Hold on. Nvidia isn't suppressing other, competing, vendors from creating hardware accelerated physics. AMD could develop their own flavor, or Intel could start making Havok co-processors, and Nvidia would be impotent. Nvidia is only tinkering with the operation of Nvidia products, and yes, I suppose you're right. Nvidia has a monopoly on Nvidia. If they were a company founded on open source or free software or whatever, there could be genuine concern, but that's just not the case. Nvidia's products are all proprietary. If you want hardware acceleration for your physics calculations, design your own, or write a letter to Intel or AMD or SIS. Hell, Microsoft's been showing a steady interest in hardware these past couple years, maybe they could get in on it.
Until Nvidia starts making it hard for other companies to come in and try their hand at this, they're not violating any monopoly laws. They're being dicks, sure, but they're not maintaining a monopoly.
CRT radiation? There's the radiation that allows you detect the picture it's displaying, but LCDs have that too. CRTs don't produce radiation in any of the wavelengths that are dangerous to life forms.
Um... you forgot the biggest vestiage of authority, which is above even the people: law. The people don't over rule the constitution, otherwise we'd be living in a mob rule nightmare. Our rights are protected because the people are bound to the law. Now, if that law runs afoul of the previous law before it, such as the abolition of fair use because of the DMCA, then the DMCA is running afoul of the law, and is not binding.
First Obama says kids in the USA don't get enough schooling. Then the article says kids in the USA do get more than most and STILL don't do well in international testing.
Surely the conclusion is not the quantity is wrong, but the quality.
A politician unware of... the facts? Surely you jest, sir!
5) Most importantly MUCH OF LEARNING IS MEMORIZATION. I've had to memorize a ton of facts just to do my daily job. Bits in a byte, Java keywords, fundamentals of OO programming.
The problem is the WAY the memorization occurs. Sitting in a classroom while a teacher talks about how to calculate the slope of a line over, and over, and over again, is NOT the proper method to facilitate learning. You learn by doing, and while you do these things, you slowly start to realize this stuff is sticking into your head while you don't even realize it.
Education isn't supposed to treat facts as lines of a school play, that you should be able to instantly recall at a moment's notice, they should be integral to your thought process.
I heard from a comedian, whose name escapes me, that we do best in math right after we wake up. Because we look at the alarm clock, and quickly calculate how many snoozes we can get away with.
That attitude exists with the upper middle class in the US. Yuppie parents who are too busy developing their own careers ship their kids off to various after school programs, because the free child care service that is public education isn't long enough for them, so they put the kid in softball, or soccer, or basket weaving.
But there's something fundamentally wrong when most kids treat summer break as a three-month vacation.
I never understood this attitude. When the kids finish high school, or college, they'll be spending the next forty or so years working, and since we're talking about American kids, the poor bastards will be working 40 hours a week with only two weeks of vacation per year.
Why not let the kids enjoy themselves while they're kids? After all, they're fucking kids, they're supposed to have fun, not act like adults.
But even if told, by God himself, exactly what needs to be done, American politicians would still screw it up.
I've had quite enough of my politicians listening to "God", thank you very much. Didn't "God" tell Bush that we'd be victorious with that whole Iraq situation?
XP and Vista both have services running in the userspace. I haven't tried Windows 7 yet, but since it's using the same basic kernel as Vista, I would image services would also run in the userspace there.
Goddamn it. I thought the gold plated analog wires were bad. Then they started doing it with wires carrying a digital signal. When I thought that was as bad as it could get, they started making 800 dollar power cables. Now they're gold plating OPTICAL wires?!
Vegetarians have to worry about calcium deficiencies when they get older. And fat people who are fat enough to actually have it impact their health aren't being selected against, because they still live long enough to reproduce. I don't see many fat people dropping dead from heart attacks at the age of 20, or 30 for that matter. Coupled that with the fact that girls with a higher fat content in their diet will reach sexual maturity faster, fat people could start reproducing in their early to mid teens.
it was believed that actions of the parent could influence the genetics of the child
Minor quibble, but Lamarckian evolution didn't have a concept of genetics, if he did he wouldn't have been so wrong. The mechanism for passing on traits was a mystery even to Darwin.
In evolution, fitness has nothing to do with it. It's all about surviving long enough to pass on your genes to the next generation. There are several aspects of intelligence that help in survival. There's communication, and spatial awareness, but there's also problem solving. Any one of those things could have been the spark that allowed an ancient group of apes to survive, and the mutation that allowed them to be more spatially aware than before might have gotten bigger and bigger, until you get something like a human being.
I'm curious about your statement "as in other species the most intelligent one usually lose". What makes you say that? Intelligence is an adaptation that's able to survive environmental changes, which is a much bigger advantage over flight, or speed, or camouflage, or strong jaws.
Are you seriously comparing the WAY somebody writes something and the way a painter paints? I've read a lot of literature, some great, some seriously overrated, and it was always typed. Even Shakespeare, the god damn grandfather of modern literature, was all conveyed to me through text printed in a uniform manor on some time of printing machine of some sort, not by a human being's strokes on a page.
Some writers might prefer to write their novels with a pen, but they don't submit the story to their publisher that way.
That was the point. The relationship between literacy and cursive is the same sort of relationship as mathematics and non-positional notation number systems. They're not directly related to each other.
Unfortunately, we've got enough coal reserves to keep the coal industry profitable for several centuries. If coal were to face the kinds of problems that oil is going to face in a few decades, I'd bet that nuclear power would be able to gain the foothold it should have gained back in the 70s.
Small nitpick. The Immaculate Conception is actually a reference to Mary, not Jesus. The early church had to find some loophole to prevent Jesus from being cursed from the same "original sin" gimmick as the people he was supposedly saving. His father isn't effected by it, but his mother, as a human being, would have been. So she's got some special circumstance that makes her immune to the blood curse, or what have you.
A good book? Are you reading the same bible that most English speakers mean when they say "bible"? The book that contains the Jewish Torah, and the Christian Gospels? The "moral" book that advocates slavery, rape, incest, human sacrifice, and genocide? The "cool guy" Jesus who has no qualms with sending people to eternal suffering simply for being born in an area of the world where his "message" hadn't arrived to yet?
What about his idea that the world would be ending a few decades after his death? In the big Sermon on the Mount he tells his followers to become bums, to sell everything they have, give the money to charity, and forget about tomorrow, because the now is what's important. Jesus is no more a good role model than the Yahweh figure from the Old Testament.
Not to say there aren't some good ideas in the damn book, but they're few and far between. One of the big ten prohibits theft, which is good. Another one prohibits false idols, but that runs contrary to a multinational/multicultural society that we have now, where it's generally accepted that people are allowed to hold whatever crazy ideas they want. I've performed work on the Sabbath, and the "good book" says I should be stoned to death because of that. It also says, because I've both blasphemed and denied the existence of the holy spirit, that I am committed to eternity in hell without exception. Jesus says so TWICE.
I do believe the term "atheist" is a misnomer, however. The term "naturalist" or "materialist" is much more fitting, since an atheist will usually reject *all* supernatural claims including astrology, numerology, etc. Anything that's nonsense and cannot be verified, basically.
Atheism is simply a response to theism. An atheist is non-belief in a god or gods. There are branches of Buddhism that have no deities, and the people who practice those particular religions are atheists.
There's nothing paradoxical about believing in astrology or numerology or even scientology, and being an atheist. It's a bit tricky to be a practicing Christian, Muslim, or Jew and still be an atheist though.
Your arguments only hold water in countries which have a specific separation between church and state. England has no such separation, because their head of state is also the head of the state religion.
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Hold on. Nvidia isn't suppressing other, competing, vendors from creating hardware accelerated physics. AMD could develop their own flavor, or Intel could start making Havok co-processors, and Nvidia would be impotent. Nvidia is only tinkering with the operation of Nvidia products, and yes, I suppose you're right. Nvidia has a monopoly on Nvidia. If they were a company founded on open source or free software or whatever, there could be genuine concern, but that's just not the case. Nvidia's products are all proprietary. If you want hardware acceleration for your physics calculations, design your own, or write a letter to Intel or AMD or SIS. Hell, Microsoft's been showing a steady interest in hardware these past couple years, maybe they could get in on it.
Until Nvidia starts making it hard for other companies to come in and try their hand at this, they're not violating any monopoly laws. They're being dicks, sure, but they're not maintaining a monopoly.
CRT radiation? There's the radiation that allows you detect the picture it's displaying, but LCDs have that too. CRTs don't produce radiation in any of the wavelengths that are dangerous to life forms.
Um... you forgot the biggest vestiage of authority, which is above even the people: law. The people don't over rule the constitution, otherwise we'd be living in a mob rule nightmare. Our rights are protected because the people are bound to the law. Now, if that law runs afoul of the previous law before it, such as the abolition of fair use because of the DMCA, then the DMCA is running afoul of the law, and is not binding.
First Obama says kids in the USA don't get enough schooling. Then the article says kids in the USA do get more than most and STILL don't do well in international testing.
Surely the conclusion is not the quantity is wrong, but the quality.
A politician unware of... the facts? Surely you jest, sir!
5) Most importantly MUCH OF LEARNING IS MEMORIZATION. I've had to memorize a ton of facts just to do my daily job. Bits in a byte, Java keywords, fundamentals of OO programming.
The problem is the WAY the memorization occurs. Sitting in a classroom while a teacher talks about how to calculate the slope of a line over, and over, and over again, is NOT the proper method to facilitate learning. You learn by doing, and while you do these things, you slowly start to realize this stuff is sticking into your head while you don't even realize it.
Education isn't supposed to treat facts as lines of a school play, that you should be able to instantly recall at a moment's notice, they should be integral to your thought process.
Do we do math better before or after gym class?
I heard from a comedian, whose name escapes me, that we do best in math right after we wake up. Because we look at the alarm clock, and quickly calculate how many snoozes we can get away with.
That attitude exists with the upper middle class in the US. Yuppie parents who are too busy developing their own careers ship their kids off to various after school programs, because the free child care service that is public education isn't long enough for them, so they put the kid in softball, or soccer, or basket weaving.
But there's something fundamentally wrong when most kids treat summer break as a three-month vacation.
I never understood this attitude. When the kids finish high school, or college, they'll be spending the next forty or so years working, and since we're talking about American kids, the poor bastards will be working 40 hours a week with only two weeks of vacation per year.
Why not let the kids enjoy themselves while they're kids? After all, they're fucking kids, they're supposed to have fun, not act like adults.
But even if told, by God himself, exactly what needs to be done, American politicians would still screw it up.
I've had quite enough of my politicians listening to "God", thank you very much. Didn't "God" tell Bush that we'd be victorious with that whole Iraq situation?
It was intentional, honest.
XP and Vista both have services running in the userspace. I haven't tried Windows 7 yet, but since it's using the same basic kernel as Vista, I would image services would also run in the userspace there.
Goddamn it. I thought the gold plated analog wires were bad. Then they started doing it with wires carrying a digital signal. When I thought that was as bad as it could get, they started making 800 dollar power cables. Now they're gold plating OPTICAL wires?!
That's it, I'm officially insane now.
It's even more fun when you're majoring in GA&A
Could you please expand that acro...er... initialism. This is Slashdot, I don't want to piss of a grammar nazi.
Vegetarians have to worry about calcium deficiencies when they get older. And fat people who are fat enough to actually have it impact their health aren't being selected against, because they still live long enough to reproduce. I don't see many fat people dropping dead from heart attacks at the age of 20, or 30 for that matter. Coupled that with the fact that girls with a higher fat content in their diet will reach sexual maturity faster, fat people could start reproducing in their early to mid teens.
it was believed that actions of the parent could influence the genetics of the child
Minor quibble, but Lamarckian evolution didn't have a concept of genetics, if he did he wouldn't have been so wrong. The mechanism for passing on traits was a mystery even to Darwin.
In evolution, fitness has nothing to do with it. It's all about surviving long enough to pass on your genes to the next generation. There are several aspects of intelligence that help in survival. There's communication, and spatial awareness, but there's also problem solving. Any one of those things could have been the spark that allowed an ancient group of apes to survive, and the mutation that allowed them to be more spatially aware than before might have gotten bigger and bigger, until you get something like a human being.
I'm curious about your statement "as in other species the most intelligent one usually lose". What makes you say that? Intelligence is an adaptation that's able to survive environmental changes, which is a much bigger advantage over flight, or speed, or camouflage, or strong jaws.
Are you seriously comparing the WAY somebody writes something and the way a painter paints? I've read a lot of literature, some great, some seriously overrated, and it was always typed. Even Shakespeare, the god damn grandfather of modern literature, was all conveyed to me through text printed in a uniform manor on some time of printing machine of some sort, not by a human being's strokes on a page.
Some writers might prefer to write their novels with a pen, but they don't submit the story to their publisher that way.
That was the point. The relationship between literacy and cursive is the same sort of relationship as mathematics and non-positional notation number systems. They're not directly related to each other.
Unfortunately, we've got enough coal reserves to keep the coal industry profitable for several centuries. If coal were to face the kinds of problems that oil is going to face in a few decades, I'd bet that nuclear power would be able to gain the foothold it should have gained back in the 70s.
Two girls one sewer? Nah, bit redundant.
It was mentioned on the season finale of Penn and Teller's Bullshit. Season 7, the episode aired two weeks ago.
Small nitpick. The Immaculate Conception is actually a reference to Mary, not Jesus. The early church had to find some loophole to prevent Jesus from being cursed from the same "original sin" gimmick as the people he was supposedly saving. His father isn't effected by it, but his mother, as a human being, would have been. So she's got some special circumstance that makes her immune to the blood curse, or what have you.
A good book? Are you reading the same bible that most English speakers mean when they say "bible"? The book that contains the Jewish Torah, and the Christian Gospels? The "moral" book that advocates slavery, rape, incest, human sacrifice, and genocide? The "cool guy" Jesus who has no qualms with sending people to eternal suffering simply for being born in an area of the world where his "message" hadn't arrived to yet?
What about his idea that the world would be ending a few decades after his death? In the big Sermon on the Mount he tells his followers to become bums, to sell everything they have, give the money to charity, and forget about tomorrow, because the now is what's important. Jesus is no more a good role model than the Yahweh figure from the Old Testament.
Not to say there aren't some good ideas in the damn book, but they're few and far between. One of the big ten prohibits theft, which is good. Another one prohibits false idols, but that runs contrary to a multinational/multicultural society that we have now, where it's generally accepted that people are allowed to hold whatever crazy ideas they want. I've performed work on the Sabbath, and the "good book" says I should be stoned to death because of that. It also says, because I've both blasphemed and denied the existence of the holy spirit, that I am committed to eternity in hell without exception. Jesus says so TWICE.
I do believe the term "atheist" is a misnomer, however. The term "naturalist" or "materialist" is much more fitting, since an atheist will usually reject *all* supernatural claims including astrology, numerology, etc. Anything that's nonsense and cannot be verified, basically.
Atheism is simply a response to theism. An atheist is non-belief in a god or gods. There are branches of Buddhism that have no deities, and the people who practice those particular religions are atheists.
There's nothing paradoxical about believing in astrology or numerology or even scientology, and being an atheist. It's a bit tricky to be a practicing Christian, Muslim, or Jew and still be an atheist though.
Your arguments only hold water in countries which have a specific separation between church and state. England has no such separation, because their head of state is also the head of the state religion.