Hey, and there are smugglers at The Smuggler's Inn... who'dve thunk it? You think the authorities would be grateful that idiot criminals make themselves easier to find.
My iPad position is that I wouldn't have bought one, and I didn't - I won it in a drawing that I didn't even know I had entered.
Sooooo....~ two years (and $50ish in Apps) later, the iPad is going strong, looking like the day we got it, and the $350 Asus Netbook that the kids had about equal access to got just enough drops, hard lid closings, etc, that the hinge has come loose and the internal screen doesn't work anymore. The kids actually treated the netbook fairly well, doesn't take much to break those screws loose from their plastic mating holes. We've had similar results with other "affordable" gadgets like handheld DVD players, etc., and below a certain size - roughly a 7" screen, gadgets seem more prone to being exposed to water, at least by our kids.
The iPad was more "intuitive" for my kids - of course, they learned how to access the netbook in about 3 seconds flat, as opposed to 2 for the iPad, but for some kids it might make a difference.
As for the tablet i don't see anything the tablet could do that a cheap netbook or desktop could do, except maybe cost more.
In the 8-10 year old range, I have found the iPad 1 to be more kid-resistant than an Asus netbook. I think, dollar for dollar, the iPad will outlast 2, perhaps 3 netbooks.
Yes, and too much television will rot your brain, give you cancer, and ruin your eyes.
Tablets: They're new, they're (a little) different, they'll have lots of critics and fear mongers.
As for "causing ADD/Autism", I only see that happening if they're used as the ultimate babysitter (kinda like TV 30 years ago.) If a kid's whole day, every day, consists of 99% tablet interaction and 1% ducking criticism from parents and other adults, yeah, they're going to come out a little bent, at least compared to kids who didn't grow up that way.
Anybody still go to a school that forbids simple +-x/ calculators in advanced math and science courses? This, too, shall pass.
I used to carry stuff like this on airplanes, and through international customs. My company made and sold products that were hacked together PCBs slapped in a box with a motorcycle battery - looked awesome on X-ray.
The best hardware/software combo device is between your ears. If you actually listen to and understand what is being said, you will remember it....
This was my method in college, also it didn't hurt to pair up with a dedicated scribe, the kind that wrote everything down, we'd get together after class and I'd explain her notes to her.
In a more progressive environment (like almost any >1M population metro area), I'd agree that the News might help.
Around here, people with dark skin are still "supposed to live on the East side of town," and those damn retards are just a distraction keeping my little genius from getting a proper education (speaking from the perspective of the majority of the local population, not mine.)
My kids are all perfectly typical and have the same response. That's just kids.
This is true of almost everything my kids do, it's mostly "special" with my kids due to the restricted communication aspect, plus the intensity, frequency, and difficulty of terminating total meltdowns is quite a bit higher. Restricted communication also entails a lack of motivational reasoning capacity - we can say something like: "stop rolling on the floor and we can watch Toy Story again," or the opposite tack of "stop rolling on the floor or Toy Story is gone", and it just won't get through a lot of the time. It helps to try to communicate before getting to the meltdown state, but even that can be hit and miss.
Big heads run in our family, for at least four generations. Thing is, this generations' heads got bigger, faster than ever before, we're talking "normal" body size with a head circumference above 4 sigma on the standard growth charts. There are theories about what environmental factors are causing that, but they don't have much real data, yet.
So the idea that people are trying to get their kids diagnosed in order to get more attention is rather an offensive one for those having to deal with the lack of support every day.
Yes, exactly. In our community, about 1 in 10 parents of autistic children are "adequately served" by the school system, most of them are locked up in "closet classrooms," typically portable units on the back corner of the property with their own separate entry gate and unpaved path to "their rooms."
Yes, we have contacted the Federal Office of Civil Rights, you see, if "some" special needs children are served in the normal building, and "some" normal children are served in the portables, then it doesn't meet their definition of discrimination. As you might guess, the portables are 90% special needs, and the main building is 95% "normal," which meets the Federal guidelines and therefore they will not come to investigate further on that basis...
If Disney and others have been mass producing DVDs like that for children for the last 15 years, I'd fully expect incidences of all kinds of mental pathology to be skyrocketing right about now.
My boys are both diagnosed (mostly non-verbal) Autistic - they feed on Pixar DVDs like they were crack, same super strong dopamine push high when they get it, same withdrawal symptoms when they don't, same "will do anything to get it" motivation.
The only thing worse are Disney "Sneak Peek" trailers.
... will be to end all vaccinations, and not to clean up the poisons that our kids breath, the crap that's in our food, and all the other potentially genetically damaging stuff that we do.
No, the vaccination thing is cooling off, but Al Gore might be making a case that it comes from increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
Looking back at my highschool (early 1980s), I can clearly identify 3 cases (diagnosable by today's criteria) out of 210 graduating seniors - that's a little skewed though, we had roughly 90 dropouts, so the overall number in my class was about 1:100 (all guys), the class one year older than me had about 5.
What's changed in the last 30 years is that all those cases were "high functioning, verbal" there are a lot more with serious challenges today.
The CDC stats are for 8 year olds - if you have comorbid dwarfisim and were attending 2nd grade in 2010, you might have fooled them well enough to get counted.
Having children diagnosed with Autism, and fairly far out on the spectrum, I wouldn't call it a dis-ability, they're "differently-abled."
If all you care about is being able to sit in a room with 17 other kids their age, shut up and do what they're told - yeah, that's a problem, well into the disability range. Personally, I don't think that the ability to sit like a vegetable and follow basic instructions is the only thing of value that a person can offer to society.
In my family, at least, this finding goes a long way toward explaining at least some of our "abnormal" behaviors:
And, I was just going to point out that the statistics were:
1:150 (nationwide) in 2002, 1:125 (nationwide) in 2004, 1:110 (nationwide) in 2006, 1:88 (in 14 states) in 2008.
This isn't really telling us what the statistics are today, but I would extrapolate an 8.713%/year increase from the presented data, leading to a figure of 1:61 in 2012. When the 2006 data was presented, everyone called out "you can't extrapolate like that, the growth is over now", but the latest data presented actually shows an increase in the trend to over 10%/year increase.
At these 10%/year rates, by 2040 over 1:2 8 year old boys will be autistic and it will be the jocks and frat boys who are whining about discrimination and bullying, and by 2050, the majority of the population will be classified autistic, and/. will finally surpass Facebook for market share.
Solar is barely cost effective with all the rebates and incentives, if you've got significant shade, you'll be... less than cost effective.
Also, try to think about how much that oak is going to grow, how much you're going to need to trim it, how much that costs, how much extra heat load you're getting from trimming the tree....
I live in Florida, I'd love to go solar, but I love my trees more and as long as they shade my home, solar is out for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, and there are smugglers at The Smuggler's Inn... who'dve thunk it? You think the authorities would be grateful that idiot criminals make themselves easier to find.
My iPad position is that I wouldn't have bought one, and I didn't - I won it in a drawing that I didn't even know I had entered.
Sooooo....~ two years (and $50ish in Apps) later, the iPad is going strong, looking like the day we got it, and the $350 Asus Netbook that the kids had about equal access to got just enough drops, hard lid closings, etc, that the hinge has come loose and the internal screen doesn't work anymore. The kids actually treated the netbook fairly well, doesn't take much to break those screws loose from their plastic mating holes. We've had similar results with other "affordable" gadgets like handheld DVD players, etc., and below a certain size - roughly a 7" screen, gadgets seem more prone to being exposed to water, at least by our kids.
The iPad was more "intuitive" for my kids - of course, they learned how to access the netbook in about 3 seconds flat, as opposed to 2 for the iPad, but for some kids it might make a difference.
Read these lyrics from 40 years ago.
As for the tablet i don't see anything the tablet could do that a cheap netbook or desktop could do, except maybe cost more.
In the 8-10 year old range, I have found the iPad 1 to be more kid-resistant than an Asus netbook. I think, dollar for dollar, the iPad will outlast 2, perhaps 3 netbooks.
It's a $600 toy they're trying to justify buying. Surely there must be something better they can spend the $6,000 on than 10 iPads.
Like, what? 1/5 of an annual teacher's salary expense?
Yes, and too much television will rot your brain, give you cancer, and ruin your eyes.
Tablets: They're new, they're (a little) different, they'll have lots of critics and fear mongers.
As for "causing ADD/Autism", I only see that happening if they're used as the ultimate babysitter (kinda like TV 30 years ago.) If a kid's whole day, every day, consists of 99% tablet interaction and 1% ducking criticism from parents and other adults, yeah, they're going to come out a little bent, at least compared to kids who didn't grow up that way.
Anybody still go to a school that forbids simple +-x/ calculators in advanced math and science courses? This, too, shall pass.
I used to carry stuff like this on airplanes, and through international customs. My company made and sold products that were hacked together PCBs slapped in a box with a motorcycle battery - looked awesome on X-ray.
6.5KHz, I am impressed, boot times should be..... glacial.
The best hardware/software combo device is between your ears. If you actually listen to and understand what is being said, you will remember it....
This was my method in college, also it didn't hurt to pair up with a dedicated scribe, the kind that wrote everything down, we'd get together after class and I'd explain her notes to her.
I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.
There are several Utopian cults who promise what you seek, it is delivered right after the Kool-Aid is served.
Since anyone with reasonably good karma can vote stories up to the front page now, /. content is going to start resembling Reddit more and more.
In a more progressive environment (like almost any >1M population metro area), I'd agree that the News might help.
Around here, people with dark skin are still "supposed to live on the East side of town," and those damn retards are just a distraction keeping my little genius from getting a proper education (speaking from the perspective of the majority of the local population, not mine.)
My kids are all perfectly typical and have the same response. That's just kids.
This is true of almost everything my kids do, it's mostly "special" with my kids due to the restricted communication aspect, plus the intensity, frequency, and difficulty of terminating total meltdowns is quite a bit higher. Restricted communication also entails a lack of motivational reasoning capacity - we can say something like: "stop rolling on the floor and we can watch Toy Story again," or the opposite tack of "stop rolling on the floor or Toy Story is gone", and it just won't get through a lot of the time. It helps to try to communicate before getting to the meltdown state, but even that can be hit and miss.
Big heads run in our family, for at least four generations. Thing is, this generations' heads got bigger, faster than ever before, we're talking "normal" body size with a head circumference above 4 sigma on the standard growth charts. There are theories about what environmental factors are causing that, but they don't have much real data, yet.
In our community, autistic children tend to be less obese than the general population, by a fairly wide margin.
Judging by the current trends, persons with autistic genetic profiles are successfully producing offspring better than ever before...
So the idea that people are trying to get their kids diagnosed in order to get more attention is rather an offensive one for those having to deal with the lack of support every day.
Yes, exactly. In our community, about 1 in 10 parents of autistic children are "adequately served" by the school system, most of them are locked up in "closet classrooms," typically portable units on the back corner of the property with their own separate entry gate and unpaved path to "their rooms."
Yes, we have contacted the Federal Office of Civil Rights, you see, if "some" special needs children are served in the normal building, and "some" normal children are served in the portables, then it doesn't meet their definition of discrimination. As you might guess, the portables are 90% special needs, and the main building is 95% "normal," which meets the Federal guidelines and therefore they will not come to investigate further on that basis...
If Disney and others have been mass producing DVDs like that for children for the last 15 years, I'd fully expect incidences of all kinds of mental pathology to be skyrocketing right about now.
My boys are both diagnosed (mostly non-verbal) Autistic - they feed on Pixar DVDs like they were crack, same super strong dopamine push high when they get it, same withdrawal symptoms when they don't, same "will do anything to get it" motivation.
The only thing worse are Disney "Sneak Peek" trailers.
... will be to end all vaccinations, and not to clean up the poisons that our kids breath, the crap that's in our food, and all the other potentially genetically damaging stuff that we do.
No, the vaccination thing is cooling off, but Al Gore might be making a case that it comes from increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
Looking back at my highschool (early 1980s), I can clearly identify 3 cases (diagnosable by today's criteria) out of 210 graduating seniors - that's a little skewed though, we had roughly 90 dropouts, so the overall number in my class was about 1:100 (all guys), the class one year older than me had about 5.
What's changed in the last 30 years is that all those cases were "high functioning, verbal" there are a lot more with serious challenges today.
The CDC stats are for 8 year olds - if you have comorbid dwarfisim and were attending 2nd grade in 2010, you might have fooled them well enough to get counted.
Having children diagnosed with Autism, and fairly far out on the spectrum, I wouldn't call it a dis-ability, they're "differently-abled."
If all you care about is being able to sit in a room with 17 other kids their age, shut up and do what they're told - yeah, that's a problem, well into the disability range. Personally, I don't think that the ability to sit like a vegetable and follow basic instructions is the only thing of value that a person can offer to society.
In my family, at least, this finding goes a long way toward explaining at least some of our "abnormal" behaviors:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=mind-wandering-is-linked-to-your-wo-12-03-17
They're not all mainstreamed, not by a longshot.
And, I was just going to point out that the statistics were:
1:150 (nationwide) in 2002,
1:125 (nationwide) in 2004,
1:110 (nationwide) in 2006,
1:88 (in 14 states) in 2008.
This isn't really telling us what the statistics are today, but I would extrapolate an 8.713%/year increase from the presented data, leading to a figure of 1:61 in 2012. When the 2006 data was presented, everyone called out "you can't extrapolate like that, the growth is over now", but the latest data presented actually shows an increase in the trend to over 10%/year increase.
At these 10%/year rates, by 2040 over 1:2 8 year old boys will be autistic and it will be the jocks and frat boys who are whining about discrimination and bullying, and by 2050, the majority of the population will be classified autistic, and /. will finally surpass Facebook for market share.
Cue Oh You Pretty Things
Solar is barely cost effective with all the rebates and incentives, if you've got significant shade, you'll be... less than cost effective.
Also, try to think about how much that oak is going to grow, how much you're going to need to trim it, how much that costs, how much extra heat load you're getting from trimming the tree....
I live in Florida, I'd love to go solar, but I love my trees more and as long as they shade my home, solar is out for me.
Confirmed.