Dude, do you even realize that you're trying to tell someone who actually lives down here that you know better than him how his country works? Heh. It's like me telling one of your astronauts that I know better than him what riding a space shuttle is _really_ like. Geesh.
And really... the rich classes are for socialism? Heh. Well, I'm glad that they'd approve of the fact that here in Germany unions are officially given a lot of power and get a say in how corporations are run. I'm soo sure that if you took a random CEO from the USA, he'd be _totally_ for that. I'm sure your CEOs would also be _totally_ for excellent unemployment benefits, socialized medical care, very harsh anti-trust regulations, and all that other socialist stuff we do here.
I'm also sure they'd _totally_ be for the lower GINI index we have here, meaning, pay attention, that the rich make less money than in the USA (and pay more taxes, too) and the poor make more. Why, the biggest nightmare of the average USA CEO must be that he can't convince the politicians to take more of his money and give it to the poor. I'm sure they're lobbying for that day and night.
I just wonder why they in practice rant and rave against it, and pay think-tanks to attack that.
That was sarcasm, btw.
Lorded by the upper classes and used to it? Heh. Well, blimey, all those strikes and unions must be the workers trying to make their masters more powerful. I'm sure they're on strike to demand to be lorded over.
Heh. Dude, you just proved in one fell swoop that you have _zero_ clue how Europe works, you have _zero_ clue how socialism works, etc. I'm sorry, I wish I had something nice to say, but it's just so stupid I don't even know where to start. Learn how the world really works, lemming, before lecturing others abut how their country works. Hallucinations, propaganda falsehoods and Hollywood movies don't quite qualify as primary sources, you know.
And here's a parting idea: if you _really_ want to know why the economy changed in the 30's look up the Great Depression and Keynesian Economics some day. Might give you some actual data as to why those changes were necessary. And why the countries which spent more (e.g., the USA with its New Deal, or Germany with its rearmament) got out of the Great Depression fast, while those who stuck to lean mean government ideas (e.g., Canada) enjoyed a jolly good depression until the 40's.
_That_ is what happened in the 30's. Not some rich men's conspiracy to give some money to the poor, but just the fact that the old economy became no longer functional. If you drew two curves, (1) how much you produce vs production costs, and (2) how much you want to sell vs the price at which people will buy that much, the two just became _parallel_. Aggregate supply had just outstripped aggregate demand, and there was no price point or production value at which you could even break even. _That_ is why the economic model had to be patched, and fast.
I mean, again: if you're going to criticize something, be it the economic policy or other countries, it might help if you actually have any clue what you're criticizing. Attacking strawmen and bogus conspiracy theories is only funny so far.
You know, by now I wonder if the uncany valley effect actually exists at all. Remember, it's just a hypothesis.
The thing is, if you carefully cherry-pick your examples, and/or are allowed to hand-wave where any given example should fall, you can convincingly argue the uncanny valley effect. But the problem is when you anchor two examples which should, for example be in the valley, yet a third in the middle is not. Although by the shape of it, the third should be there too.
For example, the FF movies were supposed to be in the valley, and EQ2 is easy to argue as being in the valley too. A _lot_ of people's suspension of disbelief was tripped by EQ2. But take Oblivion: the graphics are half-way between EQ2 and the FF movies, yet they don't cause the same reaction. Hmm...
For example, if think it's as unidimensional as in the uncanny valley theory, then just degrading quality on something that's in the valley should eventually move it out on the left bank of it. I.e., it should become pretty. Right? Well, zombies are the classic uncanny valley example, right from the paper. So reducing texture quality and polygon counts on zombies should eventually make them pretty cute, right? I can't think of any game where that was true.
Could it be that some things are repulsive because of cultural associations, and _not_ because of an uncanny valley effect? For example, zombies are disturbing because they remind us of death and have millenia of being a genuine fear for the living, not because they're slightly imperfect humans. When people feared revenants in medieval europe, it wasn't because they looked imperfect, it was a genuine fear of the idea that the dead could come back and hunt the living. Could it be that emotional baggage that's the _real_ cause of our repulsion there? Just a possibility.
Now I don't claim I can disprove the uncanny valley. Just that it looks highly unbelievable to me by now. I actually started as a believer, and genuinely collected examples of why game designers and artists should avoid it. But then it just started to not add up. I ran into more examples as to why it doesn't work the way I think, than into examples supporting that hypothesis.
You're from the USA, right? Well, then I'm not surprised that you don't get it. You've had that sociopathic clique tell you all the time that the only way the economy and freedom can _possibly_ work is if you let them have more power, and that any other way leads to slavery and poverty.
Unfortunately, I'm from Europe, and here we're living proof that it doesn't work that way. Look in the G8 who's in there besides the USA, and you'll find such countries as the left-wing Germany and the pretty socialist France in there. We didn't go bankrupt yet, and we're not quite slaves either. Funny how those social elitism's bogeymen just failed to happen.
Germany had a bit of a setback as it absorbed the bankrupt and obsolete industry of the GDR, but by now we seem to be over it. Germany has positive economic growth again. I guess you'd have a bit of a hickup on the whole if you had to inherit and industrialize Mexico too.
The main difference between us and you, as far as I can tell, is that in the USA the bogeyman is "noo, don't let the government give any laws or it'll be an unstoppable slippery slope to fascism." We're more like in a mind to actually control the government and make it work for us. We also have a parliamentary system that didn't degenerate into two parties and gerrimandering yet, so it tends to work better.
Looking at who's currently arguably closer to fascism, dunno, I'd say the continental european way actually slid the least in that direction, if at all. Mind you, politicians are politicians everywhere, and that's not to say anyone is happy with theirs. But on the whole, I can look at mine here and not worry too much about on whose payroll are they. That's worth something.
So it makes me wonder... maybe all those bogeymen exist only in the USA rich clique's propaganda, after all? We've had over 60 years in which we were supposed to get that "boot in everyone's face", and it just didn't happen. We did all the "bad stuff" you're warned not to do. We had good social security, we used the government lots, we passed laws, we regulated the economy, we hit trusts with a _huge_ stick regularly, etc. Heck, some of us even took candy from strangers;) We should have been bankrupt and slaves by now. We're not.
So are you sure that those bogeymen aren't just some scarecrow to keep you in line? Just a possibility.
1. Roman "democracy" was by and large a democracy of the rich. When they voted on anything, the entire population of Rome was divided into 193 centuries, by economic class, and they voted by century. One vote per century. And 98 centuries were made of the senators and the equites. So they may have had a lot of poor, but the rich had the majority of votes by definition. Furthermore, voting stopped completely when they had a majority of 97 centuries either for or against, so quite routinely the poorest never had a chance to cast any vote.
That's democracy of the rich for you, seriously.
2. You have to remember that welfare and populism were limited to the city of Rome itself. No more, no less. If you wanted to vote to tax Egypt or the Gaul to hand out more bread in Rome, everyone would be for it.
Fixing prices for the peasants outside Rome to give cheap bread to the plebs in Rome would have been insanely popular at any point.
3. The only political office I can remember offhand that _required_ one to be a plebeian, was the Tribune Of The Plebs. The requirement seemed to be very flexible however. Remember that Octavian Augustus, among the many titles he accumulated in one hand as Imperator was also a Tribune Of The Plebs. If you can genuinely believe that he was a poor commoner, I have some logging rights to sell in Sahara. They were also routinely bribed by the rich.
4. The late Western Roman Empire was more... weird. Not everything you learned about the peak of the republic still applied. They had increasingly deranged emperors, the praetorian guard started installing and removing emperors itself, they had a _major_ civil war over who gets to be Augustus (emperor) and who gets to be Caesar (vice-emperor) in the tetrarchy, etc. Basically the Western Roman Empire in the 3-4th century AD isn't quite what you've learned about the Roman Republic.
5. Well, just because some people argue nonsense, it doesn't mean they can really rewrite history. What happened, well, already happened, whether the right-wing think-tanks like it or not. Plus, there are a lot of people who are disillusioned with the present and retreat in some rose-tinted illusion that the past was some gentle and noble utopia. (And I don't mean only in modern times, but also see the Renaissance.) Unfortunately, it never really was that great. Even more unfortunately, that sanitized illusion makes them easy to manipulate by those think-tanks I've already mentioned.
And yes, I'm not surprised that the rich in the USA, who want more political power for themselves, would try to paint it that way. "See, giving us more power is good, giving power to the poor is bad." It's only expected, I guess. Unfortunately that's not what actually happened in the real history.
Yes, how history does repeat. The downside is that until there was a significant drop population, that bubonic plague thing, there was no positive change for the commoner. Once there were not enough serfs to till the fields or serve as Men at Arms, conditions leveled out for all.
That's very insightful, but unfortunately, it's even worse than that. (If one can really say worse than the plague.)
1. Not for all. Eastern Europe, for example, was already sparsely populated enough that the plagues had no major impact. So there serfdom continued to be a downwards slide until the 19'th century. I've already given the example of Poland, but things got even worse in Russia, for example.
2. It took some very bloody revolts to really get a positive change, even with the plague. The ruling class didn't just start giving better salaries and conditions when western Europe depopulated. The first (and second and third) attempt again was to fix prices and try to force everyone to work more for less pay, so they can keep their luxury and privileges with less population.
As an example of it, in England and France which were having a jolly good 100 years war, the first effect of the population halving was that the levies on each peasant doubled.
The problem is, it doesn't work like that. If you give the rich and powerful enough unchecked power, freedom of choice is either (A) taken from you, because they make a deal, or (B) meaningless, as it went down a spiral where everyone does the same things.
As an example of the former, you can see the last centuries of Rome and the introduction of serfdom. The rich clique that formed the senate:
1. proclaimed themselves not subject to tax
2. raised taxes on everyone else, especially the free peasants (land was the most common pension for soldiers and recruitment incentive, so they eventually had quite a few) to support the ever increasing costs of warfare and the luxury in Rome
3. tried to fix prices _and_ devalue the coin, by law. There goes some of your freedom right there, as a free peasant or small landowner: they already tell you what your produce is worth, and it just became half of what you got for it last year.
4. when people started moving away as a result, they just forbade everyone to move, effectively turning all free peasants into serfs of the empire. In one fell swoop.
I'm sure those peasants still thought they have a choice before step 3. Unfortunately after step 4 it started going downhill fast, and eventually they were not only tied to the land and taxed, but had to work 3 days a week for the local noble too, and some 15 centuries later it had become 6 days a week and no land of their own at all. In some places (e.g., some Polish revolts were against that), serfs could not only be sold, but also rented by burghers, merchants, whatever. The long and painful slide from a free peasant class back to effective slavery, eh?
As a _probable_ example of the latter, well, you can learn a lot about what problems a society had, by the laws they give. That Moses forbade working on Sabbath on penalty of _death_, should tell you that they probably had a _major_ problem there. It also gives you the idea that probably nothing else worked, choice be damned.
At some point, even if you forbid by law to _require_ working on the Sabbath, people will just find weasel ways to require "volunteering" for it. (See the recent EA scandal.) So at some point your choice becomes picking one of X potential employers, all of which require it. You have a choice to take it or starve.
The death penalty on workers on Sabbath is, if you think about it, the ultimate way to stop asking for it right in its tracks. There is no reward someone can promise you, in exchange for maybe getting stoned to death, and no threat they could use to make anyone accept that. Maybe religion could work to motivate someone to go to death, but here religion is what forbade that in the first place. Basically it attacked the supply side of labour, not the demand side.
It makes me wonder how bad it had got, at the very least.
At any rate, sometimes you have to restrict people's "choice" to accept being kicked in the head, because otherwise it can very soon degenerate into something where you have no choice to refuse it.
Finally, don't get me wrong, I'm not against the rich or capitalism... as such. It's just that when one side has disproportionately more bargaining power and power to subvert the system, at some point you have to restrict what they can do with it. Otherwise, if left unchecked, they'll just figure out a way to turn everyone else into their serfs. See, the Romans again.
Do most things confuse you as much as this simple concept?
How did you manage to stumble upon slashdot, anyway?
I notice that you still haven't answered that question, and not only from me. Instead you do a piss-poor ad-hominem.
Your assumption that the software on the iPhone doesn't count in that total price you calculated price of components is... bizarre, to put it very very mildly. Doubly so discounting an embedded version on account that a desktop version exists. It's akin to saying that Windows CE is free because Windows for PCs already existed.
So to paraphrase that ad-hominem right back at you -- in case that's the only pseudo-logic you're equipped to comprehend -- do most things confuse you as much as the simple concept that software costs money to develop, money to port, and money to test? Or that such costs need to be recouped? How did you stumble upon slashdot anyway? No, seriously.
And I think you'll find that Apple still charges you $129 for it. Or do you think that's pure profit too, because the only physical cost was the CD and manuals?
By the same logic, an OS/X upgrade only costs 10 cents for the CD, and the latest Intel CPU is just a couple of dollars worth of silicon. I think you'll find that recouping R&D costs is the biggest chunk of the price in high-tech products.
Well, on the whole I guess we're not disagreeing too much then, except on one point: you seem to have more faith in the human species than I have.
If I understand your point right, yes, someone with the correct mental discipline will be able to use even worse tools or languages right, and can critically evaluate a tool and discard it if it's not the right one. I can't disagree with that.
Being the jaded cynic that I am, however, I'd question how many such people exist.
A) I see people everyday lacking the mental discipline to use programming languages or tools right, and still making a living anyway. In fact, they got hired just because they were cheaper than someone who does. Will an underpaid, high-stress job like teaching get all the aces where some much higher paid job doesn't? Somehow I doubt it.
B) In a lot of cases, using a tool isn't really based on an in-depth analysis. It can be driven by hype, laziness, pressure, or just following orders and using whatever management gave you. In some cases you don't even really have the knowledge to do the right evaluation, so you just go with the flow. Again, will the situation in schools be that much different from the rest of the world? Nope, I don't expect it to.
Well, it's sorta a question of estimated market share, the way I see it. Someone probably figured it out like this:
- we'd sell X1 thousand units at price Y1, unlocked and for everyone
- we'd sell X2 thousand units at the much lower price Y2, even if it's tied to AT&T
Obviously they thought that X2 > X1.
Whether that's right or wrong, smart or dumb, I couldn't tell. But basically, yes, Apple obviously thought that that's a smart move. Feel free to agree or disagree with them, though.
To quote Scot Adams' My New Favourite Response to people answering to their own mis-understandings of what he wrote, "I agree with your analysis of your hallucination."
I never said that the cost of manufacturing dictates the market price. It does however, yes, dictate whether you stay in that game or not. "Would it still sell for $1000?" is actually a damn valid question. It's the "can we stay in that game?" question, in fact.
Apple's model is based on getting a hefty part of the price subsidized by AT&T. Without it, would they still be in the game of selling iPhones? The others faced the exact same question, and that's why they didn't make an iPhone before. That's what I'm saying there.
So if you got tripped that badly by "Would it still sell for $1000?", then maybe it's you who needs to re-read those econ 101 notes. Because while you've proven that you can repeat the trivia, I see no sign of actual understanding there. _That_ question is exactly what determines whether you're in that game or not. If you don't understand that, the rest is just mechanically spewing trivia, and not much of a sign of economic wisdom.
1. I'm not saying that bad teachers didn't exist before. I'm saying that reliance on Powerpoint might just make it even worse.
2. Yes, you can get such a split on a blackboard too, but it's not "natural" so to speak. Unless you're a bit schizophrenic or make a hell of an effort, it's not the natural reflex to think of two different things at the same time. Try writing the story of Snow White on a piece of paper while the words of your national anthem out loud, and you'll see for yourself how hard it can get.
So on a blackboard you'll at the very least take a break from writing while you take the verbal detour.
At any rate, most people won't even try causing such a split on a blackboard, because it's taxing on their own brains. You can do it, if you really try, but that's the point: you have to try. Most people just don't. Unless they're actually malicious or deranged, that is.
With powerpoint it's just _natural_. I could present to you the summary of the US Independence War on slides, while telling you about Markov chains, without missing a beat. Ok, so most won't go to that kind of extremes, but more modest disconnects are actually commonplace.
3. Can Powerpoint be used well? Yes. But given that even professionals get it wrong all the time, I wouldn't set my hopes that high that every single teacher in some small underfunded school will get it 100% right, 100% of the time. I'm not saying that teachers are dumb, I'm saying that they're humans too. If it's possible -- and in fact, very, very easy -- to get something wrong, they'll do the same as any other profession: get it wrong often enough to matter.
Maybe not surprising, but we'll have to wait and see what kind of effects it has on the iPhone.
Thing is, that kind of agreements aren't just because Apple or AT&T are "evil" and want to tie you to their network. They're a glimpse into how expensive the iPhone really is. That price you see when you buy one is already minus AT&T's subsidies, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're quite hefty.
That's how everyone else negotiates too. Exclusive contract is worth X dollars, for the features and hopefully new killer app, Y dollars, for tying some functionality to their network, Z dollars, and so on. Dunno how it works in the USA, but that's how we end up with 1 Euro phones down here, as long as you're tied to a telco.
Seeing the extent to which the iPhone is locked down, makes me think Apple negotiated some pretty damn hefty subsidies for it. I mean, for example, for any other phone, they don't even bother worrying what you do with it, as long as you have your two year contract with the one who subsidized it. If you have your 2 years T-Mobile contract anyway, and you want to use that phone with Vodaphone too (thus paying two phone bills for it), T-Mobile won't usually give a damn. It's just assumed that most people won't bother. If you wanted a Vodaphone contract, you'd have just gotten one of their phones. If for the iPhone anyone actually gives a damn whether you can use it at all on another network, they probably are paying more than the standard subsidies for it.
Thing is, the iPhone didn't happen before just because it's expensive, not because everyone else is a drooling moron and Apple is t3h genius. Symbian has all the expertise they need with touch screens even before they starting having anything to do with phones, for example. My old Psion 5 has touch-screen. Everyone just bet that there's not much of a market for a phone that costs as much as a laptop. Apple apparently bet that there's one if they get half the price subsidized by AT&T.
So it might get interesting. If Apple can't deliver the lockdown they promised for the extra money, AT&T would have to be dumb to keep paying for it. And that's at the very least.
Would the iPhone still be as attractive as a $1000 toy (a number pulled out of the arse, for example sake) if it were unlocked and usable on any network? Sure, for some nerds it would still be a cool toy, but more people -- or they significant other, if they have one -- would start wondering if they _really_ need one.
It might get interesting.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating curtailing consumer rights to save the iPhone. Just saying what I see at work there. (And I could be wrong too.)
The problem with powerpoint slides is that someone recently figured out we're not made to read text off a slide and hear someone talk at the same time. We only have enough brain power for one, not for both. If you even try to -- and people instinctively will -- you'll go fuzzy brained and remember neither. So in effect showing powerpoint slides badly, can be in fact worse than not writing anything anywhere.
Now they figured that out for management presentations, and why you come empty-headed from of a presentation you were actually interested in. But I can't come up with any argument as to why it would work better in schools. In fact, it might be outright scary. Using powerpoint instead of a blackboard may well be _the_ most destructive thing one can do.
There are ways to use powerpoint well, like you'd use an overhead projector. E.g., to show charts, relevant illustrations, etc. E.g., in a biology class you could show a picture of a cell's structure as a slide instead of as an overhead projector foil. And leave people time to digest it, instead of forcing them to also take notes at the same time.
But a substitute for a blackboard it ain't. On a blackboard:
A) you're led to follow the current focus of attention, whatever word is currently being written. You don't just get a big word soup to get lost in and out of sync, you get to follow the cursor (hand with chalk) so to speak, at the same time you're hearing it. It works to reinforce what you hear, not to try to split your attention between two different texts.
B) the teacher is only human too, and he too would have trouble if he tried speaking one thing while writing something completely different. So there's a self-reinforcing mechanism to hold prevent it from becoming an attention-splitting device. As a subcase, if he takes some time to explain why he did something to a formula, he won't already start writing the next one.
C) it enforces _some_ structure, because a blackboard is all the space you can get at a time. Which also cuts back on distractions like flipping back and forth between charts. Which is a distraction. Everytime you go "hmm, this one we don't need.. next... nope, this one we'll learn next week... let's see the next one... nah, we don't need that... next... aha, here we are..." that's not just wasted time. That's a bunch of people who've either tried to read it fast and the next minutes will be busy figuring that out instead of what you say next, or (probably most) whose attention and focus went right out the window while you did that little powerpoint dance.
D) well, I hate to be mean to teachers (God knows they have a shitty job already), but it forces them to prepare that material instead of just borrowing someone's slides. And if they didn't know it too well, they'll at least recap it while they write it on the blackboard.
If you will, what I'm saying at points C an D is that I see it as the same as in IT: the better tools and languages we had, the more unqualified monkeys got hired to use them. I'm all for better tools and compilers, don't get me wrong. But in a lot of places the trend wasn't to do more with them, but to lower the baseline for the people hired to use them. And they'll feel the less of a need to learn what they're doing there. After all, the tool will do the thinking for them, right?
The same might just happen in schools. I can see some people (e.g., substitute teachers) going into a class with someone else's powerpoint presentation, but barely knowing what it's about.
Except in IT you have at least some reality check whether it worked or not. If it doesn't compile or doesn't run the test cases, you know you've screwed up. In teaching we might not even know it before we pump out a few generations of complete airheads, for no fault of their own. And for a change I don't mean just the dumb jocks and prom queens, because the powerpoint fuzzy-brain effect applies to nerds interested in that topic too.
From my experience, in a lot of companies, they just don't want to innovate.
Doing the exact same thing with a computer application instead of a typewritten form isn't innovation. I'm sorry, it just isn't. An optimization that doesn't change the process at all, isn't it. Innovation is when you figure that you can turn the process upside down, and do things like they _weren't_ done before. When Ford figured out he'd use an assembly line instead of the old fashioned way, that was innovation. If Ford had just hired a faster courier boy to carry the forms from one beancounter to another (which is what a lot of computer apps really are today: just a faster way to do the exact same thing with the same people), that would be at most a straightforward optimization.
But when you want to shake up the process, you run into a lot of managers and egos which would be displaced by the new version. And there in a lot of places is where it fails. Try explaining to someone that his function will lose some power or prestige when your cool new system goes online, and see what kind of disproportionate resources he'll mobilize against it. Or try explaining to an old dog that he must learn new tricks, and see real resistance in action.
Remember, a lot of these are guys who know how to backstab, brownnose or make backroom deals, when they need to. In a lot of cases that's the only skill that got them there in the first place. If you think they'll just bend over and take it just because a techie figured out how to displace them, you may be surprised.
So what will happen in a lot of places is that they don't really want innovation. They want to keep their power and influence intact, and keep doing things like they were always done. With a computer, maybe, but nevertheless in the exact same way.
If the old process required that a form doesn't even have a registration number before a beancounter uses his stamp to give it one, don't be surprised if the requirement for the computer version says the record may not have an ID until the beancounter gives it one. That's his "power" there: he's the guy (or the boss of the guy) who gives registration numbers. He's not going to give that up. (Don't laugh, I've actually been in a team which implemented exactly that. We actually had a hidden unique ID, while the one assigned by the beancounter was only for display purposes.)
That's not innovation.
The budget is an excuse there. In a lot of places, the budget isn't even really calculated as in "what can we get for how much money", but a function of:
- corporate politics and petty wars and power grabs between heads of departments
- the product of some inflexible regulations (e.g., if in the last year you used only X dollars, you automatically get that. Whether there's actually an ROI in it or not. And a lot goes into _waste_, not R&R, because a penny saved is a penny cut next from your budget next year.)
- the result of some new boss pissing on everything to mark his territory (e.g., he'll show everyone who's boss by pointless half-baked restructuring games and budget reorganization, not because he actually studied what needs to be done with that money, but just to mark his new territory.) This goes especially well with the previous situation.
Etc.
Note that in the above I've said "many" or "a lot", but not "all". Yeah, there still are sane places. On the other hand, like Scot Adams put it recently, we seem to have harnessed the power of stupidity: at any given time, 90% of society's resources are pushed off a cliff by morons. It makes one wonder.
on the other hand if the machine was bought with windows 98 and is now running a pirate copy of 2K or XP pro thier stats wouldn't show it.
Assuming that you never upgraded anything in that computer, i.e., that you still have the 300 MHz K6 or Pentium 2 you bought in '98, that is probably correct. If not they'll put two and two together and figure out that 1 CPU + 1 Mobo + 1 Graphics Card + 1 HDD = Auugh, someone built a computer without buying a license from us.
Seriously, don't underestimate the power of being paid to cry wolf, or being the official wolf-crier of an industry. If the BSA came and said, "hmm, you know, actually if we use more sane assumptions (e.g., that a chinese kid who used 3DSMax once to mod a $40 game wouldn't have actually spent several thousands on it otherwise), losses to piracy are really minimal", that would be the end of the BSA right there and then. MS and the gang would gut them and replace them with someone else who understands what's expected of them.
I think averages aren't actually stereotypes, though. The point when it becomes a stereotype and possibly sexist or racist is when it's extrapolated to "all X are/do/like Y" or the equivalent "you're an X, therefore you are/do/like Y". A lot of people extrapolate from statistics and averages to that, but it's that extrapolation that's the fallacy, not the statistic or average itself.
E.g., consider this "most insects have 6 legs, spiders are insects, therefore spiders have 6 legs." The fallacy there is the implied extrapolation from "most" (i.e., a variant of "some") to "all", not the "most insects have 6 legs" premise.
Ditto, "women like pink" is a stereotype, especially if it's taken to the point of "you're a woman, therefore you like pink", but "more women than men like pink" is just a statistic. And yes, we have a statistic showing that, for westerners. (For Chinese it's much more of a close call, since it's a lucky colour in their culture, though.) I think the same applies to blogs, recipes, physical strength, or anything else. If you steer clear of the usual extrapolation from "some" to "all", it's IMHO not really a stereotype.
Hard to imagine that viral DNA is 5% of our genome without having any impact..
Actually, it's very easy to imagine. Transcribing DNA to proteins happens between a START and a STOP marker. If those markers are lost -- heck, even if just the START marker is lost -- then that piece of code is never "executed". In programming terms, it's commented out.
And, yeah, your genetic code contains a whole bunch of commented-out sequences. Dunno, I don't have much trouble believing that they have no impact whatsoever:)
You haven't played against some players. Half the newbies will stand watching the pretty missile coming their way, then half of those start screaming "cheater!", "aimbot!", "wall-hack!"
My favourite example from way back when I still played CS goes like this:
So I just pick the first server that's not full or empty, from a list sorted by ping. It has only 2 players, but everyone has to start somewhere. More will probably come.
The first thing I notice is that suspiciously I'm assigned to counter-terrorist, while both the guys already on the server are terrorists. Not much point in playing a team game if both are on the same team, and the only two on the whole server.
I'm new on that server, I quickly buy a TMP, I don't get any armour, helmet or grenades, and pretty much rush ahead like a noob. If you're not familiar to CS, the TMP used to be the most underpowered SMG. You pretty much needed to change the clip if the opponent had armour and you weren't at point blank range. Well, not exactly, but you get the idea. (I'm told it became much better in the meantime, but I wouldn't know.)
So I run into them around a corner, and I mean literally bump into. I had one guy's head on half my screen. I'm surprised to see that one of them is already carrying the bomb in his hands, half a map away from the target position, and the other one is apparently guarding him. At any rate, it's a sunday morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet, so they watch me and I watch them like a noob for a full second or so. (Yeah, not one of my best days.)
Then I open fire and ventilate both their brains from 1 ft away, like the NKVD;)
Before I go any further, let me stress that some more: it was not the most challenging situation or good for bragging rights in any way. I was very slow to react and it was from 1 ft away, so it's hardly an achievement. I mean, my barrel was pretty much up one of their noses.
So they start screaming that I somehow used aimbots or wall hacks. WTF? "Guys, why would I ever need a wallhack or aimbot from 1ft distance?" I get kicked.
Heh. I didn't say that you could pick up the universe and run with it, like with a suitcase, or whatever you imagined there. The thing about flipping the suitcase was just a simple experiment to show that the complete system has an angular momentum even if just a part of it spins. I'm not saying someone could turn the whole universe. Just that it can have a non-zero total angular momentum, if all galaxies rotate the same way.
1. If you intend to shaft someone, and feed them mis-information and FUD to that end, it's immoral, yeah.
2. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with telling people that it's a damn good idea to have one recovery disk. And if you want the shop to do that for you, it will cost money, because their employees, time, space, etc, still cost money. It's providing a service, for a cost. It's how capitalism works.
Some shops will do #1, some shops will do #2, and some won't do it at all and deal with the fallout of the clients coming back with a thoroughly screwed up system and demanding it fixed for free because it's still under warranty.
In other words, the question is where you set the bar. _If_ for you anything other than doing unpaid charity work is "screwing over the stupid for a buck", you might have some unrealistic expectations. It's not how the economy works. If you're too stupid to do a task, or can't be arsed to learn how, or your time is too valuable to do it personally, you pay someone to do that service for you.
Heck, I'm too "stupid" to know all laws and precedents, so I pay a lawyer when I need that kind of knowledge. I'm too "stupid" to know all diseases and antibiotics/antivirals/etc, so I pay a doctor. Etc. Is it "screwing me over for a buck"? No, it's just providing a service for adequate remuneration.
Sure, the doctor could take the time and teach me medicine for free instead, but chances are it would be a waste of both my time and his anyway. Ditto for the lawyer.
I fail to see why the same wouldn't apply to a shop's techies. If you're too stupid to do your own recovery CD, and want someone else to do it for you, you pay for that service.
Again, I do draw the line at telling the customer lies to get them to pay for something they don't need. That's unethical. But offering a paid service, even an overpriced one? What's wrong with that?
I didn't mean just mass, as in, they tend to stay behind unless you push them. I meant angular momentum, as in, they tend to stay pointing in the same direction. That would happen even in a perfect vacuum.
Well, anyway, the thing with the tops and the briefcase was probably just an unneeded tangent. (I do a lot of those.) The important part is that the total system has a non-zero total angular momentum even if the centres of the tops don't move.
Of course, the galaxies themselves could still move around each other, or around the centre of mass, or, really, whatever. I don't know enough to rule that out. I'm just saying that even without that, if they're aligned, there _still_ would be a total angular momentum.
Yeah, man, but those turtles spin. Or maybe the last one has a gramophone kinda thingie on top that rotates the Earth. I mean, if God made a mechanism that rotates the Sun on a pole around the turtle, not to mention the planets and stuff, it only takes an extra pair of cogs and a shaft to make the disc on the turtle spin too. It's like, totally awesome, dude;)
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Dude, do you even realize that you're trying to tell someone who actually lives down here that you know better than him how his country works? Heh. It's like me telling one of your astronauts that I know better than him what riding a space shuttle is _really_ like. Geesh.
And really... the rich classes are for socialism? Heh. Well, I'm glad that they'd approve of the fact that here in Germany unions are officially given a lot of power and get a say in how corporations are run. I'm soo sure that if you took a random CEO from the USA, he'd be _totally_ for that. I'm sure your CEOs would also be _totally_ for excellent unemployment benefits, socialized medical care, very harsh anti-trust regulations, and all that other socialist stuff we do here.
I'm also sure they'd _totally_ be for the lower GINI index we have here, meaning, pay attention, that the rich make less money than in the USA (and pay more taxes, too) and the poor make more. Why, the biggest nightmare of the average USA CEO must be that he can't convince the politicians to take more of his money and give it to the poor. I'm sure they're lobbying for that day and night.
I just wonder why they in practice rant and rave against it, and pay think-tanks to attack that.
That was sarcasm, btw.
Lorded by the upper classes and used to it? Heh. Well, blimey, all those strikes and unions must be the workers trying to make their masters more powerful. I'm sure they're on strike to demand to be lorded over.
Heh. Dude, you just proved in one fell swoop that you have _zero_ clue how Europe works, you have _zero_ clue how socialism works, etc. I'm sorry, I wish I had something nice to say, but it's just so stupid I don't even know where to start. Learn how the world really works, lemming, before lecturing others abut how their country works. Hallucinations, propaganda falsehoods and Hollywood movies don't quite qualify as primary sources, you know.
And here's a parting idea: if you _really_ want to know why the economy changed in the 30's look up the Great Depression and Keynesian Economics some day. Might give you some actual data as to why those changes were necessary. And why the countries which spent more (e.g., the USA with its New Deal, or Germany with its rearmament) got out of the Great Depression fast, while those who stuck to lean mean government ideas (e.g., Canada) enjoyed a jolly good depression until the 40's.
_That_ is what happened in the 30's. Not some rich men's conspiracy to give some money to the poor, but just the fact that the old economy became no longer functional. If you drew two curves, (1) how much you produce vs production costs, and (2) how much you want to sell vs the price at which people will buy that much, the two just became _parallel_. Aggregate supply had just outstripped aggregate demand, and there was no price point or production value at which you could even break even. _That_ is why the economic model had to be patched, and fast.
I mean, again: if you're going to criticize something, be it the economic policy or other countries, it might help if you actually have any clue what you're criticizing. Attacking strawmen and bogus conspiracy theories is only funny so far.
You know, by now I wonder if the uncany valley effect actually exists at all. Remember, it's just a hypothesis.
The thing is, if you carefully cherry-pick your examples, and/or are allowed to hand-wave where any given example should fall, you can convincingly argue the uncanny valley effect. But the problem is when you anchor two examples which should, for example be in the valley, yet a third in the middle is not. Although by the shape of it, the third should be there too.
For example, the FF movies were supposed to be in the valley, and EQ2 is easy to argue as being in the valley too. A _lot_ of people's suspension of disbelief was tripped by EQ2. But take Oblivion: the graphics are half-way between EQ2 and the FF movies, yet they don't cause the same reaction. Hmm...
For example, if think it's as unidimensional as in the uncanny valley theory, then just degrading quality on something that's in the valley should eventually move it out on the left bank of it. I.e., it should become pretty. Right? Well, zombies are the classic uncanny valley example, right from the paper. So reducing texture quality and polygon counts on zombies should eventually make them pretty cute, right? I can't think of any game where that was true.
Could it be that some things are repulsive because of cultural associations, and _not_ because of an uncanny valley effect? For example, zombies are disturbing because they remind us of death and have millenia of being a genuine fear for the living, not because they're slightly imperfect humans. When people feared revenants in medieval europe, it wasn't because they looked imperfect, it was a genuine fear of the idea that the dead could come back and hunt the living. Could it be that emotional baggage that's the _real_ cause of our repulsion there? Just a possibility.
Now I don't claim I can disprove the uncanny valley. Just that it looks highly unbelievable to me by now. I actually started as a believer, and genuinely collected examples of why game designers and artists should avoid it. But then it just started to not add up. I ran into more examples as to why it doesn't work the way I think, than into examples supporting that hypothesis.
You're from the USA, right? Well, then I'm not surprised that you don't get it. You've had that sociopathic clique tell you all the time that the only way the economy and freedom can _possibly_ work is if you let them have more power, and that any other way leads to slavery and poverty.
;) We should have been bankrupt and slaves by now. We're not.
Unfortunately, I'm from Europe, and here we're living proof that it doesn't work that way. Look in the G8 who's in there besides the USA, and you'll find such countries as the left-wing Germany and the pretty socialist France in there. We didn't go bankrupt yet, and we're not quite slaves either. Funny how those social elitism's bogeymen just failed to happen.
Germany had a bit of a setback as it absorbed the bankrupt and obsolete industry of the GDR, but by now we seem to be over it. Germany has positive economic growth again. I guess you'd have a bit of a hickup on the whole if you had to inherit and industrialize Mexico too.
The main difference between us and you, as far as I can tell, is that in the USA the bogeyman is "noo, don't let the government give any laws or it'll be an unstoppable slippery slope to fascism." We're more like in a mind to actually control the government and make it work for us. We also have a parliamentary system that didn't degenerate into two parties and gerrimandering yet, so it tends to work better.
Looking at who's currently arguably closer to fascism, dunno, I'd say the continental european way actually slid the least in that direction, if at all. Mind you, politicians are politicians everywhere, and that's not to say anyone is happy with theirs. But on the whole, I can look at mine here and not worry too much about on whose payroll are they. That's worth something.
So it makes me wonder... maybe all those bogeymen exist only in the USA rich clique's propaganda, after all? We've had over 60 years in which we were supposed to get that "boot in everyone's face", and it just didn't happen. We did all the "bad stuff" you're warned not to do. We had good social security, we used the government lots, we passed laws, we regulated the economy, we hit trusts with a _huge_ stick regularly, etc. Heck, some of us even took candy from strangers
So are you sure that those bogeymen aren't just some scarecrow to keep you in line? Just a possibility.
You do it too. See, Saccades.
That's somewhat inaccurate, though:
1. Roman "democracy" was by and large a democracy of the rich. When they voted on anything, the entire population of Rome was divided into 193 centuries, by economic class, and they voted by century. One vote per century. And 98 centuries were made of the senators and the equites. So they may have had a lot of poor, but the rich had the majority of votes by definition. Furthermore, voting stopped completely when they had a majority of 97 centuries either for or against, so quite routinely the poorest never had a chance to cast any vote.
That's democracy of the rich for you, seriously.
2. You have to remember that welfare and populism were limited to the city of Rome itself. No more, no less. If you wanted to vote to tax Egypt or the Gaul to hand out more bread in Rome, everyone would be for it.
Fixing prices for the peasants outside Rome to give cheap bread to the plebs in Rome would have been insanely popular at any point.
3. The only political office I can remember offhand that _required_ one to be a plebeian, was the Tribune Of The Plebs. The requirement seemed to be very flexible however. Remember that Octavian Augustus, among the many titles he accumulated in one hand as Imperator was also a Tribune Of The Plebs. If you can genuinely believe that he was a poor commoner, I have some logging rights to sell in Sahara. They were also routinely bribed by the rich.
4. The late Western Roman Empire was more... weird. Not everything you learned about the peak of the republic still applied. They had increasingly deranged emperors, the praetorian guard started installing and removing emperors itself, they had a _major_ civil war over who gets to be Augustus (emperor) and who gets to be Caesar (vice-emperor) in the tetrarchy, etc. Basically the Western Roman Empire in the 3-4th century AD isn't quite what you've learned about the Roman Republic.
5. Well, just because some people argue nonsense, it doesn't mean they can really rewrite history. What happened, well, already happened, whether the right-wing think-tanks like it or not. Plus, there are a lot of people who are disillusioned with the present and retreat in some rose-tinted illusion that the past was some gentle and noble utopia. (And I don't mean only in modern times, but also see the Renaissance.) Unfortunately, it never really was that great. Even more unfortunately, that sanitized illusion makes them easy to manipulate by those think-tanks I've already mentioned.
And yes, I'm not surprised that the rich in the USA, who want more political power for themselves, would try to paint it that way. "See, giving us more power is good, giving power to the poor is bad." It's only expected, I guess. Unfortunately that's not what actually happened in the real history.
That's very insightful, but unfortunately, it's even worse than that. (If one can really say worse than the plague.)
1. Not for all. Eastern Europe, for example, was already sparsely populated enough that the plagues had no major impact. So there serfdom continued to be a downwards slide until the 19'th century. I've already given the example of Poland, but things got even worse in Russia, for example.
2. It took some very bloody revolts to really get a positive change, even with the plague. The ruling class didn't just start giving better salaries and conditions when western Europe depopulated. The first (and second and third) attempt again was to fix prices and try to force everyone to work more for less pay, so they can keep their luxury and privileges with less population.
As an example of it, in England and France which were having a jolly good 100 years war, the first effect of the population halving was that the levies on each peasant doubled.
The problem is, it doesn't work like that. If you give the rich and powerful enough unchecked power, freedom of choice is either (A) taken from you, because they make a deal, or (B) meaningless, as it went down a spiral where everyone does the same things.
As an example of the former, you can see the last centuries of Rome and the introduction of serfdom. The rich clique that formed the senate:
1. proclaimed themselves not subject to tax
2. raised taxes on everyone else, especially the free peasants (land was the most common pension for soldiers and recruitment incentive, so they eventually had quite a few) to support the ever increasing costs of warfare and the luxury in Rome
3. tried to fix prices _and_ devalue the coin, by law. There goes some of your freedom right there, as a free peasant or small landowner: they already tell you what your produce is worth, and it just became half of what you got for it last year.
4. when people started moving away as a result, they just forbade everyone to move, effectively turning all free peasants into serfs of the empire. In one fell swoop.
I'm sure those peasants still thought they have a choice before step 3. Unfortunately after step 4 it started going downhill fast, and eventually they were not only tied to the land and taxed, but had to work 3 days a week for the local noble too, and some 15 centuries later it had become 6 days a week and no land of their own at all. In some places (e.g., some Polish revolts were against that), serfs could not only be sold, but also rented by burghers, merchants, whatever. The long and painful slide from a free peasant class back to effective slavery, eh?
As a _probable_ example of the latter, well, you can learn a lot about what problems a society had, by the laws they give. That Moses forbade working on Sabbath on penalty of _death_, should tell you that they probably had a _major_ problem there. It also gives you the idea that probably nothing else worked, choice be damned.
At some point, even if you forbid by law to _require_ working on the Sabbath, people will just find weasel ways to require "volunteering" for it. (See the recent EA scandal.) So at some point your choice becomes picking one of X potential employers, all of which require it. You have a choice to take it or starve.
The death penalty on workers on Sabbath is, if you think about it, the ultimate way to stop asking for it right in its tracks. There is no reward someone can promise you, in exchange for maybe getting stoned to death, and no threat they could use to make anyone accept that. Maybe religion could work to motivate someone to go to death, but here religion is what forbade that in the first place. Basically it attacked the supply side of labour, not the demand side.
It makes me wonder how bad it had got, at the very least.
At any rate, sometimes you have to restrict people's "choice" to accept being kicked in the head, because otherwise it can very soon degenerate into something where you have no choice to refuse it.
Finally, don't get me wrong, I'm not against the rich or capitalism... as such. It's just that when one side has disproportionately more bargaining power and power to subvert the system, at some point you have to restrict what they can do with it. Otherwise, if left unchecked, they'll just figure out a way to turn everyone else into their serfs. See, the Romans again.
I notice that you still haven't answered that question, and not only from me. Instead you do a piss-poor ad-hominem.
Your assumption that the software on the iPhone doesn't count in that total price you calculated price of components is... bizarre, to put it very very mildly. Doubly so discounting an embedded version on account that a desktop version exists. It's akin to saying that Windows CE is free because Windows for PCs already existed.
So to paraphrase that ad-hominem right back at you -- in case that's the only pseudo-logic you're equipped to comprehend -- do most things confuse you as much as the simple concept that software costs money to develop, money to port, and money to test? Or that such costs need to be recouped? How did you stumble upon slashdot anyway? No, seriously.
And I think you'll find that Apple still charges you $129 for it. Or do you think that's pure profit too, because the only physical cost was the CD and manuals?
By the same logic, an OS/X upgrade only costs 10 cents for the CD, and the latest Intel CPU is just a couple of dollars worth of silicon. I think you'll find that recouping R&D costs is the biggest chunk of the price in high-tech products.
Well, on the whole I guess we're not disagreeing too much then, except on one point: you seem to have more faith in the human species than I have.
If I understand your point right, yes, someone with the correct mental discipline will be able to use even worse tools or languages right, and can critically evaluate a tool and discard it if it's not the right one. I can't disagree with that.
Being the jaded cynic that I am, however, I'd question how many such people exist.
A) I see people everyday lacking the mental discipline to use programming languages or tools right, and still making a living anyway. In fact, they got hired just because they were cheaper than someone who does. Will an underpaid, high-stress job like teaching get all the aces where some much higher paid job doesn't? Somehow I doubt it.
B) In a lot of cases, using a tool isn't really based on an in-depth analysis. It can be driven by hype, laziness, pressure, or just following orders and using whatever management gave you. In some cases you don't even really have the knowledge to do the right evaluation, so you just go with the flow. Again, will the situation in schools be that much different from the rest of the world? Nope, I don't expect it to.
Well, it's sorta a question of estimated market share, the way I see it. Someone probably figured it out like this:
- we'd sell X1 thousand units at price Y1, unlocked and for everyone
- we'd sell X2 thousand units at the much lower price Y2, even if it's tied to AT&T
Obviously they thought that X2 > X1.
Whether that's right or wrong, smart or dumb, I couldn't tell. But basically, yes, Apple obviously thought that that's a smart move. Feel free to agree or disagree with them, though.
To quote Scot Adams' My New Favourite Response to people answering to their own mis-understandings of what he wrote, "I agree with your analysis of your hallucination."
I never said that the cost of manufacturing dictates the market price. It does however, yes, dictate whether you stay in that game or not. "Would it still sell for $1000?" is actually a damn valid question. It's the "can we stay in that game?" question, in fact.
Apple's model is based on getting a hefty part of the price subsidized by AT&T. Without it, would they still be in the game of selling iPhones? The others faced the exact same question, and that's why they didn't make an iPhone before. That's what I'm saying there.
So if you got tripped that badly by "Would it still sell for $1000?", then maybe it's you who needs to re-read those econ 101 notes. Because while you've proven that you can repeat the trivia, I see no sign of actual understanding there. _That_ question is exactly what determines whether you're in that game or not. If you don't understand that, the rest is just mechanically spewing trivia, and not much of a sign of economic wisdom.
Look, let's put it like this:
1. I'm not saying that bad teachers didn't exist before. I'm saying that reliance on Powerpoint might just make it even worse.
2. Yes, you can get such a split on a blackboard too, but it's not "natural" so to speak. Unless you're a bit schizophrenic or make a hell of an effort, it's not the natural reflex to think of two different things at the same time. Try writing the story of Snow White on a piece of paper while the words of your national anthem out loud, and you'll see for yourself how hard it can get.
So on a blackboard you'll at the very least take a break from writing while you take the verbal detour.
At any rate, most people won't even try causing such a split on a blackboard, because it's taxing on their own brains. You can do it, if you really try, but that's the point: you have to try. Most people just don't. Unless they're actually malicious or deranged, that is.
With powerpoint it's just _natural_. I could present to you the summary of the US Independence War on slides, while telling you about Markov chains, without missing a beat. Ok, so most won't go to that kind of extremes, but more modest disconnects are actually commonplace.
3. Can Powerpoint be used well? Yes. But given that even professionals get it wrong all the time, I wouldn't set my hopes that high that every single teacher in some small underfunded school will get it 100% right, 100% of the time. I'm not saying that teachers are dumb, I'm saying that they're humans too. If it's possible -- and in fact, very, very easy -- to get something wrong, they'll do the same as any other profession: get it wrong often enough to matter.
Maybe not surprising, but we'll have to wait and see what kind of effects it has on the iPhone.
Thing is, that kind of agreements aren't just because Apple or AT&T are "evil" and want to tie you to their network. They're a glimpse into how expensive the iPhone really is. That price you see when you buy one is already minus AT&T's subsidies, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're quite hefty.
That's how everyone else negotiates too. Exclusive contract is worth X dollars, for the features and hopefully new killer app, Y dollars, for tying some functionality to their network, Z dollars, and so on. Dunno how it works in the USA, but that's how we end up with 1 Euro phones down here, as long as you're tied to a telco.
Seeing the extent to which the iPhone is locked down, makes me think Apple negotiated some pretty damn hefty subsidies for it. I mean, for example, for any other phone, they don't even bother worrying what you do with it, as long as you have your two year contract with the one who subsidized it. If you have your 2 years T-Mobile contract anyway, and you want to use that phone with Vodaphone too (thus paying two phone bills for it), T-Mobile won't usually give a damn. It's just assumed that most people won't bother. If you wanted a Vodaphone contract, you'd have just gotten one of their phones. If for the iPhone anyone actually gives a damn whether you can use it at all on another network, they probably are paying more than the standard subsidies for it.
Thing is, the iPhone didn't happen before just because it's expensive, not because everyone else is a drooling moron and Apple is t3h genius. Symbian has all the expertise they need with touch screens even before they starting having anything to do with phones, for example. My old Psion 5 has touch-screen. Everyone just bet that there's not much of a market for a phone that costs as much as a laptop. Apple apparently bet that there's one if they get half the price subsidized by AT&T.
So it might get interesting. If Apple can't deliver the lockdown they promised for the extra money, AT&T would have to be dumb to keep paying for it. And that's at the very least.
Would the iPhone still be as attractive as a $1000 toy (a number pulled out of the arse, for example sake) if it were unlocked and usable on any network? Sure, for some nerds it would still be a cool toy, but more people -- or they significant other, if they have one -- would start wondering if they _really_ need one.
It might get interesting.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating curtailing consumer rights to save the iPhone. Just saying what I see at work there. (And I could be wrong too.)
The problem with powerpoint slides is that someone recently figured out we're not made to read text off a slide and hear someone talk at the same time. We only have enough brain power for one, not for both. If you even try to -- and people instinctively will -- you'll go fuzzy brained and remember neither. So in effect showing powerpoint slides badly, can be in fact worse than not writing anything anywhere.
Now they figured that out for management presentations, and why you come empty-headed from of a presentation you were actually interested in. But I can't come up with any argument as to why it would work better in schools. In fact, it might be outright scary. Using powerpoint instead of a blackboard may well be _the_ most destructive thing one can do.
There are ways to use powerpoint well, like you'd use an overhead projector. E.g., to show charts, relevant illustrations, etc. E.g., in a biology class you could show a picture of a cell's structure as a slide instead of as an overhead projector foil. And leave people time to digest it, instead of forcing them to also take notes at the same time.
But a substitute for a blackboard it ain't. On a blackboard:
A) you're led to follow the current focus of attention, whatever word is currently being written. You don't just get a big word soup to get lost in and out of sync, you get to follow the cursor (hand with chalk) so to speak, at the same time you're hearing it. It works to reinforce what you hear, not to try to split your attention between two different texts.
B) the teacher is only human too, and he too would have trouble if he tried speaking one thing while writing something completely different. So there's a self-reinforcing mechanism to hold prevent it from becoming an attention-splitting device. As a subcase, if he takes some time to explain why he did something to a formula, he won't already start writing the next one.
C) it enforces _some_ structure, because a blackboard is all the space you can get at a time. Which also cuts back on distractions like flipping back and forth between charts. Which is a distraction. Everytime you go "hmm, this one we don't need.. next... nope, this one we'll learn next week... let's see the next one... nah, we don't need that... next... aha, here we are..." that's not just wasted time. That's a bunch of people who've either tried to read it fast and the next minutes will be busy figuring that out instead of what you say next, or (probably most) whose attention and focus went right out the window while you did that little powerpoint dance.
D) well, I hate to be mean to teachers (God knows they have a shitty job already), but it forces them to prepare that material instead of just borrowing someone's slides. And if they didn't know it too well, they'll at least recap it while they write it on the blackboard.
If you will, what I'm saying at points C an D is that I see it as the same as in IT: the better tools and languages we had, the more unqualified monkeys got hired to use them. I'm all for better tools and compilers, don't get me wrong. But in a lot of places the trend wasn't to do more with them, but to lower the baseline for the people hired to use them. And they'll feel the less of a need to learn what they're doing there. After all, the tool will do the thinking for them, right?
The same might just happen in schools. I can see some people (e.g., substitute teachers) going into a class with someone else's powerpoint presentation, but barely knowing what it's about.
Except in IT you have at least some reality check whether it worked or not. If it doesn't compile or doesn't run the test cases, you know you've screwed up. In teaching we might not even know it before we pump out a few generations of complete airheads, for no fault of their own. And for a change I don't mean just the dumb jocks and prom queens, because the powerpoint fuzzy-brain effect applies to nerds interested in that topic too.
Do they really?
From my experience, in a lot of companies, they just don't want to innovate.
Doing the exact same thing with a computer application instead of a typewritten form isn't innovation. I'm sorry, it just isn't. An optimization that doesn't change the process at all, isn't it. Innovation is when you figure that you can turn the process upside down, and do things like they _weren't_ done before. When Ford figured out he'd use an assembly line instead of the old fashioned way, that was innovation. If Ford had just hired a faster courier boy to carry the forms from one beancounter to another (which is what a lot of computer apps really are today: just a faster way to do the exact same thing with the same people), that would be at most a straightforward optimization.
But when you want to shake up the process, you run into a lot of managers and egos which would be displaced by the new version. And there in a lot of places is where it fails. Try explaining to someone that his function will lose some power or prestige when your cool new system goes online, and see what kind of disproportionate resources he'll mobilize against it. Or try explaining to an old dog that he must learn new tricks, and see real resistance in action.
Remember, a lot of these are guys who know how to backstab, brownnose or make backroom deals, when they need to. In a lot of cases that's the only skill that got them there in the first place. If you think they'll just bend over and take it just because a techie figured out how to displace them, you may be surprised.
So what will happen in a lot of places is that they don't really want innovation. They want to keep their power and influence intact, and keep doing things like they were always done. With a computer, maybe, but nevertheless in the exact same way.
If the old process required that a form doesn't even have a registration number before a beancounter uses his stamp to give it one, don't be surprised if the requirement for the computer version says the record may not have an ID until the beancounter gives it one. That's his "power" there: he's the guy (or the boss of the guy) who gives registration numbers. He's not going to give that up. (Don't laugh, I've actually been in a team which implemented exactly that. We actually had a hidden unique ID, while the one assigned by the beancounter was only for display purposes.)
That's not innovation.
The budget is an excuse there. In a lot of places, the budget isn't even really calculated as in "what can we get for how much money", but a function of:
- corporate politics and petty wars and power grabs between heads of departments
- the product of some inflexible regulations (e.g., if in the last year you used only X dollars, you automatically get that. Whether there's actually an ROI in it or not. And a lot goes into _waste_, not R&R, because a penny saved is a penny cut next from your budget next year.)
- the result of some new boss pissing on everything to mark his territory (e.g., he'll show everyone who's boss by pointless half-baked restructuring games and budget reorganization, not because he actually studied what needs to be done with that money, but just to mark his new territory.) This goes especially well with the previous situation.
Etc.
Note that in the above I've said "many" or "a lot", but not "all". Yeah, there still are sane places. On the other hand, like Scot Adams put it recently, we seem to have harnessed the power of stupidity: at any given time, 90% of society's resources are pushed off a cliff by morons. It makes one wonder.
Assuming that you never upgraded anything in that computer, i.e., that you still have the 300 MHz K6 or Pentium 2 you bought in '98, that is probably correct. If not they'll put two and two together and figure out that 1 CPU + 1 Mobo + 1 Graphics Card + 1 HDD = Auugh, someone built a computer without buying a license from us.
Seriously, don't underestimate the power of being paid to cry wolf, or being the official wolf-crier of an industry. If the BSA came and said, "hmm, you know, actually if we use more sane assumptions (e.g., that a chinese kid who used 3DSMax once to mod a $40 game wouldn't have actually spent several thousands on it otherwise), losses to piracy are really minimal", that would be the end of the BSA right there and then. MS and the gang would gut them and replace them with someone else who understands what's expected of them.
I think averages aren't actually stereotypes, though. The point when it becomes a stereotype and possibly sexist or racist is when it's extrapolated to "all X are/do/like Y" or the equivalent "you're an X, therefore you are/do/like Y". A lot of people extrapolate from statistics and averages to that, but it's that extrapolation that's the fallacy, not the statistic or average itself.
E.g., consider this "most insects have 6 legs, spiders are insects, therefore spiders have 6 legs." The fallacy there is the implied extrapolation from "most" (i.e., a variant of "some") to "all", not the "most insects have 6 legs" premise.
Ditto, "women like pink" is a stereotype, especially if it's taken to the point of "you're a woman, therefore you like pink", but "more women than men like pink" is just a statistic. And yes, we have a statistic showing that, for westerners. (For Chinese it's much more of a close call, since it's a lucky colour in their culture, though.) I think the same applies to blogs, recipes, physical strength, or anything else. If you steer clear of the usual extrapolation from "some" to "all", it's IMHO not really a stereotype.
Actually, it's very easy to imagine. Transcribing DNA to proteins happens between a START and a STOP marker. If those markers are lost -- heck, even if just the START marker is lost -- then that piece of code is never "executed". In programming terms, it's commented out.
And, yeah, your genetic code contains a whole bunch of commented-out sequences. Dunno, I don't have much trouble believing that they have no impact whatsoever
You haven't played against some players. Half the newbies will stand watching the pretty missile coming their way, then half of those start screaming "cheater!", "aimbot!", "wall-hack!"
;)
My favourite example from way back when I still played CS goes like this:
So I just pick the first server that's not full or empty, from a list sorted by ping. It has only 2 players, but everyone has to start somewhere. More will probably come.
The first thing I notice is that suspiciously I'm assigned to counter-terrorist, while both the guys already on the server are terrorists. Not much point in playing a team game if both are on the same team, and the only two on the whole server.
I'm new on that server, I quickly buy a TMP, I don't get any armour, helmet or grenades, and pretty much rush ahead like a noob. If you're not familiar to CS, the TMP used to be the most underpowered SMG. You pretty much needed to change the clip if the opponent had armour and you weren't at point blank range. Well, not exactly, but you get the idea. (I'm told it became much better in the meantime, but I wouldn't know.)
So I run into them around a corner, and I mean literally bump into. I had one guy's head on half my screen. I'm surprised to see that one of them is already carrying the bomb in his hands, half a map away from the target position, and the other one is apparently guarding him. At any rate, it's a sunday morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet, so they watch me and I watch them like a noob for a full second or so. (Yeah, not one of my best days.)
Then I open fire and ventilate both their brains from 1 ft away, like the NKVD
Before I go any further, let me stress that some more: it was not the most challenging situation or good for bragging rights in any way. I was very slow to react and it was from 1 ft away, so it's hardly an achievement. I mean, my barrel was pretty much up one of their noses.
So they start screaming that I somehow used aimbots or wall hacks. WTF? "Guys, why would I ever need a wallhack or aimbot from 1ft distance?" I get kicked.
Ah well...
Heh. I didn't say that you could pick up the universe and run with it, like with a suitcase, or whatever you imagined there. The thing about flipping the suitcase was just a simple experiment to show that the complete system has an angular momentum even if just a part of it spins. I'm not saying someone could turn the whole universe. Just that it can have a non-zero total angular momentum, if all galaxies rotate the same way.
Depends on the intent, I guess.
1. If you intend to shaft someone, and feed them mis-information and FUD to that end, it's immoral, yeah.
2. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with telling people that it's a damn good idea to have one recovery disk. And if you want the shop to do that for you, it will cost money, because their employees, time, space, etc, still cost money. It's providing a service, for a cost. It's how capitalism works.
Some shops will do #1, some shops will do #2, and some won't do it at all and deal with the fallout of the clients coming back with a thoroughly screwed up system and demanding it fixed for free because it's still under warranty.
In other words, the question is where you set the bar. _If_ for you anything other than doing unpaid charity work is "screwing over the stupid for a buck", you might have some unrealistic expectations. It's not how the economy works. If you're too stupid to do a task, or can't be arsed to learn how, or your time is too valuable to do it personally, you pay someone to do that service for you.
Heck, I'm too "stupid" to know all laws and precedents, so I pay a lawyer when I need that kind of knowledge. I'm too "stupid" to know all diseases and antibiotics/antivirals/etc, so I pay a doctor. Etc. Is it "screwing me over for a buck"? No, it's just providing a service for adequate remuneration.
Sure, the doctor could take the time and teach me medicine for free instead, but chances are it would be a waste of both my time and his anyway. Ditto for the lawyer.
I fail to see why the same wouldn't apply to a shop's techies. If you're too stupid to do your own recovery CD, and want someone else to do it for you, you pay for that service.
Again, I do draw the line at telling the customer lies to get them to pay for something they don't need. That's unethical. But offering a paid service, even an overpriced one? What's wrong with that?
I didn't mean just mass, as in, they tend to stay behind unless you push them. I meant angular momentum, as in, they tend to stay pointing in the same direction. That would happen even in a perfect vacuum.
Well, anyway, the thing with the tops and the briefcase was probably just an unneeded tangent. (I do a lot of those.) The important part is that the total system has a non-zero total angular momentum even if the centres of the tops don't move.
Of course, the galaxies themselves could still move around each other, or around the centre of mass, or, really, whatever. I don't know enough to rule that out. I'm just saying that even without that, if they're aligned, there _still_ would be a total angular momentum.
Yeah, man, but those turtles spin. Or maybe the last one has a gramophone kinda thingie on top that rotates the Earth. I mean, if God made a mechanism that rotates the Sun on a pole around the turtle, not to mention the planets and stuff, it only takes an extra pair of cogs and a shaft to make the disc on the turtle spin too. It's like, totally awesome, dude ;)