I am highly literate and every once in a while I come across a word I recognize but want to find the EXACT meaning of.
Yeah, and the key phrase there is "every once in a while." A feature you use "every once in a while" is in no way the "fantastic benefit" that the GP claimed it to be -- the only way any feature can be a "fantastic benefit" is if you need to use it enough to make it so. Tautologically, anyone who needs to use a dictionary so damn often that having it instantly accessible is a "fantastic benefit" (rather than a minor one) is, in fact, illiterate.
But hey, thanks for entirely missing the point and then attacking me for it. That really sets a great example for how not to be a dick on the Internet!
Some people like to challenge themselves once in a while. By your logic, we should never move beyond our elementary school readers.
No, that's going by your strawman caricature of my logic.
By my actual logic, you should probably not try to skip directly from little golden books to Ulysses without reading incrementally more difficult things in between.
Gee, there's only one possible "point of reading"? And here I thought that one of the primary "points of reading" was to understand what the author was saying... which you can't very well do if you don't understand the words.
And if you have to look up every other damn word, you'll forget what the first part of the sentence said by the time you get to the end of it.
I have taught graduate-level courses at universities, and one of the things I strongly encourage students to do is look up recurring words that they don't know.
If your students are having to do that so often -- and that's the important word: "often!" -- that using an e-reader with a built-in dictionary provides a significant advantage, then what were they doing during their entire 'education' up to that point? Shouldn't people have already developed a decent vocabulary before becoming grad students? How do they even pass the verbal portion of the GRE?
Yes, that's a great exercise, and if you're in the middle of a fast-paced novel, it's probably a reasonable idea. But if you're actually trying to understand what an author is saying, and there's this word popping up a dozen times that you don't know, simply guessing what it means is missing an opportunity to learn something.
Well shit, if you've already tried figuring the word out from context and failed, and then it keeps coming up over and over again, then of course you should go look it up -- that's fucking common sense! Clearly, from your response, I overestimated Slashdotters' grasp of the obvious.
And recurring words are great for that kind of exercise, because it provides periodic reinforcement, which is one of the keys to learning natural language and recalling new things. Most authors -- even those who write "stories" and fiction -- tend to have "pet words" that aren't part of the standard core vocabulary everyone uses. When you see such a word and look it up [or figure it out from context], each time the author uses it again you'll reinforce that word. Suddenly, by the end of the book, you'll have expanded your vocabulary by a dozen or a few dozen words. (And you're more likely to remember the meaning than if you had just memorized the word for a vocab test or something -- seeing practical usage will aid recall.)
Right. I'm sure you were born knowing the meaning of every word in every book you've ever read.
No, I started with easy books and worked my way up. Although a little bit of dictionary-reading and vocabulary drills are necessary, it really does work better to learn the vast majority of vocabulary from context and experience reading lots and lots of stuff. That's why children's books have pictures, you know.
Besides, you missed the fact that I wasn't accusing the guy of being illiterate, just pointing out that if you're not illiterate then you shouldn't need to look stuff up all the time (and thus being able to look stuff up easily is not a high-priority feature).
On the bright side, it's nice to be able to point to this guy when some European elitist claims that Americans (or more specifically, southerners) somehow have a monopoly on unscientific idiocy.
The links were just congested and that's the problem... Actual throttling is easy to prove intentional throttling.
And Comcast actively refused to upgrade the links, despite having fucktons of spare money to do so and demand from their own customers telling them it was necessary -- that demonstrates "intent" too.
The monopolies already existed, and were already protected. The only difference was that before, they were allowed to have their cake and eat it too. We're actually going from the "monopoly without regulation" state to the "monopoly with regulation" state, which is a strict improvement.
Videoconferencing from any device on the planet without installing any special software is bloat?
YES, in the same way that every user on the planet would probably want a calculator once in a while but that doesn't mean the browser needs to add one!
A 14" (or better yet, 13.5") 4:3 ratio screen would work great for an e-reader: it would be big enough to display a whole sheet of paper (either A4 or letter, I think) and still have room for menus and whatnot along the edges.
Having the ability to touch any word on the screen and have definitions, translations, and wikipedia entries pop up as you read (which is great for many of the older books) is a fantastic benefit...
Why, are you illiterate or something?
No, seriously -- if you have to go look up stuff often enough for that to be a big deal, then (a) the book is too hard for you and (b) you're missing the point of reading. You'd lose sense of how the story flows if you keep starting and stopping like that. When you run across the occasional unfamiliar word, it provides a better experience just to figure it out from context and move on.
Capacity begets usage. It's so true it's even been a meme ("if you build it, they will come") from before the Internet made "memes" a meme! Building a pipeline to ship the oil faster will cause more oil to be shipped in a shorter period of time.
If you don't like having the oil shipped by rail, then fix that problem instead! (Make the rail cars safer, prohibit shipping oil by rail -- whatever.)
In what way is Chicago landlocked? The entire point of its existence is the fact that it's a good port to ship things from the interior of the US out the St. Lawrence Seaway to the rest of the world.
But, the most crappy, inefficient code in the world can be covered up by hardware
Well, until it gets the answer wrong in a way that fucks up the business...
...But by then, the management fucks who made the bad decision have gotten their golden parachutes and shed their liability, so nobody gives a shit, apparently.
I really want to see what you can do with $30K in Atlanta.
Before I graduated and started working, my wife and I lived comfortably on her $30K artist's salary. We even bought a three-bedroom house in a decent neighborhood close to downtown. Of course, this was in 2009.... our house would cost about twice that much now.
(We still live comfortably spending less than $30K, although I now make a lot more.)
Given the hardware advances in the 6 years since the 1000HE was released, I find it hard to believe Asus can't put out a computer that serves the same purpose for the same amount of money. Or less money.
I bought an Asus X200CA (12" touchscreen, slow CPU, 4 GB RAM) for about $260 back in October. They do make computers that serve the same purpose for the same amount of money (or less money); it's just that the computer in TFA isn't it.
In the example I was thinking of, the "one computer per classroom" thing didn't actually happen until almost 2000, when networking and email did exist.
"Glorified toy?" You give those schools too much credit -- they'd put one computer in each classroom... and then the teacher would use it for email and nothing else (if he even used it at all).
I have one of those $30 T-mobile plans too, and none of the nickel-and-dime stuff you mention matters because I just use Google Voice / Hangouts VoIP so everything, including phone calls and SMS, counts as data.
You can insult me all you like, and live in denial all you like. It doesn't change the fact that you're a sniveling, cowardly, traitorous, authoritarian bootlicker who is too goddamn stupid to realize that you can't preserve freedom by destroying it.
No, the world is not fucking different! The world has never been fucking different! All that happened was that a few assholes got lucky on 9/11 and then dumbasses like you shit themselves and then let Bush et al. turn the US into a goddamn fascist police state! Being a dumbass is one thing, but being a dumbass in a way that screws over everybody else is not acceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and the key phrase there is "every once in a while." A feature you use "every once in a while" is in no way the "fantastic benefit" that the GP claimed it to be -- the only way any feature can be a "fantastic benefit" is if you need to use it enough to make it so. Tautologically, anyone who needs to use a dictionary so damn often that having it instantly accessible is a "fantastic benefit" (rather than a minor one) is, in fact, illiterate.
But hey, thanks for entirely missing the point and then attacking me for it. That really sets a great example for how not to be a dick on the Internet!
No, that's going by your strawman caricature of my logic.
By my actual logic, you should probably not try to skip directly from little golden books to Ulysses without reading incrementally more difficult things in between.
And if you have to look up every other damn word, you'll forget what the first part of the sentence said by the time you get to the end of it.
If your students are having to do that so often -- and that's the important word: "often!" -- that using an e-reader with a built-in dictionary provides a significant advantage, then what were they doing during their entire 'education' up to that point? Shouldn't people have already developed a decent vocabulary before becoming grad students? How do they even pass the verbal portion of the GRE?
Well shit, if you've already tried figuring the word out from context and failed, and then it keeps coming up over and over again, then of course you should go look it up -- that's fucking common sense! Clearly, from your response, I overestimated Slashdotters' grasp of the obvious.
So you agree with me, then!
No, I started with easy books and worked my way up. Although a little bit of dictionary-reading and vocabulary drills are necessary, it really does work better to learn the vast majority of vocabulary from context and experience reading lots and lots of stuff. That's why children's books have pictures, you know.
Besides, you missed the fact that I wasn't accusing the guy of being illiterate, just pointing out that if you're not illiterate then you shouldn't need to look stuff up all the time (and thus being able to look stuff up easily is not a high-priority feature).
On the bright side, it's nice to be able to point to this guy when some European elitist claims that Americans (or more specifically, southerners) somehow have a monopoly on unscientific idiocy.
And Comcast actively refused to upgrade the links, despite having fucktons of spare money to do so and demand from their own customers telling them it was necessary -- that demonstrates "intent" too.
The monopolies already existed, and were already protected. The only difference was that before, they were allowed to have their cake and eat it too. We're actually going from the "monopoly without regulation" state to the "monopoly with regulation" state, which is a strict improvement.
Firefox has an IM client built in now. Clearly, you're using the wrong verb tense.
Yo dawg, I heard you like 'application platforms' so I turned your web browser into a goddamn operating system?
Fuck that. Just because Google does it doesn't make it a good idea!
YES, in the same way that every user on the planet would probably want a calculator once in a while but that doesn't mean the browser needs to add one!
A 14" (or better yet, 13.5") 4:3 ratio screen would work great for an e-reader: it would be big enough to display a whole sheet of paper (either A4 or letter, I think) and still have room for menus and whatnot along the edges.
Why, are you illiterate or something?
No, seriously -- if you have to go look up stuff often enough for that to be a big deal, then (a) the book is too hard for you and (b) you're missing the point of reading. You'd lose sense of how the story flows if you keep starting and stopping like that. When you run across the occasional unfamiliar word, it provides a better experience just to figure it out from context and move on.
Capacity begets usage. It's so true it's even been a meme ("if you build it, they will come") from before the Internet made "memes" a meme! Building a pipeline to ship the oil faster will cause more oil to be shipped in a shorter period of time.
If you don't like having the oil shipped by rail, then fix that problem instead! (Make the rail cars safer, prohibit shipping oil by rail -- whatever.)
In what way is Chicago landlocked? The entire point of its existence is the fact that it's a good port to ship things from the interior of the US out the St. Lawrence Seaway to the rest of the world.
Well, until it gets the answer wrong in a way that fucks up the business...
...But by then, the management fucks who made the bad decision have gotten their golden parachutes and shed their liability, so nobody gives a shit, apparently.
Before I graduated and started working, my wife and I lived comfortably on her $30K artist's salary. We even bought a three-bedroom house in a decent neighborhood close to downtown. Of course, this was in 2009.... our house would cost about twice that much now.
(We still live comfortably spending less than $30K, although I now make a lot more.)
There are! They just aren't willing to relocate to a fucking cardboard box in Silicon Valley.
The company I work for is currently code-naming their projects after cartoon characters.
I bought an Asus X200CA (12" touchscreen, slow CPU, 4 GB RAM) for about $260 back in October. They do make computers that serve the same purpose for the same amount of money (or less money); it's just that the computer in TFA isn't it.
In the example I was thinking of, the "one computer per classroom" thing didn't actually happen until almost 2000, when networking and email did exist.
"Glorified toy?" You give those schools too much credit -- they'd put one computer in each classroom... and then the teacher would use it for email and nothing else (if he even used it at all).
Clearly, he means schools founded by magnates, like Carnegie Mellon University.
Shortening yellow light duration causes accidents. Installing cameras causes shortening yellow light duration. Use the transitive property.
I have one of those $30 T-mobile plans too, and none of the nickel-and-dime stuff you mention matters because I just use Google Voice / Hangouts VoIP so everything, including phone calls and SMS, counts as data.
You can insult me all you like, and live in denial all you like. It doesn't change the fact that you're a sniveling, cowardly, traitorous, authoritarian bootlicker who is too goddamn stupid to realize that you can't preserve freedom by destroying it.
No, the world is not fucking different! The world has never been fucking different! All that happened was that a few assholes got lucky on 9/11 and then dumbasses like you shit themselves and then let Bush et al. turn the US into a goddamn fascist police state! Being a dumbass is one thing, but being a dumbass in a way that screws over everybody else is not acceptable.
YOU LET THE TERRORISTS WIN, YOU GODDAMN MORON!