I wasn't thinking about Waco -- a bit earlier actually, I want to say Ruby Ridge.
Ruby Ridge was the ATF versus a man, a 14-year-old boy, his dog, and a woman holding a baby. I doubt that that's the one you're thinking of; it's not a very good example of "ATF versus militia".
That's a great way to prepare them for the real world, isn't it, where corporate computers are locked down pretty hard. I think a better idea would be to survey some companies (larger ones with as many or more employees as there are students) in the local area and average out their practices.
In the real world, the kids will have their own computers at home.
Trying to make schools resemble businesses isn't a good goal. Their business is to teach, not to make money.
Now, with that said, the kids don't need to be watching tentacle porn instead of doing their homework, on a laptop provided by taxpayers. They can get an old machine for ten bucks at a thrift store for that, assuming that they don't already have one. This has nothing to do with "preparing them for the 'real world'", which a school quite frankly cannot do.
Block sites that are only pornography (yes, the smart ones will get around this, but they probably already know whatever it is they're studying), leave political sites alone, and do whatever you want with the social networking sites. Err on the side of non-restriction if there's a question.
Directly and indirectly, religon has been responsible for more people dying than any other cause EVER.
I see this often, but it's just plain wrong.
Secular leaders ushering in various forms of extreme socialism managed to surpass it in a single century, and general nationalism was far ahead of it anyway.
It was true 5000 years ago. And it's still true today.
Religion was the top killer 5000 years ago? I'd love to see your sources for that.
I won't even get into extended lifespans, artificially extended childhood or a whole host of other, related societal issues.
Ok, I'll bite, I'm interested in these. What do you mean? What's artificially extended childhood?
I would surmise that he's talking about how the age when a person takes on the responsibilities (or at least the mental maturity) of adulthood keeps rising.
One commenter suggests that professors should encourage students to improve the Wikipedia articles about topics they are studying. 'This will help them understand the topic and at the same time improve Wikipedia.'"
How is bringing thousands of people into the mix who don't know what they're talking about (many of whom think they know everything) supposed to improve anything?
Encouraging your students to go "improve" Wikipedia articles isn't encouraging them to speak up, seek knowledge, or debate.
When you're the leader of a nation of 300 million people, your slightest mistake can bring suffering to millions of people. Good decisions may even bring suffering to millions of people.
By your reasoning, the previously-mentioned Siberia stuff is no longer evil, because a good decision could lead to it.
I said "Good decisions may bring suffering to millions of people", not "Decisions that bring suffering to millions of people are good".
As an example: Was Allied involvement in World War II evil because it brought suffering (death, even) to millions of people? The generally accepted answer is NO, because it was in response to an attack and prevented something far worse.
It is juvenile to think someone is evil because they use a different text editor. It is just clarity to see evil in someone who will bring suffering to millions of people.
When you're the leader of a nation of 300 million people, your slightest mistake can bring suffering to millions of people. Good decisions may even bring suffering to millions of people.
So, please give your definition of "evil" and explain why McCain fits it. I expect that you're either deluded about McCain, or have a laughable definition of the word.
Sex and violence (including murder) are both about as natural as you can get.
Becoming obsessed with either is a bad thing for a society, and so is being unrealistically afraid of them.
I don't think as many Americans "fear" sex as you think (granted, a higher ratio do than in other countries). I think more are just worried about people becoming obsessed with it.
The lengths that some European nations go to to censor "violence" are more ridiculous to me than American censorship of sex.
I mean, we don't have shows called "Holding Hands in the City" and "Herbs with Medicinal Value".
Do you really think that Nazis weren't fanatics? They killed 6 million Jews because the Jews didn't have blue eyes!
1. The parent post specified "religious fanatics".
2. The Nazis blamed the Jews for economic, social, etc ills of the country, and for the conflict turning against Germany.
At any rate, the main point is that the US's enemies in the Middle East have very different motivations, and culture, than its enemies in the second World War did. They aren't necessarily going to behave the same way, even in similar situations.
Stories like this are actually interesting and have a math/science side to them, instead of being mindless humor that everyone has already seen elsewhere. This is something that a math teacher could show her students to make them interested, more so than all the silly posters and videos they used when I was going through grade school.
The best voting machines I've seen use jelly beans and glass jars. Put the RED jelly bean in the RIGHT jar to vote for the REPUBLICAN. Put the BLUE jelly bean in the LEFT jar to vote DEMOCRAT. Put GREEN jelly bean in CENTER jar to vote OTHER. To ABSTAIN your vote, EAT JELLY BEAN.
Sadly, another comment from the "My country, right or wrong" crowd. The duty of a citizen in a democracy isn't to agree, it's to fix, therefore, "My country, right or fix it!"
Read the post:
We don't need whiners like you in a small mess like this. Real Americans can take a look around, and say "I've seen worse." and rebuild.
He's talking about fixing, and he's castigating the first guy for wanting to run instead. The "translation" by the person you replied to is drivel.
There's four borders in this country. Pick one and head out. We don't need whiners like you in a small mess like this. Real Americans can take a look around, and say "I've seen worse." and rebuild. If you're not interested in that, move.
signed:
Real American.
Translation: "People who complain or criticize the current state of affairs are whiners. 'Real Americans' are people who agree with me that things aren't so bad. And if you criticize the country or think that things are bad here, then you should leave."
Anyone care to explain how this got modded +5 insightful?
No, he said that people who were going to whine about it and threaten to leave should leave. The post above his wasn't just criticizing the state of affairs; it was recommending abandonment of the country.
He said that the current state of the country was a mess, and that Americans were going to fix it.
That's not even close to what you're claiming....And, of course, YOU were modded +5 Insightful.
I'm gonna have to call "shenanigans" on your $$ figures there. According to this it would appear there are plenty of homes one could buy that are FAR less than your supposed $625K "median" price.
That's the wrong point to make. Half of the homes (give or take half of a house) would be under the "median price", in either case. Unlike the mean, how far some go above or below it doesn't affect it. If the prices were $5, $5, $5, $60000, $80000, $80000, and $85000, $60000 would be the median.
You do appear to be correct about his first figure (the "bad place in the Bay" being wrong, though.
A total of 7,271 new and resale houses and condominiums sold last month in the nine-county region, marking a 0.5 percent uptick from August. The median sales price fell 36 percent from a year earlier to a five-year low of $400,000, MDA DataQuick said.
$400,000 /.64 = 625,000. It did "hit" 625K, evidently, but certainly isn't there any more.
Not to mention it is a "free" service, no one has a right to demand it to be up anyway. You are storing your e-mail on google's servers and you pay nothing for it. If they need access to their crucial time-sensitive data then they should keep it themselves or pay for a service which will guarantee availability.
Some of these companies are paying customers. The headline only mentions Gmail, but this is also about Google Apps as a whole.
Interestingly enough, it occurred to me that one of the quickest ways to discover whether you were talking to a person or an AI would be to repeat yourself. A person will quickly notice and call you on it, whereas an AI will blandly repeat the same sort of response. (Even if the AI is programmed to "notice" when you say the same thing twice, the English language is versatile enough to allow you to say basically the same thing without setting off the trigger.)
Unfortunately, plenty of people say the same thing several times in a row, changing only the wording. This is especially likely to happen if they're venting about something that bothers them.
What response should an AI have if it detects this? I would recommend annoyance, but the number of "not quite repetitions" required to trip it should be higher if the AI "agrees" with the statement.
Sadly enough, for any real liberals, our choices are to vote for Obama, and hope he wins, or vote for someone else, who will not win, and will possibly get the worse of the two elected.
What do you mean by "real liberals"? Both candidates are about the same distance from real liberalism (and real conservatism for that matter), and that's so far away that it doesn't matter.
From a liberal point of view, Obama is infinitely better than McCain, for the same reason that one meal a day is infinitely better than none. It might not be the best thing, but it is better than nothing.
This was followed up on the astro mailing lists as faulty data -- the observers mistook sunspot-dimming for a planet passing in front of the star. The correction hasn't made it to journalists yet and the science article is still in draft, so no link-to-reference, sorry!
The same thing happened 3-4 weeks back with TW Hydrae b.
NASA and the ESA's sites still claim this one is valid.
Maybe you could post an excerpt from one of the emails?
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't thinking about Waco -- a bit earlier actually, I want to say Ruby Ridge.
Ruby Ridge was the ATF versus a man, a 14-year-old boy, his dog, and a woman holding a baby. I doubt that that's the one you're thinking of; it's not a very good example of "ATF versus militia".
That's a great way to prepare them for the real world, isn't it, where corporate computers are locked down pretty hard. I think a better idea would be to survey some companies (larger ones with as many or more employees as there are students) in the local area and average out their practices.
In the real world, the kids will have their own computers at home.
Trying to make schools resemble businesses isn't a good goal. Their business is to teach, not to make money.
Now, with that said, the kids don't need to be watching tentacle porn instead of doing their homework, on a laptop provided by taxpayers. They can get an old machine for ten bucks at a thrift store for that, assuming that they don't already have one. This has nothing to do with "preparing them for the 'real world'", which a school quite frankly cannot do.
Block sites that are only pornography (yes, the smart ones will get around this, but they probably already know whatever it is they're studying), leave political sites alone, and do whatever you want with the social networking sites. Err on the side of non-restriction if there's a question.
Directly and indirectly, religon has been responsible for more people dying than any other cause EVER.
I see this often, but it's just plain wrong.
Secular leaders ushering in various forms of extreme socialism managed to surpass it in a single century, and general nationalism was far ahead of it anyway.
It was true 5000 years ago. And it's still true today.
Religion was the top killer 5000 years ago? I'd love to see your sources for that.
Pfft! What were they thinking!? They should have stopped as soon as they got "Digging designation canceled: Warm stone located"...
They're digging from the Z-level above, so they're fine.
Now they can build a forge, kiln, or smelter on top of it without having to worry about using bituminous coal, lignite, or wood for fuel.
You don't have to worry until someone finds an adamantine vein and follows it for too long...
I won't even get into extended lifespans, artificially extended childhood or a whole host of other, related societal issues.
Ok, I'll bite, I'm interested in these. What do you mean? What's artificially extended childhood?
I would surmise that he's talking about how the age when a person takes on the responsibilities (or at least the mental maturity) of adulthood keeps rising.
One commenter suggests that professors should encourage students to improve the Wikipedia articles about topics they are studying. 'This will help them understand the topic and at the same time improve Wikipedia.'"
How is bringing thousands of people into the mix who don't know what they're talking about (many of whom think they know everything) supposed to improve anything?
Encouraging your students to go "improve" Wikipedia articles isn't encouraging them to speak up, seek knowledge, or debate.
Reread my first post and your reponse to it.
By your reasoning, the previously-mentioned Siberia stuff is no longer evil, because a good decision could lead to it.
This made no sense in response to what I said. Saying that even good decisions can make people suffer doesn't mean "Siberia stuff is no longer evil".
The last part was simply an example of a decision causing suffering, and still being good.
Incidentally, you never answered the question from the first post.
When you're the leader of a nation of 300 million people, your slightest mistake can bring suffering to millions of people. Good decisions may even bring suffering to millions of people.
By your reasoning, the previously-mentioned Siberia stuff is no longer evil, because a good decision could lead to it.
I said "Good decisions may bring suffering to millions of people", not "Decisions that bring suffering to millions of people are good".
As an example: Was Allied involvement in World War II evil because it brought suffering (death, even) to millions of people? The generally accepted answer is NO, because it was in response to an attack and prevented something far worse.
It is juvenile to think someone is evil because they use a different text editor. It is just clarity to see evil in someone who will bring suffering to millions of people.
When you're the leader of a nation of 300 million people, your slightest mistake can bring suffering to millions of people. Good decisions may even bring suffering to millions of people.
So, please give your definition of "evil" and explain why McCain fits it. I expect that you're either deluded about McCain, or have a laughable definition of the word.
To me, sex is way more natural than murder.
Sex and violence (including murder) are both about as natural as you can get.
Becoming obsessed with either is a bad thing for a society, and so is being unrealistically afraid of them.
I don't think as many Americans "fear" sex as you think (granted, a higher ratio do than in other countries). I think more are just worried about people becoming obsessed with it.
The lengths that some European nations go to to censor "violence" are more ridiculous to me than American censorship of sex.
I mean, we don't have shows called "Holding Hands in the City" and "Herbs with Medicinal Value".
Do you really think that Nazis weren't fanatics? They killed 6 million Jews because the Jews didn't have blue eyes!
1. The parent post specified "religious fanatics".
2. The Nazis blamed the Jews for economic, social, etc ills of the country, and for the conflict turning against Germany.
At any rate, the main point is that the US's enemies in the Middle East have very different motivations, and culture, than its enemies in the second World War did. They aren't necessarily going to behave the same way, even in similar situations.
Stories like this are actually interesting and have a math/science side to them, instead of being mindless humor that everyone has already seen elsewhere. This is something that a math teacher could show her students to make them interested, more so than all the silly posters and videos they used when I was going through grade school.
And artificial intelligence. That's always 20 years away.
No, it starts off at 20 years away and gets closer, and once it's less than 5 or 10 years away, someone redefines it and it's back to 20.
This stuff isn't just happening in the UK.
True, but you deserved it - we didn't.
Which one are you, and why didn't you "deserve" it as much as the other did?
Hey, you're disenfranchising colorblind voters.
Sadly, another comment from the "My country, right or wrong" crowd. The duty of a citizen in a democracy isn't to agree, it's to fix, therefore, "My country, right or fix it!"
Read the post:
We don't need whiners like you in a small mess like this. Real Americans can take a look around, and say "I've seen worse." and rebuild.
He's talking about fixing, and he's castigating the first guy for wanting to run instead. The "translation" by the person you replied to is drivel.
Real Americans can take a look around, and say "I've seen worse." and rebuild. If you're not interested in that, move.
Except there has never been worse fascism in America, so of course, you'd be nothing but a liar were you to claim that you'd seen worse here.
"Seeing worse" doesn't mean "seeing worse fascism".
"Seeing worse" also doesn't mean "seeing worse here".
I think you're arguing against what you wish he'd said.
Dear Ralph:
There's four borders in this country. Pick one and head out. We don't need whiners like you in a small mess like this. Real Americans can take a look around, and say "I've seen worse." and rebuild. If you're not interested in that, move.
signed:
Real American.
Translation: "People who complain or criticize the current state of affairs are whiners. 'Real Americans' are people who agree with me that things aren't so bad. And if you criticize the country or think that things are bad here, then you should leave."
Anyone care to explain how this got modded +5 insightful?
No, he said that people who were going to whine about it and threaten to leave should leave. The post above his wasn't just criticizing the state of affairs; it was recommending abandonment of the country.
He said that the current state of the country was a mess, and that Americans were going to fix it.
That's not even close to what you're claiming. ...And, of course, YOU were modded +5 Insightful.
I'm gonna have to call "shenanigans" on your $$ figures there. According to this it would appear there are plenty of homes one could buy that are FAR less than your supposed $625K "median" price.
That's the wrong point to make. Half of the homes (give or take half of a house) would be under the "median price", in either case. Unlike the mean, how far some go above or below it doesn't affect it. If the prices were $5, $5, $5, $60000, $80000, $80000, and $85000, $60000 would be the median.
You do appear to be correct about his first figure (the "bad place in the Bay" being wrong, though.
A total of 7,271 new and resale houses and condominiums sold last month in the nine-county region, marking a 0.5 percent uptick from August. The median sales price fell 36 percent from a year earlier to a five-year low of $400,000, MDA DataQuick said.
$400,000 / .64 = 625,000. It did "hit" 625K, evidently, but certainly isn't there any more.
Not to mention it is a "free" service, no one has a right to demand it to be up anyway. You are storing your e-mail on google's servers and you pay nothing for it. If they need access to their crucial time-sensitive data then they should keep it themselves or pay for a service which will guarantee availability.
Some of these companies are paying customers. The headline only mentions Gmail, but this is also about Google Apps as a whole.
It's a risk you take any time you let someone else handle something for you.
Interestingly enough, it occurred to me that one of the quickest ways to discover whether you were talking to a person or an AI would be to repeat yourself. A person will quickly notice and call you on it, whereas an AI will blandly repeat the same sort of response. (Even if the AI is programmed to "notice" when you say the same thing twice, the English language is versatile enough to allow you to say basically the same thing without setting off the trigger.)
Unfortunately, plenty of people say the same thing several times in a row, changing only the wording. This is especially likely to happen if they're venting about something that bothers them.
What response should an AI have if it detects this? I would recommend annoyance, but the number of "not quite repetitions" required to trip it should be higher if the AI "agrees" with the statement.
I would go so far as to say that failure to recognize and understand sarcasm will always lead to making stupid comments.
He understood the post perfectly. You just misunderstood his.
Post 1 was indeed sarcastic, and implied that police keeping seized assets could (or would often) lead to corruption.
Post 2 said that not only would it _often_ lead to corruption, it would _always_ do so.
What do you mean by "real liberals"? Both candidates are about the same distance from real liberalism (and real conservatism for that matter), and that's so far away that it doesn't matter.
Eating nothing is better than eating poison.
This was followed up on the astro mailing lists as faulty data -- the observers mistook sunspot-dimming for a planet passing in front of the star. The correction hasn't made it to journalists yet and the science article is still in draft, so no link-to-reference, sorry!
The same thing happened 3-4 weeks back with TW Hydrae b.
NASA and the ESA's sites still claim this one is valid.
Maybe you could post an excerpt from one of the emails?