you are assuming that by choosing his news sources, he is choosing to only read things that confirm what he already believes. you have no basis for that conclusion.
i frequently read news from sources like The People's Daily (beijing newspaper) or al jezeera. i think a lot of what is published in those sources is bullshit, and plenty more i just disagree with. I still find them more useful than Fox News. In this case getting news on "my terms" simply means I am not dependent upon the popular mass media of this country for my information.
Its revealing of how far slashdot has fallen that we're 4 years in and still trying to figure out whether or not twitter might be useful. If you don't like using twitter, don't. But here are some things I like about it.
* I frequently discover that a friend is doing something (e.g. getting a beer) nearby, and I join them, when otherwise I wouldn't have known.
* I get news much sooner that I would otherwise.
* I don't have to have a facebook account.
* I find other people with similar interests to mine because they follow me on twitter.
* Some of my friends are hilarious. I love hearing their running commentary on their experiences.
* If I'm in a part of town I'm not familiar with, or another city, and want food recommendations, i tweet and usually get a few good suggestions within minutes. There are probably other good opportunities for crowd-sourcing decisions I'm not thinking of.
* I can quickly plan events by suggesting a time and place on twitter, and dont have to send emails or make phone calls.
* When I am at conferences and events, it is invaluable for meeting up with people, or finding out last minute about something awesome I want to be part of.
This sucks. Examples of why:
* GPS navigation only works if you have a gps enabled device and a constant data connection. Wi-Fi is useless for this.
* Netbooks suck. Period.
* Pulling out a laptop to check twitter to see where your friends are while walking down the street does not make sense.
* Prepaid SIM service sucks. Calls are deprioritized relative to other traffic and call quality is terrible.
Do I need to keep going? Start counting the apps in the iTunes store that *DONT* work on the iPod Touch and you should start to get the idea.
Get this. Up until 85-100 years ago (practically) no one had cars. They all managed to survive and get through life despite that handicap. You may have to endure being a social pariah for a few years but it isn't necessary to have a car.
I don't know if it's still available but you can use the horse-drawn buggy on a road without getting a car. Whether they'll let you ride it to the grocery store without upgrading to a car is another thing. They allowed this for the first time with the Model T.
The Supreme Court was thinking about overturning an important and just ruling but decided to just maintain the status quo. Oooooh, I suddenly feel so optimistic.
Agreed about the Feynman Lectures. Halliday and Resnick are ok as well.
It's not widely available, but my favorite text book of all time is Thomas M. Helliwell's "Introduction to Special Relativity". Its the only textbook I've ever read cover to cover.
The sample problems are great fun, frequently involving a rhinoceros traveling at 0.99c (where c is the speed of light in a vacuum).
He also has an excellent two volume introduction to mechanics, but its much harder to find. It basically only exists as spiral bound sets of photocopies made for Harvey Mudd students.
Print the bits out on paper to be scanned later, as necessary. You should make several copies and store them in different locations incase of fire or water damage.
To answer your next question:
Land in Montana and the Yukon territory is cheap.
...because its at the bottom of a page that already has too many comments, but I hated the movie and this is a chance for me to complain.
I felt like I was watching the viral marketing campaign for the movie that SHOULD have been made. There is this huge, awesome monster with interesting biology slaughtering New Yorkers in droves. We have no idea where it came from, how it arrived in manhattan, or how its going to be gotten rid of. It drops parasites cooler than the monsters you see in most films. But we don't get information about any of that. We're stuck with Dipshit-with-a-handycam chasing Douche-bag around as he tries to find Cute-but-kinda-skanky-girlfiend to tell her he loves her before she dies because she's too lazy to pick herself up off a piece of rebar.
Also, the Pepé LePew effect drives me nuts. The characters run frantically around Manhattan for 90 minutes, and yet, somehow, the monster is never more than 50 yards away.
(On the other hand, that one chick exploded. That was kinda cool.)
"Generally the bands only break even on album sales and that's if they're lucky."
While its true that only the most popular bands make any reasonable income from album sales, the above comment doesn't make much sense to me. Recording companies are greedy, but I don't think many signed musicians pay the cost of actually producing their albums, so they "break even" before the first album is sold. The pennies/album they receive, albeit small, is profit as far as the artist is concerned.
My dad had a friend a while back that did this, I think maybe in Oregon or Washington, but I don't recall. He had a large property with a decent sized stream running through it, and set up a water wheel. It generated A LOT more power than he used, so he was constantly pumping power back into the grid, which his electric company paid him for, at something like one fifth of what he would pay for the electricity if he was drawing it. The startup cost wasn't that high, as he was an electrician and set it most of it up himself, and was way more cost effective than solar panels at the time (I don't know if that is still true, this was 10 or 15 years ago). He wasn't just saving money, but actually turning a profit of a couple thousand dollars a year.
I think some time later the regulations might have changed and the power company would no longer pay him, but at least he still had electricity that was essentially free.
Much the same as landowners deserved to be tied to ceiling fans and swung about till they died...
I think you are thinking of the cat in the fake cell phone commercial everyone has seen on youtube. Because, if there is a ceiling fan powerful enough to swing around an adult human, I want to know where I can get one!
Seriously though, enough bad shit happened during the communist revolution that you really don't need to make stuff up about it.
I think the problem is the education system as a whole. The system is set up to produce cogs. It is entirely possible to have low or failing grades in all your classes in high school and hear not a word about it from any teacher or authority figure. Some of the more concerned teachers (who are sadly few and far between) might give you the "not living up to your potential" speech, but thats about it. However, if you are late to class, talk when you aren't called on, don't sit in your assigned seat, you get reprimanded in front of your peers, detention, etc. Do it too often, and you can expect suspension, parent-teacher conferences, and so forth. In some districts, if you have too many unexcused absences you are held back a year, regardless of GPA. I could go on and on, but I think the agenda is pretty clear.
Also, this is something worth mentioning. A friend, a high school physics teacher, gave me a piece of advice. If you are ever going to vote on a ballot measure that relates in some way to education, and aren't sure what is in the kids' best interests, look and see where the Teacher's Union stands on the issue, and then vote the opposite.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize you can read other people's tweets without posting your own, right?
you are assuming that by choosing his news sources, he is choosing to only read things that confirm what he already believes. you have no basis for that conclusion.
i frequently read news from sources like The People's Daily (beijing newspaper) or al jezeera. i think a lot of what is published in those sources is bullshit, and plenty more i just disagree with. I still find them more useful than Fox News. In this case getting news on "my terms" simply means I am not dependent upon the popular mass media of this country for my information.
Its revealing of how far slashdot has fallen that we're 4 years in and still trying to figure out whether or not twitter might be useful. If you don't like using twitter, don't. But here are some things I like about it.
* I frequently discover that a friend is doing something (e.g. getting a beer) nearby, and I join them, when otherwise I wouldn't have known.
* I get news much sooner that I would otherwise.
* I don't have to have a facebook account.
* I find other people with similar interests to mine because they follow me on twitter.
* Some of my friends are hilarious. I love hearing their running commentary on their experiences.
* If I'm in a part of town I'm not familiar with, or another city, and want food recommendations, i tweet and usually get a few good suggestions within minutes. There are probably other good opportunities for crowd-sourcing decisions I'm not thinking of.
* I can quickly plan events by suggesting a time and place on twitter, and dont have to send emails or make phone calls.
* When I am at conferences and events, it is invaluable for meeting up with people, or finding out last minute about something awesome I want to be part of.
I could probably go on.
This sucks. Examples of why:
* GPS navigation only works if you have a gps enabled device and a constant data connection. Wi-Fi is useless for this.
* Netbooks suck. Period.
* Pulling out a laptop to check twitter to see where your friends are while walking down the street does not make sense.
* Prepaid SIM service sucks. Calls are deprioritized relative to other traffic and call quality is terrible.
Do I need to keep going? Start counting the apps in the iTunes store that *DONT* work on the iPod Touch and you should start to get the idea.
Get this. Up until 85-100 years ago (practically) no one had cars. They all managed to survive and get through life despite that handicap. You may have to endure being a social pariah for a few years but it isn't necessary to have a car. I don't know if it's still available but you can use the horse-drawn buggy on a road without getting a car. Whether they'll let you ride it to the grocery store without upgrading to a car is another thing. They allowed this for the first time with the Model T.
The Supreme Court was thinking about overturning an important and just ruling but decided to just maintain the status quo. Oooooh, I suddenly feel so optimistic.
moreover, firewire iPods *can't* charge over USB. At least my 3rd gen can't.
Pisses me off. Firewire is much better tech than USB. Loading a 160 GB iPod over USB sucks.
For those who like to RTFA, there is another article.
Candlejack? Who the hell is Can
what do you do when they say "Yes"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0
"The only thing i want to save, in case it comes in handy later, is space."
Agreed about the Feynman Lectures. Halliday and Resnick are ok as well. It's not widely available, but my favorite text book of all time is Thomas M. Helliwell's "Introduction to Special Relativity". Its the only textbook I've ever read cover to cover. The sample problems are great fun, frequently involving a rhinoceros traveling at 0.99c (where c is the speed of light in a vacuum). He also has an excellent two volume introduction to mechanics, but its much harder to find. It basically only exists as spiral bound sets of photocopies made for Harvey Mudd students.
Print the bits out on paper to be scanned later, as necessary. You should make several copies and store them in different locations incase of fire or water damage. To answer your next question: Land in Montana and the Yukon territory is cheap.
I read that as BSD world. For a second, I thought that comment might be offensive.
...because its at the bottom of a page that already has too many comments, but I hated the movie and this is a chance for me to complain.
I felt like I was watching the viral marketing campaign for the movie that SHOULD have been made. There is this huge, awesome monster with interesting biology slaughtering New Yorkers in droves. We have no idea where it came from, how it arrived in manhattan, or how its going to be gotten rid of. It drops parasites cooler than the monsters you see in most films. But we don't get information about any of that. We're stuck with Dipshit-with-a-handycam chasing Douche-bag around as he tries to find Cute-but-kinda-skanky-girlfiend to tell her he loves her before she dies because she's too lazy to pick herself up off a piece of rebar.
Also, the Pepé LePew effect drives me nuts. The characters run frantically around Manhattan for 90 minutes, and yet, somehow, the monster is never more than 50 yards away.
(On the other hand, that one chick exploded. That was kinda cool.)
"Generally the bands only break even on album sales and that's if they're lucky."
While its true that only the most popular bands make any reasonable income from album sales, the above comment doesn't make much sense to me. Recording companies are greedy, but I don't think many signed musicians pay the cost of actually producing their albums, so they "break even" before the first album is sold. The pennies/album they receive, albeit small, is profit as far as the artist is concerned.
THERE ARE NO ROADS TO NOME!
My dad had a friend a while back that did this, I think maybe in Oregon or Washington, but I don't recall. He had a large property with a decent sized stream running through it, and set up a water wheel. It generated A LOT more power than he used, so he was constantly pumping power back into the grid, which his electric company paid him for, at something like one fifth of what he would pay for the electricity if he was drawing it. The startup cost wasn't that high, as he was an electrician and set it most of it up himself, and was way more cost effective than solar panels at the time (I don't know if that is still true, this was 10 or 15 years ago). He wasn't just saving money, but actually turning a profit of a couple thousand dollars a year.
I think some time later the regulations might have changed and the power company would no longer pay him, but at least he still had electricity that was essentially free.
...the launch titles are so crappy.
Much the same as landowners deserved to be tied to ceiling fans and swung about till they died...
I think you are thinking of the cat in the fake cell phone commercial everyone has seen on youtube. Because, if there is a ceiling fan powerful enough to swing around an adult human, I want to know where I can get one!
Seriously though, enough bad shit happened during the communist revolution that you really don't need to make stuff up about it.
That should extend the battery life of my powerbook to about 48 hours.
I think the problem is the education system as a whole. The system is set up to produce cogs. It is entirely possible to have low or failing grades in all your classes in high school and hear not a word about it from any teacher or authority figure. Some of the more concerned teachers (who are sadly few and far between) might give you the "not living up to your potential" speech, but thats about it. However, if you are late to class, talk when you aren't called on, don't sit in your assigned seat, you get reprimanded in front of your peers, detention, etc. Do it too often, and you can expect suspension, parent-teacher conferences, and so forth. In some districts, if you have too many unexcused absences you are held back a year, regardless of GPA. I could go on and on, but I think the agenda is pretty clear.
Also, this is something worth mentioning. A friend, a high school physics teacher, gave me a piece of advice. If you are ever going to vote on a ballot measure that relates in some way to education, and aren't sure what is in the kids' best interests, look and see where the Teacher's Union stands on the issue, and then vote the opposite.
I could never expect anyone to know how it pains me to say this, but... it would be an improvement.
EVERY console made by a Japanese company sells out at launch in Japan. The fucking VisualBoy sold out in Japan.