth in "The Bell Curve", read "The Mismeasure of Man" by Steven Jay Gould (who was a biologist at harvard, but incredibly well informed about intelligence and the fallacies that early researchers made).
BTW, have you ever been around someone with schizophrenia and heard the type of neologisms they derive? It's like listening to the Jabberwock for the first time--every single day.
Actually, if they are dumb, they are probably ignorant as well. How, then, do you tell the two apart? Unfortunately, I think the problem is deeper than you think.
The real trouble is that of the 90% of the population that aren't geeks, 75% of them are intimidated by computers (some are also intimidated by cars, oddly enough). Of the 25% that aren't intimidated (yes, I'm using relativistic percentages, deal with it), 99% feel that they are competent and really understand computers. 90% of them don't.
All statistics are purely estimations, and are only given as an illustration::end disclaimer.
I can agree that the way that psychologists use the term differs from the way joe geek would use it, but that doesn't mean that A) all psychologists agree on the nature of intelligence or B) they aren't trying to define it in a more rigid fashion.
In the psych literature this is referred to as operationally defining the construct (in this case intelligence is the construct). While the definition eventually end up with will not be the same as what you would generally find in a dictionary, it doesn't mean that we aren't defining it. Also, operationalization doesn't always mean narrowing the definition. Frequently it means making it broad enough to cover everything that should come under that label.
Furthermore, although I use the word intelligence in both this and the previous post, I should have really avoided that particular term, due to its cultural and sociological connotations (only IQ is worse). In the field it is more common parlance to say "cognitive ability" or "G".
I would also like to state that I never claimed that psychologists were defining the *word* intelligence, but rather the idea of intelligence in our field (which is implicit to my previous post, but not explicitly stated [although I should know enough to explicitly state _everything_ here on good old/.]). Yes, you are correct that the definition of the word is a linguists job, but its really tangential to my previous post.
I will note, however, that many psychologists are purist in the sense that they want EVERYONE to use terms the way that they do (forgetting that some people use those same words in their specialty for something very different, a problem that makes some research very difficult). The trouble is that as we make progress in understanding how humans function at the cognitive level (and then the neurological level), we begin to use various existing words to describe processes, since we get laughed at for making up completely new words (after all, neologisms are the domain of schizophrenics).
Thank you, however, for allowing me to spend time thinking about this.
As a question: do you believe that all human cognitive functioning can be attributed to some single underlying factor, or is it multifaceted in an independent fashion? Also, is intelligence malleable? That is, can a human, through various tasks, increase their intelligence?
Personally, I lean toward a malleable, multi-faceted perspective (only half of which is really a popular/common view at this time).
First, intelligence is a *very* complicated beast. Second, we don't have as good of an understanding of it as we'd like (by we, I mean psychologists, who are the primary researchers in intelligence).
Simply put, spatial reasoning isn't that strongly related to verbal reasoning, or mathematical reasoning. Creative ability also seems to be fairly independent of the above. Mechanical ability does seem to be related to creative ability.
STWM is related to most of the above--it seems to be one of the most important sections of memory/intelligence (that's why this finding is so important).
As some one who is very interested in intelligence testing, I would just like to say that from what I can remember, programming (in general), is most strongly correlated with mathematical ability, although some of the others that are mentioned above are important.
However, its important to remember that some people who are very successful programmers don't seem to have the ability to "visualize" things at all. We frequently assume that most people can do the "cube test", (where you are asked to visualize a white cube painted red. Then slice it into smaller cubes. You are then asked to state how many cubes there are, how many white faces, how many red faces, things like that. Also, how many cubes have 2 red faces.) but there are a few people who are very mechanically inclined who simply can't do this visually.
Like I said, intelligence is very complicated, and to see a lot of people here try to boil it down to a simple idea is somewhat painful (but even the pros like to do it, so what can I say).
I wasn't aware that it was Maslow that said that, but it really is ironic. His theories were definitely "pet" theories, and are NOT taken seriously by Applied Psychologists today. Clinicians perhaps, but not AP's
As genesplicer states, sometimes tearing up the land is the idea!
Notice also that there is a tracked version and a tired version of each tractor.
Since you've never farmed, just a point of info--rack and pinion types can do a LOT of damage to your fields by bouncing (genesplicer also mentions this), and by other odd behavior's.
Also, where I am at, there is a lot of mud. Tracks would have been very helpful in these conditions. Instead we ended up with a stuck tractor on more than a few occasions.
Finally, some people use tractors for things other than plowing/cultivation. We use our Belarus (Russian company) for mowing and what not. Granted, its only 84 hp, and isn't on the same scale as those 500hp monsters, but hey. I can imagine commercial alfalfa/timothy growers using these at harvest time. Ditto for corn harvesting.
Also, note that while on the fields, tractors typically travel in straight lines or in circles. Rarely do they do a lot of turning on field. Crossing rows with any type of tire is REALLY bad for your crops. For an analogy, grab some sand and comb lines into with a hair comb (like plowing). Then run a toy car/tractor/whatever across the rows (perpendicular), and see what happens.
Wow, its funny you should mention Strom...I go past the Strom Thurman Institute every day (its on Clemson's campus).
I do agree that this is probably the best solution I've heard in a while. It's always been interesting to me how ex-presidents never run for congress/senate, never do anything like that. In fact, it seems almost like they disappear. Some of that has to do with age (most are fairly old by the time they hit prez), but I think it's partly because they can't run for pres again, so they just take it easy.
I think this would be more of the case in congress if the term limits applied to them also (we could limit them to two terms, just like the prez). Unfortunately the people in charge of enacting such a sentence are very unlikely to do so. Perhaps they don't realize the potential power they would wield as commentators, CEO's and the like once their term as a senator was over.
You, sir (or in the unlikely event that this is the case, madam), are most enlightened.
The problem is that politicians rely on complex laws to keep themselves in office and reduce the power of individuals that aren't part of the ingroup. But don't break out the tin-foil hats just yet--I'm not claimin a conspiracy, just good old-fashioned capitolism. That's right, people striving to make their business thrive. In this case, it's the gov't.
This misses the deeper issue though. Why in the world does this company (or any one else) feel that advertising is a constitutional "right". I am guessing that this is another one of those sorry misinterpretations of "freedom to speech" that we hear about. The sad truth is that freedom of speech was never meant to be guaranteed for companies, just individuals. There is a huge difference between my claims and the claims of any corporate entity.
If advertising was truly free speech, then the laws about truth in advertising wouldn't fly (after all, making us tell the truth restricts our ability to promote our product). As it is, we have two essentially conflicting ideas.
The real problem is that, as you said, we have far too many laws that only a few people know anything about.
One solution would be to make congressmen have no salary, and then they would have to work for a living. This would mean that they wouldn't have time to sit around and think of new laws. Any country with professional politicians is certain to have trouble.
Personally, I like the track model, but you can get one with wheels if you prefer. This beast is akin to the two strong oxen (or cray supercomputer). I would rather have this than 2 of the 6003 series, but if it was 1024 of These, I would rather have the small ones--for most tasks.
I tend to agree, also having recently moved to Gentoo.
I have a problem in Gentoo--I can't print. Getting this to work from the manual is not happening--I've tried.
The trouble is that when I asked about it on the forums I never got a response.
That said, there have also been times when the forums were great. This is fine for someone with 2 things: time and patience. I happened to have both, but for someone who is doing anything remotely mission critical, the forums aren't good enough, and the manual not detailed enough on the trouble-shooting.
As far as emerge--It's awesome. For those who knock Gentoo, but haven't used emerge, you need to try it. If, after that, you still don't like it, then you can bash away, but when all you've ever used is rpm's, don't knock portage--there is no comparison, especially for a newbie.
If I were to start a business selling computers, the default OS would be Gentoo Linux with a good GUI interface for portage. Second would be debian, and then possibly Suse or MDK. Last would be Windows (I don't have a problem with people who like windows, I just happen to disagree with them on the point that it has any intrinsic value).
Certainly, but the OP was saying otherwise as an example of why Linux was a problem. Not being a dedicated coder (I write PHP scripts in my spare time, but that's hardly serious programming next to the power of C++), I don't always know what's available.
First, mod check--Hello? Funny? I don't really believe it--maybe I'll get to meta-mod it!
Second, I think of this as a strength--if your personal tastes don't lie within QT, you can still use something else. If you don't like VB or VC, then you are stuck with one or two alternatives in Winland.
So that's what happened. Of course, Sodipodi still exports just fine on my linux install, but under winxp it craps out every time since I installed the gimp.
I don't know. I really haven't put that much thought into it. Perhaps for companies it should be different (no taxes, just tax gains (so in this case the 5k), but I don't know for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL!
It's not about how old she is, buddy. It's about how hot she is. While there is a correlation, you'd be surprised how many 30 yr. old women are very beautiful.
BTW, name a few of your favorite actresses, and we'll discuss their age. They might be older than you realize.
The median age in the US is 33 yrs. old: see this site http://www.adherents.com/adh_dem.html for details.
That is why I chose that age. Did you look at the site I originally quoted? Let's say you are interested in datin 20yr old women. The median height is about 64.5 inches (5 ft, 4.5 in). The median weight is about 130 lbs. So we are talking two std. deviations above the mean in terms of IQ. This means you are ruling out everyone that is NOT two std. deviations above the mean. Given this, we eliminate about (IIRC) 65% of the female population. Going back to a website I found earlier, here's what that leaves you:
females in US: 145,532,800.
65% of 145,532,800: 94,596,320.
leaves you with: 50,936,480.
not too shabby, yet. Now we eliminate everyone not between 18 and say 24 (a group which only represents 9.3% of the total female population).
(go to this link for my source).
This leaves us with 9.3% of 50,936,480: 4,737,092.64. This isn't looking so good for you.
Based on another page, approximately 4% of them aren't going to be interested in dating a male--leaves you with: 4,737,092.64-4,737,092.64(.04)=4,547,608.9344.
This isn't a sizeable portion of the population, even if it seems like a large number. If you want more depressing news, consider this: the population of the US is not evenly distributed. People in your selected age group are only going to comprise 9.3% of your locales population (on average). 4547608.9344 is only 1.5967728% of the US population. Good luck!
Just a little information for you amusement.
Not to mention in nuetral...
The gap between efficiency and power cars/SUV's is growing all the time. When I first started driving, I had a VW rabbit (5speed) with a deisel engine. It got close to 40 mpg. Now I have a minivan (~23 to ~26 mpg) and a grand am (92) (~20mpg). The car could do better, but I have a couple of leaks in the fuel system... (only leaks when its running, so fumes (the dangerous part of gas) can't build up).
Here in Clemson, there are a lot of SUV's, especially on campus. Sad thing is that 90% of the owners are students, and we can all guess where they got the money for one of those.
If mommies and daddies weren't so anxious to spend a gazillion dollars on jr., there wouldn't be so many cars on the road. Personally I think any parent that buys their child a car made within the past 5 years is crazy. Kid don't need it! IF they REALLY need any car at all, I think it should be an older vehicle, and they should be required to do all maintenance.
The trouble is that these days, you can't. I _barely_ understand the more complicated systems on my car. I can change the brakes, alternator, etc, but if the tranny ever goes, I'm up a creek. A lot of people can't do that much.
As an example of how bad its getting, I recently overheard some individuals saying how they had had trouble the first time they were on their own because they didn't know how to pump the gas! Sheesh! It's very sad.
Also, I would gladly trade my grand am in for a hybrid--efficiency is important. Unfortunately it also seems to come at the price of easy maintenance. Maybe the two will converge at some point.
interesting sig.
Now, I don't know your gender, but lets make some suppositions:
If you are male, then you are asking females to either be rather petite (or anorexic), or pretty smart (IQ 145? That's pretty high.). Despite what some mags make you think, 100 lbs isn't the average weight a white female. Try 140 lbs for a 30 yr. old woman Halls Md. (this is the 50th percentile). This means that if you are male, then you are looking for a woman with an IQ of at least 140. 145 would put her at THREE standard deviations above the mean of the population (by definition), which only something like 0.01% of the population. Not bloody likely.
Now, if you are female, then this is even more unlikely--the 50th percentile of men at age 30 are 170 lbs; in order to surpass this mark they would need to have an IQ at LEAST 4.67 std. deviations above the mean. Percentage wise this is less than 0.0001% of the population. Even less bloody likely!
For information the current US population is about 270,000,000 (give or take). Assuming an even gender split, and saying 50% are over 18 (making it legal), if you are male, you are saying you will only date about 675,000 of the people in the US. While this is a large number, you have to realize that some of them will be older, and some younger. Also, you have to consider that many of them are probably already married or dating. Your numbers are dwindling.
If you are female, then that number drops to 6,750, which is also high due to married ones, etc. You are being very selective here.
So my final question is: how do you plan to meet them? Good luck.
(BTW, my post fails to account for the possibility that you might be male looking for a male, or female looking for a female. Let's just say that the available population dwindles even further in that case.)
You will recall, if you are Christian, that Christ himself was included in that group you mention so tenderly. Hence the reason that they crucified him.
Although to tell the truth its not too bad. I've seen much worse under linux (twm anybody).
The real problem is usability. I think it would be a nightmare.
Okay, I hadn't seen it from that perspective. Like the sibling post, you argue that satelite is a broadcast signal.
While I can certainly agree that it is broadcast, I think th similarities between cable and satelite are deeper than your sibling poster thinks (of course I could be wrong--it happens).
First, satelite does go to great lengths to establish a physical infrastructure. Just because there aren't wires to your home doesn't mean that they haven't spent a lot of money trying to make a service (which they sell) available in your home. This is similar to a wireless internet access. I don't think you could reasonably argue that just because someone has placed a set of AP's in your area, you therefore have a right to use them without paying for it.
I think the way in which this differs from a rock concert is this: At a rock concert it does not cost the band extra money if someone at a nearby house happens to listen in. It might annoy them, but they don't have to spend extra money just because someone else is listening.
With cable, it definitely can cost more, and even more so with wireless internet (bandwidth ain't free for any ISP). Satelite probably doesn't cost more, but they still have put a lot of money into a system.
Think of this though: if you pay taxes (yes you do) and steal satelite, what are you going to say the next time DirectTV says: Help, we're losing money to pirates!? Give us money, MR. Congressman. Are you going to say, well those idiots shouldn't be broadcasting it?
Somehow I think you are more likely to say, Hey, that's my tax money you're taking. To which they appropriately respond: that was our signal you borrowed.
IF you like TV without commercials, you need to pay for it. At one time (I know its not now), cable/satelite was much lighter on the commercials.
In the end, I'm sure I've made some logical/factual errors, but I can live with that. I just can't justify not paying the satelite company if I want their service (which, FWIW, I don't have). So, if I ever decide to use cable/satelite, I will pay for it. In the mean time, I do without.
The replies are already copious, but I feel that it's necessary to put my opinion in:
Every one would be MUCH better off if we all had a much better grasp of more advanced math. You state that people should be taught statistics, but not calculus. You are aware, aren't you, that the more advanced statistics (indeed all of statistics that uses a distribution) relies on calculus for its foundation.
I never took calculus, but now that I am in graduate school trying to learn some more advanced stats, I REALLY wish I had had calc in high school or college.
(For those who want to gainsay me and say stats doesn't use calc--let me ask you this: when was the last time you looked at the equation for the cumulative distribution function? It involves integrals. So does the formula for Item Response Theory (being based on the cumulative distribution), which is what we use to measure adverse impact in tests. Not convinced? I'm surprised.
My point is that I NEVER learned integrals in pre-calc or algebra, but at this point REALLY wish I understood them. I think if our society had a better understanding of math and probability, we would be much better and avoiding marketing traps, hollywood glitz, and make better voting decisions. If we understood Chemistry and Biology better, we would probably be healthier and drive more efficient cars. If we understood physics properly, there would be less car accidents. But all this would have to start at the earliest level.)
My personal goal is for all of my children (I have two now) to be able to do math such as addition/subtraction/multiplication and division before they hit kindergarten. If at all possible, I would like them to also understand algebra at some level. Sound impossible? You're not thinking openly enough. The kids can do it, and do it well. It's absolutely possible for 3rd graders to do fairly advanced algebra, but they don't because teachers don't have the mindset that that is a goal. Parents are equally to blame.
If I can get my kids to understand binary by the 4th grade, I'll be happy. To those who say kids can't be that well informed about math and still be social--you're wrong! I know some really cool people here at the uni who are extremely popular, but understand math and physics much better than I ever have. These are kids who are acing statics and dynamics, but still hang out with the other frat guys (not that that's the pinnacle of social desirability, but hey, who's judging?).
My point is that people use math a lot, but they would use it more if they understood it. Maybe if kids had a better grounding in math at an early age, they would grow up and actually use it! This would change our society, because then we wouldn't have so many ppl who could have had a good education wasting their life away working for minimum wage.
My favorite example of this is those people who are content to work at Joe's Corner Shop for the rest of their life, because they feel that they are academically unable to do anything else. They always got mad when I told them that it wasn't the place for me--I didn't want to work there for the rest of my life. Frankly, I still don't understand why they would. 10 years from now, I can go back, and it will be the same folks--still making $8 - $10 an hour. But maybe if they had had better math/science grounding at an early age, they would be more interested in doing better in life.
Sorry for the rant, but I get steamed about this::WE NEED A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF MATH && SCIENCE!!!! Thank you.
If that's true (got proof?), then you are right: the crux of the problem is in requiring people to travel. If you commit a crime in a certain area, then you should only be liable for it in that area in terms of court. No court should have jurisdiction over a crime that occurred outside its normal area.
I think the same should apply for civil lawsuits. Did someone do something to make you mad? Then you have to sue them in the county where that occurred. This would, I know, hit corps especially hard, since it would mean they would be sending lawyers all over the country--since most offenses would occur in the individuals county/city of residence.
This would help end frivolous lawsuits.
That said, I am generally against piracy of cable. I don't think that the arguments that apply to music apply to cable in even the smallest regard. If you steal cable/satelite access, then you deserve to be punished if you are caught. end of story. At the same time, this means that if you are accused of it, but are really innocent, then the cable/satelite company should have to pay your court costs.
Since I don't steal cable, I would take it to court if accused by the local moronopoly company, then counter-sue for my court costs, time lost in court, and probably even mental anguish and damage to character (and anything else that might work). Why? Because I think they need to learn a lesson--don't prosecute unless you are dead certain that its true.
Yes, but on the topic of malleability, the original IQ tests accounted for age. Originally the equation was mental age divided by chronological age, and the test was really measuring "mental" age. Binet didn't realize (neither did Stanford) that mental age didn't increase linearly across a person's lifetime, and thereby penalized older people automatically (that is if you don't get substantially smarter past 20, then anyone who is 80 will look much less intelligent than anyone who is 20, with the possible exception of the extreme tails of the distribution).
Another point to remember is that intelligence is not the equivalent of knowledge. Thus stating that someone is more intelligent as an adult (generally speaking, barring accidents and whatnot), is not necessarily true. In fact I generally disagree--we learn and absorb information at a much faster rate as a child, we just don't have the framework to understand everything the way we do as an adult.
So the real question is this: can we use knowledge, frameworks, and the like as a surrogate for cognitive ability? I personally don't think so. We are truly interested in the person's ability to learn/process new information. I don't think this is accurately captured by canned tests, especially as regards to tests such as the ACT/GRE.
However, I do think intelligence is malleable, and does tend to increase with age (despite my earlier assertion), but I think that this is a matter of practice, which (as you state), opens nueral pathways, etc. However, I don't think this is a direct result of aging, but rather of deliberate attempts to learn. It is the utilization of intelligence that promotes intelligence.
Unfortunately, many people disagree (even very respected psychologists), and feel that intelligence is innate. This leads to some very poor political and philosophical choices, such as what was seen in "The Bell Curve" (a book from the 60's). If you want a good refutation of the theories set forth in "The Bell Curve", read "The Mismeasure of Man" by Steven Jay Gould (who was a biologist at harvard, but incredibly well informed about intelligence and the fallacies that early researchers made).
BTW, have you ever been around someone with schizophrenia and heard the type of neologisms they derive? It's like listening to the Jabberwock for the first time--every single day.
Actually, if they are dumb, they are probably ignorant as well. How, then, do you tell the two apart? Unfortunately, I think the problem is deeper than you think.
The real trouble is that of the 90% of the population that aren't geeks, 75% of them are intimidated by computers (some are also intimidated by cars, oddly enough). Of the 25% that aren't intimidated (yes, I'm using relativistic percentages, deal with it), 99% feel that they are competent and really understand computers. 90% of them don't.
All statistics are purely estimations, and are only given as an illustration::end disclaimer.
I can agree that the way that psychologists use the term differs from the way joe geek would use it, but that doesn't mean that A) all psychologists agree on the nature of intelligence or B) they aren't trying to define it in a more rigid fashion.
/.]). Yes, you are correct that the definition of the word is a linguists job, but its really tangential to my previous post.
In the psych literature this is referred to as operationally defining the construct (in this case intelligence is the construct). While the definition eventually end up with will not be the same as what you would generally find in a dictionary, it doesn't mean that we aren't defining it. Also, operationalization doesn't always mean narrowing the definition. Frequently it means making it broad enough to cover everything that should come under that label.
Furthermore, although I use the word intelligence in both this and the previous post, I should have really avoided that particular term, due to its cultural and sociological connotations (only IQ is worse). In the field it is more common parlance to say "cognitive ability" or "G".
I would also like to state that I never claimed that psychologists were defining the *word* intelligence, but rather the idea of intelligence in our field (which is implicit to my previous post, but not explicitly stated [although I should know enough to explicitly state _everything_ here on good old
I will note, however, that many psychologists are purist in the sense that they want EVERYONE to use terms the way that they do (forgetting that some people use those same words in their specialty for something very different, a problem that makes some research very difficult). The trouble is that as we make progress in understanding how humans function at the cognitive level (and then the neurological level), we begin to use various existing words to describe processes, since we get laughed at for making up completely new words (after all, neologisms are the domain of schizophrenics).
Thank you, however, for allowing me to spend time thinking about this.
As a question: do you believe that all human cognitive functioning can be attributed to some single underlying factor, or is it multifaceted in an independent fashion? Also, is intelligence malleable? That is, can a human, through various tasks, increase their intelligence?
Personally, I lean toward a malleable, multi-faceted perspective (only half of which is really a popular/common view at this time).
First, intelligence is a *very* complicated beast. Second, we don't have as good of an understanding of it as we'd like (by we, I mean psychologists, who are the primary researchers in intelligence).
Simply put, spatial reasoning isn't that strongly related to verbal reasoning, or mathematical reasoning. Creative ability also seems to be fairly independent of the above. Mechanical ability does seem to be related to creative ability.
STWM is related to most of the above--it seems to be one of the most important sections of memory/intelligence (that's why this finding is so important).
As some one who is very interested in intelligence testing, I would just like to say that from what I can remember, programming (in general), is most strongly correlated with mathematical ability, although some of the others that are mentioned above are important.
However, its important to remember that some people who are very successful programmers don't seem to have the ability to "visualize" things at all. We frequently assume that most people can do the "cube test", (where you are asked to visualize a white cube painted red. Then slice it into smaller cubes. You are then asked to state how many cubes there are, how many white faces, how many red faces, things like that. Also, how many cubes have 2 red faces.) but there are a few people who are very mechanically inclined who simply can't do this visually.
Like I said, intelligence is very complicated, and to see a lot of people here try to boil it down to a simple idea is somewhat painful (but even the pros like to do it, so what can I say).
It probably isn't even metal!
(It's been 15 seconds since you hit reply....
sorry filters!)
I wasn't aware that it was Maslow that said that, but it really is ironic. His theories were definitely "pet" theories, and are NOT taken seriously by Applied Psychologists today. Clinicians perhaps, but not AP's
I'm sorry, you've got it wrong--again. (sheesh, who is this 'Anonymous Coward' guy anyway--he's annoying!)
It was the Romans who were into that.
I would really like to know which law this was. It's a sorry law and needs fixin.
As genesplicer states, sometimes tearing up the land is the idea!
Notice also that there is a tracked version and a tired version of each tractor.
Since you've never farmed, just a point of info--rack and pinion types can do a LOT of damage to your fields by bouncing (genesplicer also mentions this), and by other odd behavior's.
Also, where I am at, there is a lot of mud. Tracks would have been very helpful in these conditions. Instead we ended up with a stuck tractor on more than a few occasions.
Finally, some people use tractors for things other than plowing/cultivation. We use our Belarus (Russian company) for mowing and what not. Granted, its only 84 hp, and isn't on the same scale as those 500hp monsters, but hey. I can imagine commercial alfalfa/timothy growers using these at harvest time. Ditto for corn harvesting.
Also, note that while on the fields, tractors typically travel in straight lines or in circles. Rarely do they do a lot of turning on field. Crossing rows with any type of tire is REALLY bad for your crops. For an analogy, grab some sand and comb lines into with a hair comb (like plowing). Then run a toy car/tractor/whatever across the rows (perpendicular), and see what happens.
Wow, its funny you should mention Strom...I go past the Strom Thurman Institute every day (its on Clemson's campus).
I do agree that this is probably the best solution I've heard in a while. It's always been interesting to me how ex-presidents never run for congress/senate, never do anything like that. In fact, it seems almost like they disappear. Some of that has to do with age (most are fairly old by the time they hit prez), but I think it's partly because they can't run for pres again, so they just take it easy.
I think this would be more of the case in congress if the term limits applied to them also (we could limit them to two terms, just like the prez). Unfortunately the people in charge of enacting such a sentence are very unlikely to do so. Perhaps they don't realize the potential power they would wield as commentators, CEO's and the like once their term as a senator was over.
You, sir (or in the unlikely event that this is the case, madam), are most enlightened.
The problem is that politicians rely on complex laws to keep themselves in office and reduce the power of individuals that aren't part of the ingroup. But don't break out the tin-foil hats just yet--I'm not claimin a conspiracy, just good old-fashioned capitolism. That's right, people striving to make their business thrive. In this case, it's the gov't.
This misses the deeper issue though. Why in the world does this company (or any one else) feel that advertising is a constitutional "right". I am guessing that this is another one of those sorry misinterpretations of "freedom to speech" that we hear about. The sad truth is that freedom of speech was never meant to be guaranteed for companies, just individuals. There is a huge difference between my claims and the claims of any corporate entity.
If advertising was truly free speech, then the laws about truth in advertising wouldn't fly (after all, making us tell the truth restricts our ability to promote our product). As it is, we have two essentially conflicting ideas.
The real problem is that, as you said, we have far too many laws that only a few people know anything about.
One solution would be to make congressmen have no salary, and then they would have to work for a living. This would mean that they wouldn't have time to sit around and think of new laws. Any country with professional politicians is certain to have trouble.
No no no. You get the big one: A 9620 model.
Personally, I like the track model, but you can get one with wheels if you prefer. This beast is akin to the two strong oxen (or cray supercomputer). I would rather have this than 2 of the 6003 series, but if it was 1024 of These, I would rather have the small ones--for most tasks.
I tend to agree, also having recently moved to Gentoo.
I have a problem in Gentoo--I can't print. Getting this to work from the manual is not happening--I've tried.
The trouble is that when I asked about it on the forums I never got a response.
That said, there have also been times when the forums were great. This is fine for someone with 2 things: time and patience. I happened to have both, but for someone who is doing anything remotely mission critical, the forums aren't good enough, and the manual not detailed enough on the trouble-shooting.
As far as emerge--It's awesome. For those who knock Gentoo, but haven't used emerge, you need to try it. If, after that, you still don't like it, then you can bash away, but when all you've ever used is rpm's, don't knock portage--there is no comparison, especially for a newbie.
If I were to start a business selling computers, the default OS would be Gentoo Linux with a good GUI interface for portage. Second would be debian, and then possibly Suse or MDK. Last would be Windows (I don't have a problem with people who like windows, I just happen to disagree with them on the point that it has any intrinsic value).
Certainly, but the OP was saying otherwise as an example of why Linux was a problem. Not being a dedicated coder (I write PHP scripts in my spare time, but that's hardly serious programming next to the power of C++), I don't always know what's available.
First, mod check--Hello? Funny? I don't really believe it--maybe I'll get to meta-mod it!
Second, I think of this as a strength--if your personal tastes don't lie within QT, you can still use something else. If you don't like VB or VC, then you are stuck with one or two alternatives in Winland.
So that's what happened. Of course, Sodipodi still exports just fine on my linux install, but under winxp it craps out every time since I installed the gimp.
I don't know. I really haven't put that much thought into it. Perhaps for companies it should be different (no taxes, just tax gains (so in this case the 5k), but I don't know for sure.