Ubuntu was like that for me. I installed in on my desktop, and it took less time and effort to get it working than it usually takes to get Windows installed. It's also nice that it comes with all the software I need already prepackaged instead of purchaseable as $300 addons. It even has better driver support than Windows XP right out of the box.
When I tried installing Debian I couldn't get the netinstaller to recognize my ISPs DHCP server. Slack is not something that I want to have to play with on a daily basis. Those are the only three distros I've tried.
Do you know why they're told not to hit back? It's not because of fairness. It's because if they were allowed to hit back then the bully's parents would sue the school. Ascension? What the hell are you talking about? That seems rather crackpot. If you're suggesting that it's okay for the smart kid to beat the crap out of people he doesn't like as part of his "ascension" then you're no better than the parents of the children picking on your kid. I dare you to spend a week shadowing a teacher in your school district. Then spend another week interviewing all the people who work for your school about how they have to handle discipline because of the way the laws are written. Then come back and tell me that teachers are incompetent.
And how dare you call anyone worthless. That's the cry of the jaded and bitter child.
I agree with you completely. One of the things that is broken in our system is that the parents undermine everything, sue over everything, and don't accept that you're a professional when you teach.
When my dad was in school if he got in trouble at school his parents would give him trouble at home. Now it's "I'm going to go in and have a talk with your teacher to try and straighten this out."
There's no one person who can be blamed for that. It's the institution itself that's broken. The reason the teachers have to be the way they are is because they're legally responsible for each and every one of you from the moment you set foot inside the school until you're a mile or so down the road. First amendment rights are different though, and the GP and the punks should have stuck up for their rights. I agree with you about the rules. Some of them are pretty retarded.
As for control, parents need to learn that they need to be responsible for their child because the school is obviously not doing as good of a job.
And yeah, having happy and safe students is important, but it's possible to have happy, safe, well-educated children too. I'm not saying that the baseline for the education system is to create that kind of environment, because it sure as hell doesn't, but I believe it's possible if everyone really wants it. That's the ideal we should be aiming for. Excellence with a cheesey smile.
To GP: When I was in high school a friend of mine got expelled because his nickname from Counterstrike was Terrorist. We had a petition with about 200 signatures and names on it that we were submitting to the office. If it had gone far enough we were going to walk out.
The major problem with piecemeal adoption is the logistical problems of supplying Bob with methane while supplying Bob's neighbor Suzy with vegetable oil. It does work really well for baseload power generation, it's just hard to supply everyone with what they need when their needs cease to be cookie-cutter. Since we all use gasoline to power our cars, nobody has to worry about not being able to fill up because there aren't any methane stations around. It may not be a big problem in the long run, but there will be additional costs to maintaining infrastructure for several different types of fuel.
What's a woman? Is there an ISO standard I can look up somewhere that will tell me what a woman is? I do not understand this concept of attraction. Could somebody please explain it to me?
The real question: Can we sue him for Libel for making false statements about the Linux operating system? It would be a bitchin' class action. Suing fo r libel is how FUD is typically handled when it's about a person. FYI, Libel . I guess the next step is to get a lawyer and hit him with everything we've got.
Okay, I'll bite. It's not quite as easy as playing CDs on a tape deck. It's more like a firmware update for my MP3 player that gives it FairPlay capabilities so I can use ITMS with it. So yeah, a little harder than modifying a tape deck to play CDs. Of course, the firmware update is the nontrivial part. So is the licensing from Apple.
I'd be perfectly happy to pay the same price for a microsoft official Linux DirectX API that I would end up paying for Vista. Selling their API would be a good direction for them. It lets them assert some dominance in the Linux market and they can play all their other properties off on that.
Just curious, but why would you think that imperialism is "out there" for the US?
I believe that we went into Iraq for resources because it's been implied throughout my lifetime that the Middle East is important because of its oil. The real reason I think we went in for resources and not for any ideal is because we wanted to install a sympathetic government in the region, like we've done in nearly every other instance of attacking a soverign government. If we really believed in the Iraqis' ability to self-govern then we wouldn't have taken Saddam out of power, we would have waited for them to do it, and attempted to help when the coux happened. The only way there can be a true democratic revolution in a country is when all of its citizens believe that it will empower them.
I should clarify a little bit, but what I mean by forcing harmonic oscillation I mean that the global temperature oscillates a bit depending on where the Earth is in a Milankovitch cycle. When we start spewing massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we are raising the amplitude of the oscillation. We might also be raising the mean. In order to stop this from continuing we have to do something to counter the forcing.
Basically I'm using harmonic oscillation as an analog to another physical phenomenon.
And I've always thought that Venus was a little too similar to us for anyone to dismiss it out of hand.
Hey, I'm a skeptic too, but there is indeed evidence that at least some of the warming is human-caused. Of course, it's also possible that the earth has very slightly shifted its orbit too, and that what humans are doing is simply forcing some oscillation that takes place over many thousands of years. I mean forcing as in forced harmonic oscillation.
That said, unless we can somehow damp the oscillation we're going to be very warm indeed if the trend continues.
Also, there was another post earlier characterizing all global warming skeptics as backward-thinking fundamentalist christians who believe in intelligent design. That kind of characterization contributes nothing to the discussion, It just sets up a straw man for everyone else to viciously attack. It's not funny, it's not insightful, and it's not intelligent. I'm sure if you look through my history of posts I've said stupid stuff like that too. However, it's been my experience that if you want to convince anyone of anything you can't go around calling them a moron or you're going to get the door slammed in your face.
I totally agree that everyone should learn to touch type. The only problem with kindergarteners learning it is that they won't learn to write as well. Writing is a very important skill, at least in the United States where we still have to write to fill out paperwork and do in-class assignments. As well, it would be silly for students to have to type to do math.
If they really need to write something on a computer, give them a tablet with OCR so that they can see the letters they're trying to emulate. Don't teach them to type. It's probably pretty hard to understand this, but when you teach a kid to type he/she isn't going to want to learn to handwrite anything and that skill is much more useful at their age anyway.
Even though I'm on Slashdot I'm of the opinion that technology should play a role in education only when it facilitates the otherwise impossible. If there's something you absolutely need a computer for in kindergarten, go ahead and use it; but teaching kindergarteners to type when they could be socializing or developing less rote and more creative abilities is a mistake. Teach it to them when they're older and they've already learned to handwrite quite solidly.
I agree that typing is a really important skill, but kindergarten is too early to be teaching it.
(Offtopic)Same with Linux. The only OS I've ever used that's useless out of the box is Windows. You can't even get a decent office suite on that OS without buying or downloading. They'd be keeping me as a customer if they'd finally figured out that usability means usability instead of annoying me with security "features."
(Ontopic) A number of people have talked about IBM's deskstars. I'd like to comment that I had a 40GB deskstar as my main system drive for 4 years without any failure. Those glass platters are really nice if you're trying to build a quiet system. I wish I could get a quiet high-end video card and a quiet PSU since I no longer have the deskstar, but sadly the wallet isn't what it used to be.
They are a threat to us because their ideology doesn't prohibit them waltzing into our country and taking it for its resources. Sure, we did that in Iraq, but if we tried to sustain a campaign of taking over the middle east the public outcry would be enormous. In contrast, China has their people scared enough of retribution that there would be no public outcry of any sort if they suddenly invaded Russia or the US. Interestingly they're about the only country in the world with the resources to go to war with us for our entire country, too. It is definitely something to be worried about.
And for future reference, China no longer has a communistic economy. They were moving away from that about a decade ago. Get with the times. It is not a non-capitalist economy. It is only a non-democratic government. We're also not saying that we shouldn't trade with them, or that we should attack them. Both of those actions run counter to our ideals.
What this says is that every so often something terrible like an asteroid smacking us does happen. What that means is that if the odds are high that this one will hit us, we should actually focus on planning for it like we do with all the other natural disasters instead of ignoring it because it rarely happens. That's like calling nature's bluff, and nature is quite often a very mean poker player. If we have a chance to save lives in a few decades, why not start planning now? It's not wasted energy when someone's life is involved. We already plan for lifesaving in floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, et. al.. Just add "giant tsunami triggered by an asteroid impact wiping the California coastline clean" to your list.
Why don't you actually read the article? They tested the modulator in mice and found that it killed cancer cells in them with no ill effects. So the important part of the article is not that it kills cancer cells. It's that it kills cancer cells without major damage to other cells.
One of the overt purposes of a compulsory education is to indoctrinate children into the system of your nation. Education is somewhat secondary to that.
Ponder this.
Note: I'm not saying that that is what we actually want, only that this is what actually happens.
I'd like to comment that yes, Win32 binaries work well on Linux. The only problem I have is that I can't play EVE Online or anything else with a directX dependancy. That's the only thing stopping me from nuking my Windows install. When all the games go to Vista-exclusivity, that's going away forever.
I really love Ubuntu. I like being able to have something immediately functional right out of the box. With Windows I have to install a bunch of drivers and software since it ships with nothing. I can also actually do stuff in the command line in Ubuntu. I have the freedom to choose how my system is set up, and the freedom to take whatever control I want. I also like how easy it is to get new software compared to Windows.
Yes, I just switched about a week ago but for the Windows install on hda1.
I agree with what you said, but not with the tone that you appear to have about it. Some of us need to feel that there is something higher at work in our hearts and minds than chemistry. The philosophy behind most good widely accepted religions is one of tolerance and forgiveness. There is also striving. It's a comfort for me to read someone's 4000 year old words and know that they struggled through some of the same dichotomies that I struggle through. Even if there is no god, the philosophies that were spawned by such belief are often very insightful.
I don't think it was originally about following rules to appease a higher power. Rather, Religion may have developed as a survival mechanism. Maybe people in power needed to appeal to an even greater supernatural power in order to keep their societies intact. Of course, I'm not a sociologist.
Wait, are you saying that software developers should actually be held responsible for what their software does and doesn't do? Wow, what a backwards attitude to take considering the way things have always been. Why, if that were the case people might actually be considerate of whether or not the feature they're implementing will break things or not. Pretty soon there will be class-action lawsuits against Microsoft for making buggy low-security software that crashes all the time. Could you really live in a world where a corporation had to accept that kind of responsibility?
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Ubuntu was like that for me. I installed in on my desktop, and it took less time and effort to get it working than it usually takes to get Windows installed. It's also nice that it comes with all the software I need already prepackaged instead of purchaseable as $300 addons. It even has better driver support than Windows XP right out of the box.
When I tried installing Debian I couldn't get the netinstaller to recognize my ISPs DHCP server. Slack is not something that I want to have to play with on a daily basis. Those are the only three distros I've tried.
Do you know why they're told not to hit back? It's not because of fairness. It's because if they were allowed to hit back then the bully's parents would sue the school. Ascension? What the hell are you talking about? That seems rather crackpot. If you're suggesting that it's okay for the smart kid to beat the crap out of people he doesn't like as part of his "ascension" then you're no better than the parents of the children picking on your kid. I dare you to spend a week shadowing a teacher in your school district. Then spend another week interviewing all the people who work for your school about how they have to handle discipline because of the way the laws are written. Then come back and tell me that teachers are incompetent.
And how dare you call anyone worthless. That's the cry of the jaded and bitter child.
I agree with you completely. One of the things that is broken in our system is that the parents undermine everything, sue over everything, and don't accept that you're a professional when you teach.
When my dad was in school if he got in trouble at school his parents would give him trouble at home. Now it's "I'm going to go in and have a talk with your teacher to try and straighten this out."
There's no one person who can be blamed for that. It's the institution itself that's broken. The reason the teachers have to be the way they are is because they're legally responsible for each and every one of you from the moment you set foot inside the school until you're a mile or so down the road. First amendment rights are different though, and the GP and the punks should have stuck up for their rights. I agree with you about the rules. Some of them are pretty retarded.
As for control, parents need to learn that they need to be responsible for their child because the school is obviously not doing as good of a job.
And yeah, having happy and safe students is important, but it's possible to have happy, safe, well-educated children too. I'm not saying that the baseline for the education system is to create that kind of environment, because it sure as hell doesn't, but I believe it's possible if everyone really wants it. That's the ideal we should be aiming for. Excellence with a cheesey smile.
To GP: When I was in high school a friend of mine got expelled because his nickname from Counterstrike was Terrorist. We had a petition with about 200 signatures and names on it that we were submitting to the office. If it had gone far enough we were going to walk out.
The major problem with piecemeal adoption is the logistical problems of supplying Bob with methane while supplying Bob's neighbor Suzy with vegetable oil. It does work really well for baseload power generation, it's just hard to supply everyone with what they need when their needs cease to be cookie-cutter. Since we all use gasoline to power our cars, nobody has to worry about not being able to fill up because there aren't any methane stations around. It may not be a big problem in the long run, but there will be additional costs to maintaining infrastructure for several different types of fuel.
What's a woman? Is there an ISO standard I can look up somewhere that will tell me what a woman is? I do not understand this concept of attraction. Could somebody please explain it to me?
The real question: Can we sue him for Libel for making false statements about the Linux operating system? It would be a bitchin' class action. Suing fo r libel is how FUD is typically handled when it's about a person. FYI, Libel . I guess the next step is to get a lawyer and hit him with everything we've got.
Okay, I'll bite. It's not quite as easy as playing CDs on a tape deck. It's more like a firmware update for my MP3 player that gives it FairPlay capabilities so I can use ITMS with it. So yeah, a little harder than modifying a tape deck to play CDs. Of course, the firmware update is the nontrivial part. So is the licensing from Apple.
I'd be perfectly happy to pay the same price for a microsoft official Linux DirectX API that I would end up paying for Vista. Selling their API would be a good direction for them. It lets them assert some dominance in the Linux market and they can play all their other properties off on that.
Okay, I'll definitely give what you said some thought.
Just curious, but why would you think that imperialism is "out there" for the US?
I believe that we went into Iraq for resources because it's been implied throughout my lifetime that the Middle East is important because of its oil. The real reason I think we went in for resources and not for any ideal is because we wanted to install a sympathetic government in the region, like we've done in nearly every other instance of attacking a soverign government. If we really believed in the Iraqis' ability to self-govern then we wouldn't have taken Saddam out of power, we would have waited for them to do it, and attempted to help when the coux happened. The only way there can be a true democratic revolution in a country is when all of its citizens believe that it will empower them.
I should clarify a little bit, but what I mean by forcing harmonic oscillation I mean that the global temperature oscillates a bit depending on where the Earth is in a Milankovitch cycle. When we start spewing massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we are raising the amplitude of the oscillation. We might also be raising the mean. In order to stop this from continuing we have to do something to counter the forcing.
Basically I'm using harmonic oscillation as an analog to another physical phenomenon.
And I've always thought that Venus was a little too similar to us for anyone to dismiss it out of hand.
Hey, I'm a skeptic too, but there is indeed evidence that at least some of the warming is human-caused. Of course, it's also possible that the earth has very slightly shifted its orbit too, and that what humans are doing is simply forcing some oscillation that takes place over many thousands of years. I mean forcing as in forced harmonic oscillation.
That said, unless we can somehow damp the oscillation we're going to be very warm indeed if the trend continues.
Also, there was another post earlier characterizing all global warming skeptics as backward-thinking fundamentalist christians who believe in intelligent design. That kind of characterization contributes nothing to the discussion, It just sets up a straw man for everyone else to viciously attack. It's not funny, it's not insightful, and it's not intelligent. I'm sure if you look through my history of posts I've said stupid stuff like that too. However, it's been my experience that if you want to convince anyone of anything you can't go around calling them a moron or you're going to get the door slammed in your face.
I totally agree that everyone should learn to touch type. The only problem with kindergarteners learning it is that they won't learn to write as well. Writing is a very important skill, at least in the United States where we still have to write to fill out paperwork and do in-class assignments. As well, it would be silly for students to have to type to do math.
If they really need to write something on a computer, give them a tablet with OCR so that they can see the letters they're trying to emulate. Don't teach them to type. It's probably pretty hard to understand this, but when you teach a kid to type he/she isn't going to want to learn to handwrite anything and that skill is much more useful at their age anyway.
Even though I'm on Slashdot I'm of the opinion that technology should play a role in education only when it facilitates the otherwise impossible. If there's something you absolutely need a computer for in kindergarten, go ahead and use it; but teaching kindergarteners to type when they could be socializing or developing less rote and more creative abilities is a mistake. Teach it to them when they're older and they've already learned to handwrite quite solidly.
I agree that typing is a really important skill, but kindergarten is too early to be teaching it.
(Offtopic)Same with Linux. The only OS I've ever used that's useless out of the box is Windows. You can't even get a decent office suite on that OS without buying or downloading. They'd be keeping me as a customer if they'd finally figured out that usability means usability instead of annoying me with security "features."
(Ontopic) A number of people have talked about IBM's deskstars. I'd like to comment that I had a 40GB deskstar as my main system drive for 4 years without any failure. Those glass platters are really nice if you're trying to build a quiet system. I wish I could get a quiet high-end video card and a quiet PSU since I no longer have the deskstar, but sadly the wallet isn't what it used to be.
They are a threat to us because their ideology doesn't prohibit them waltzing into our country and taking it for its resources. Sure, we did that in Iraq, but if we tried to sustain a campaign of taking over the middle east the public outcry would be enormous. In contrast, China has their people scared enough of retribution that there would be no public outcry of any sort if they suddenly invaded Russia or the US. Interestingly they're about the only country in the world with the resources to go to war with us for our entire country, too. It is definitely something to be worried about.
And for future reference, China no longer has a communistic economy. They were moving away from that about a decade ago. Get with the times. It is not a non-capitalist economy. It is only a non-democratic government. We're also not saying that we shouldn't trade with them, or that we should attack them. Both of those actions run counter to our ideals.
What this says is that every so often something terrible like an asteroid smacking us does happen. What that means is that if the odds are high that this one will hit us, we should actually focus on planning for it like we do with all the other natural disasters instead of ignoring it because it rarely happens. That's like calling nature's bluff, and nature is quite often a very mean poker player. If we have a chance to save lives in a few decades, why not start planning now? It's not wasted energy when someone's life is involved. We already plan for lifesaving in floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, et. al.. Just add "giant tsunami triggered by an asteroid impact wiping the California coastline clean" to your list.
Jesus. Any idiot with a modem can get a slashdot account these days.
Why don't you actually read the article? They tested the modulator in mice and found that it killed cancer cells in them with no ill effects. So the important part of the article is not that it kills cancer cells. It's that it kills cancer cells without major damage to other cells.
Way to go, captain obvious!
One of the overt purposes of a compulsory education is to indoctrinate children into the system of your nation. Education is somewhat secondary to that.
Ponder this.
Note: I'm not saying that that is what we actually want, only that this is what actually happens.
I'd like to comment that yes, Win32 binaries work well on Linux. The only problem I have is that I can't play EVE Online or anything else with a directX dependancy. That's the only thing stopping me from nuking my Windows install. When all the games go to Vista-exclusivity, that's going away forever.
I really love Ubuntu. I like being able to have something immediately functional right out of the box. With Windows I have to install a bunch of drivers and software since it ships with nothing. I can also actually do stuff in the command line in Ubuntu. I have the freedom to choose how my system is set up, and the freedom to take whatever control I want. I also like how easy it is to get new software compared to Windows.
Yes, I just switched about a week ago but for the Windows install on hda1.
The funny thing about our politicians in America is that they never seem to solve problems, only invent them.
That's great, but can we run Linux?
I agree with what you said, but not with the tone that you appear to have about it. Some of us need to feel that there is something higher at work in our hearts and minds than chemistry. The philosophy behind most good widely accepted religions is one of tolerance and forgiveness. There is also striving. It's a comfort for me to read someone's 4000 year old words and know that they struggled through some of the same dichotomies that I struggle through. Even if there is no god, the philosophies that were spawned by such belief are often very insightful.
I don't think it was originally about following rules to appease a higher power. Rather, Religion may have developed as a survival mechanism. Maybe people in power needed to appeal to an even greater supernatural power in order to keep their societies intact. Of course, I'm not a sociologist.
Wait, are you saying that software developers should actually be held responsible for what their software does and doesn't do? Wow, what a backwards attitude to take considering the way things have always been. Why, if that were the case people might actually be considerate of whether or not the feature they're implementing will break things or not. Pretty soon there will be class-action lawsuits against Microsoft for making buggy low-security software that crashes all the time. Could you really live in a world where a corporation had to accept that kind of responsibility?
Sarcasm bites.