I agree with the first part of your comments. There are plenty of kids with very uneven profiles - great at one things, average in something else. And there are gifted kids with specific learning disabilities (like dyslexia or dysgraphia) - in most schools, good luck getting them in the gifted class AND getting their disability treated. Many places, you pick one or the other.
However, this part:
A "special ed" person who is included in a "normal" class will learn how to be around "normal" people, and the "normal" people will learn the material better by helping the "special ed" person along.
Is bullshit, and is not supported by research evidence either. Kids don't go to school to teach other kids, they go to learn. Teaching is the job of the person being taught to teach. If a kid wants to volunteer their time tutoring, great, but it's completely unfair to force them. Plus, kids haven't been trained to teach, and most of the time won't be as good at it as a teacher, so you're doing a disservice to the lower-ability person too.
Outdated? IQ tests are regularly re-normed and re-written to reflect current research in the cognition of intelligence and learning.
IQ level is the best predictor of a number of life outcomes, such as dying in a car accident, spending time in jail, and teen pregnancy. (Yes, all of those are correlated with a low IQ, not a high one.) It's not a terrific predictor, no - but it's better than anything else we've got, such as parents' income and education level. And, yes, it's also a pretty good predictor of future monetary success... But then, there are plenty of people with high IQs who realize that's not always the best definition of success.
I mean, he would have us believe that the cool kids would immediately go down the 2.50 new releases, buying each one and scorning the cheap songs. I don't see it working like that.
You're posting on slashdot, and you think you have any insight into what the cool kids would do?
Better yet, you assume that they would do whatever it is you do?
Non-DRMed CD: I can rip it to MP3 - and possibly do something illegal, like give my friends copies or share the files somewhere.
DRMed CD: I can rip it to AAC, then burn a non-protected CD and burn that to MP3 - and then possibly do something illegal, etc etc etc.
If you really don't want people to rip your CD, use a DRM that makes it unrippable (and watch people come burn your offices down). Otherwise, you might as well just let them rip it to MP3, and they can buy whatever music player they want to boot. You're just putting one little step between them and MP3s anyhow.
(I know it doesn't say that they were planning to use Fairplay specifically, but from the description it sounds extremely similar - and would allow burning of the songs to blank CDs, which I'm assuming could then be reripped to MP3. Of course, it's all a moot point if Apple refuses, but it's silly for them to even pursue it.)
Um, tablet PCs have keyboards too. You can use either the keyboard or the touch-screen. Keyboards are ok for typing lots of text, but there are many things they can't do so well - like draw figures and diagrams, move things around on a page, etc. A mouse can do these things, but not nearly as intuitively as actually drawing on the screen.
Parents are involving themselves in their kids' lives by monitoring the ESRB rating.
No, parents are being paid probably like $10 to watch a few clips of a video game and say whether the rating is right.
Nowhere does the article say, or even imply, that these parents (or any others) then actually pay attention to the ratings when buying games for their kids. Actually maybe these 400 parents will be more likely to, having participated in this experiment. But I know from experience with my own mother and younger brother that even parents who wouldn't let their kid go to an R-rated movie don't even check the rating of the new Grand Theft Auto when they buy it for Christmas. It's a game, all games are fine for kids, right?
This study is great for the ESRB to say "Look, we're obviously doing our job," but it doesn't mean the parents are doing theirs.
When you go down to the dock in OS X, you can right-click on an icon for an application to see a list of the windows open in that application and choose one to go straight to... Exactly like the taskbar in Windows. I mean, for a while the taskbar does keep every window in its own little space so you truly get one-click - but once you have more than a few windows open it consolidates all the windows for each app into one button, and it becaomes exactly like the dock. And you still have to click twice to get the window you want. I guess maybe with a 23" monitor the number of windows you have to have open before it consolidates them is high enough that you don't ever run into that?
And even if little Billy downloaded a nifty game bundled with adware and rootkits and managed to install it on his system, his Dad and Sister's Macs wouldn't be in danger
Hell, unless Dad was stupid enough to give Billy the admin account, even Dad and Sister's accounts on that same Mac wouldn't be in any danger. If Billy's account is truly fnuxxored, just make a new one, copy over his data, and delete his old account.
Out of curiosity, how much do you open at once? I currently have 24 windows open from 9 different apps, on 3 different desktops (oh, make that 10 apps, I'm running Desktop Manager), and things are smooth as silk. Of course, I upgraded my RAM a few months ago - at 384 it would have been starting to stutter a little. But since I went up to 768, I have yet to open enough stuff at once to slow it down.
That's just silly. OS X isn't a replacement for Unix, it IS Unix. It's a very nice implementation of Unix, which I like better than any other *nix I've used. So I would say that it's a superior replacement of those.
Why pay to watch it once when you can just TiVO it and be done?
Yeah, because TiVO is free!
I wouldn't pay for a show that's going to expire either, but I'd be more likely to pay a dollar each for the few shows I'm willing to pay anything for than to pay $200 for a TiVO plus yearlong subscription.
I think you're missing the GP's point, which was the line between Intelligent Design and Creationism.
Namely, creationism is a religious belief. No one can argue with your right to believe in it, but because it is inherently religious, and in the US at least there is separation of church and state, it cannot be taught in public schools as a fact.
Intelligent Design is a facade creationists hide behind to try and make creationism sound "scientific" and shoehorn it into the public school curriculum. It is not, in and of itself, a belief you get from the Bible - if it were, there's no way you could get it into the curriculum. No matter how strongly you believe in creationism, it's disingenuous to twist that around into something called "Intelligent Design" so that you can now claim that your religious beliefs are not religious, but scientific, and get them taught in public schools.
"All work processes tend towards a greater entropy (disorder/lower energy density) over time."
However, the theory of Evolution has the basic principle that everything is getting more organized and more complex.
2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Exactly. And water cannot be changed from a liquid form to a more stable solid form, because that would also contradict the second law of thermodynamics.
Oh, no, wait. That's a complete misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Just like yours. Something can certainly become more orderly and complexly structured, we see this all the time when crystals form, etc - but there is always some tradeoff that increases the overall entropy. According to your argument, just the process of creating a human being, wherein a mass of undifferentiated cells differentiate themselves into a highly complex system of organs and other body parts, would be impossible. And yet women do it all the time - but they have to use a LOT of energy to do it.
And you can see the increase in entropy in their mood swings.
Except that there are certain systems which are irreducibly complex.
You realize, of course, that this isn't a valid argument unless you can provide examples? Otherwise, I'll just say "but there aren't" and we'll go on ad infinitum.
What it does not allow for, just as Theistic Evolution does not allow for in its pure form, is for sudden speciation. . . . some of these parent species have undergone minor changes, in multiple different places, giving us such things as Emus, Ostriches, and Cassowaries.
So it does allow for speciation, just not sudden speciation. I'm not sure how it's any different from evolution, then. What does it matter whether God made primordial ooze or the ostri-emu, if either one can eventually evolve into several other species? The ostri-emu becomes ostriches and emus, then in a million or two years each of those is extinct, replaced by some other species, etc etc - you just have evolution with a different starting point. Seems to me that if this is really ID's goal, it's pretty useless.
I've never had a problem getting a nice, basic phone when I choose the free one on whatever cel plan. Although T-Mobile has recently upgraded their free phone to a color screen flip-phone (my husband got one), but it still lacks 90% of the photo-music-etc bells-and-whistles.
I agree with: Mobile video will never be as ubiquitous as mobile audio is today. However, I think that there is a sizable niche market for it.
Namely, travelers and kids. iPod needs to work on battery life before this will really be in full bloom, because right now it can't play video for a whole NY-LA plane trip (let alone a drive to grandma's house two states away). But once it can, it might have a place. An adult on an airplane or a kid in a backseat doesn't need to worry about multitasking, they just need something to keep them occupied for a few hours. Note the popularity of TVs in the backseats of minivans and SUVs - if downloadable video were cheaper than DVDs, the iPod could at least partially replace those.
I believe I paid $69 for the GPS and the mapping software. Prices continue to drop.
*shrug* That's $69 more than I've paid for all software total in the past probably year. You also had to pay for the PDA/phone and its internet access.
Yahoo is free. So was my cel phone, so it can't do any of that fancy stuff. Hell, I can't even send/receive test messages without paying 5c each. But I don't use text messages, so it doesn't bother me.
Some of us have a limited amount to spend on gadgets and their connectivity.
I don't use Yahoo for search, but I do use it for email, weather, movie showtimes, Yellow Pages, maps, and other things on a daily basis. Yes, google provides some of these, but I like Yahoo's YP and maps better - and gmail always seems to be really slow for me. I use Google for a lot, but I also use Yahoo daily.
I have wanted an OS X tablet ever since Windows tablets came out. Even if we'd just bought a new computer, I'd convince my husband we NEED one somehow.
I constantly find myself wanting to write or draw stuff out, but then being annoyed that I have to go back and put it in the computer separately. Or wanting to switch between writing and typing on a particular task when I get to different points in it. A tablet is exactly what I need. Please, Apple, please! Haven't we waited long enough? If you won't give us one, at least license the OS to someone who will, even if it's *only* for the tablets.
How does it take any money out of the economy? That $80-120 billion would be spent on cars, or vacations, or houses, or dining out, or *something*. Or invested at least. The only way it would be taken out of the economy is if people said "I'm going to put the $300 I saved on this piece of software under my mattress for safekeeping."
And if it created 20,000 more jobs, then that would be 20,000 more people with the ability to spend more money...
(Note: I'm not saying I support or don't support this idea. Just that your argument is flawed.>
Luckily, they're pretty generous with the financial aid. I have less in loans from my five years at MIT as from my two years in a Master's program afterwards - at a public school (though I wasn't in-state).
Of course, their employees also don't have the last name Microsoft. So (hopefully) we shouldn't be surprised that they're not acting like the corporations in that book.
My husband lived in NC for five years as a grad student, but his "legal residence" was in Colorado where his mom lives, for various reasons. He paid income tax both in NC and CO, even though he was only in CO once or twice a year to visit family - HOWEVER, both states let you deduct taxes paid to another state when you were figuring what you owed, so he didn't really wind up paying that much (if any) more than usual. (Aside from the fact that NC has a pretty high income tax.) I forget the exact way it works, but he definitely didn't have to pay full taxes to both states.
Of course, if TN has no income tax, I guess there would be no credit for it on this guy's NY taxes. *shrug*
Slashdot Mirror
However, this part:
A "special ed" person who is included in a "normal" class will learn how to be around "normal" people, and the "normal" people will learn the material better by helping the "special ed" person along.
Is bullshit, and is not supported by research evidence either. Kids don't go to school to teach other kids, they go to learn. Teaching is the job of the person being taught to teach. If a kid wants to volunteer their time tutoring, great, but it's completely unfair to force them. Plus, kids haven't been trained to teach, and most of the time won't be as good at it as a teacher, so you're doing a disservice to the lower-ability person too.
IQ level is the best predictor of a number of life outcomes, such as dying in a car accident, spending time in jail, and teen pregnancy. (Yes, all of those are correlated with a low IQ, not a high one.) It's not a terrific predictor, no - but it's better than anything else we've got, such as parents' income and education level. And, yes, it's also a pretty good predictor of future monetary success... But then, there are plenty of people with high IQs who realize that's not always the best definition of success.
You're posting on slashdot, and you think you have any insight into what the cool kids would do?
Better yet, you assume that they would do whatever it is you do?
*giggle*
Non-DRMed CD: I can rip it to MP3 - and possibly do something illegal, like give my friends copies or share the files somewhere.
DRMed CD: I can rip it to AAC, then burn a non-protected CD and burn that to MP3 - and then possibly do something illegal, etc etc etc.
If you really don't want people to rip your CD, use a DRM that makes it unrippable (and watch people come burn your offices down). Otherwise, you might as well just let them rip it to MP3, and they can buy whatever music player they want to boot. You're just putting one little step between them and MP3s anyhow.
(I know it doesn't say that they were planning to use Fairplay specifically, but from the description it sounds extremely similar - and would allow burning of the songs to blank CDs, which I'm assuming could then be reripped to MP3. Of course, it's all a moot point if Apple refuses, but it's silly for them to even pursue it.)
You might have more luck by searching (or posting in) the appropriate Apple Support Forum.
Um, tablet PCs have keyboards too. You can use either the keyboard or the touch-screen. Keyboards are ok for typing lots of text, but there are many things they can't do so well - like draw figures and diagrams, move things around on a page, etc. A mouse can do these things, but not nearly as intuitively as actually drawing on the screen.
No, parents are being paid probably like $10 to watch a few clips of a video game and say whether the rating is right.
Nowhere does the article say, or even imply, that these parents (or any others) then actually pay attention to the ratings when buying games for their kids. Actually maybe these 400 parents will be more likely to, having participated in this experiment. But I know from experience with my own mother and younger brother that even parents who wouldn't let their kid go to an R-rated movie don't even check the rating of the new Grand Theft Auto when they buy it for Christmas. It's a game, all games are fine for kids, right?
This study is great for the ESRB to say "Look, we're obviously doing our job," but it doesn't mean the parents are doing theirs.
When you go down to the dock in OS X, you can right-click on an icon for an application to see a list of the windows open in that application and choose one to go straight to... Exactly like the taskbar in Windows. I mean, for a while the taskbar does keep every window in its own little space so you truly get one-click - but once you have more than a few windows open it consolidates all the windows for each app into one button, and it becaomes exactly like the dock. And you still have to click twice to get the window you want. I guess maybe with a 23" monitor the number of windows you have to have open before it consolidates them is high enough that you don't ever run into that?
Hell, unless Dad was stupid enough to give Billy the admin account, even Dad and Sister's accounts on that same Mac wouldn't be in any danger. If Billy's account is truly fnuxxored, just make a new one, copy over his data, and delete his old account.
Out of curiosity, how much do you open at once? I currently have 24 windows open from 9 different apps, on 3 different desktops (oh, make that 10 apps, I'm running Desktop Manager), and things are smooth as silk. Of course, I upgraded my RAM a few months ago - at 384 it would have been starting to stutter a little. But since I went up to 768, I have yet to open enough stuff at once to slow it down.
That's just silly. OS X isn't a replacement for Unix, it IS Unix. It's a very nice implementation of Unix, which I like better than any other *nix I've used. So I would say that it's a superior replacement of those.
Yeah, because TiVO is free!
I wouldn't pay for a show that's going to expire either, but I'd be more likely to pay a dollar each for the few shows I'm willing to pay anything for than to pay $200 for a TiVO plus yearlong subscription.
Namely, creationism is a religious belief. No one can argue with your right to believe in it, but because it is inherently religious, and in the US at least there is separation of church and state, it cannot be taught in public schools as a fact.
Intelligent Design is a facade creationists hide behind to try and make creationism sound "scientific" and shoehorn it into the public school curriculum. It is not, in and of itself, a belief you get from the Bible - if it were, there's no way you could get it into the curriculum. No matter how strongly you believe in creationism, it's disingenuous to twist that around into something called "Intelligent Design" so that you can now claim that your religious beliefs are not religious, but scientific, and get them taught in public schools.
However, the theory of Evolution has the basic principle that everything is getting more organized and more complex.
2. Evolution cannot be true as it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Exactly. And water cannot be changed from a liquid form to a more stable solid form, because that would also contradict the second law of thermodynamics.
Oh, no, wait. That's a complete misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Just like yours. Something can certainly become more orderly and complexly structured, we see this all the time when crystals form, etc - but there is always some tradeoff that increases the overall entropy. According to your argument, just the process of creating a human being, wherein a mass of undifferentiated cells differentiate themselves into a highly complex system of organs and other body parts, would be impossible. And yet women do it all the time - but they have to use a LOT of energy to do it.
And you can see the increase in entropy in their mood swings.
You realize, of course, that this isn't a valid argument unless you can provide examples? Otherwise, I'll just say "but there aren't" and we'll go on ad infinitum.
What it does not allow for, just as Theistic Evolution does not allow for in its pure form, is for sudden speciation. . . . some of these parent species have undergone minor changes, in multiple different places, giving us such things as Emus, Ostriches, and Cassowaries.
So it does allow for speciation, just not sudden speciation. I'm not sure how it's any different from evolution, then. What does it matter whether God made primordial ooze or the ostri-emu, if either one can eventually evolve into several other species? The ostri-emu becomes ostriches and emus, then in a million or two years each of those is extinct, replaced by some other species, etc etc - you just have evolution with a different starting point. Seems to me that if this is really ID's goal, it's pretty useless.
I've never had a problem getting a nice, basic phone when I choose the free one on whatever cel plan. Although T-Mobile has recently upgraded their free phone to a color screen flip-phone (my husband got one), but it still lacks 90% of the photo-music-etc bells-and-whistles.
Namely, travelers and kids. iPod needs to work on battery life before this will really be in full bloom, because right now it can't play video for a whole NY-LA plane trip (let alone a drive to grandma's house two states away). But once it can, it might have a place. An adult on an airplane or a kid in a backseat doesn't need to worry about multitasking, they just need something to keep them occupied for a few hours. Note the popularity of TVs in the backseats of minivans and SUVs - if downloadable video were cheaper than DVDs, the iPod could at least partially replace those.
*shrug* That's $69 more than I've paid for all software total in the past probably year. You also had to pay for the PDA/phone and its internet access.
Yahoo is free. So was my cel phone, so it can't do any of that fancy stuff. Hell, I can't even send/receive test messages without paying 5c each. But I don't use text messages, so it doesn't bother me.
Some of us have a limited amount to spend on gadgets and their connectivity.
I don't use Yahoo for search, but I do use it for email, weather, movie showtimes, Yellow Pages, maps, and other things on a daily basis. Yes, google provides some of these, but I like Yahoo's YP and maps better - and gmail always seems to be really slow for me. I use Google for a lot, but I also use Yahoo daily.
I have wanted an OS X tablet ever since Windows tablets came out. Even if we'd just bought a new computer, I'd convince my husband we NEED one somehow.
I constantly find myself wanting to write or draw stuff out, but then being annoyed that I have to go back and put it in the computer separately. Or wanting to switch between writing and typing on a particular task when I get to different points in it. A tablet is exactly what I need. Please, Apple, please! Haven't we waited long enough? If you won't give us one, at least license the OS to someone who will, even if it's *only* for the tablets.
And if it created 20,000 more jobs, then that would be 20,000 more people with the ability to spend more money...
(Note: I'm not saying I support or don't support this idea. Just that your argument is flawed.>
Luckily, they're pretty generous with the financial aid. I have less in loans from my five years at MIT as from my two years in a Master's program afterwards - at a public school (though I wasn't in-state).
I doubt the kid is going to be doing nothing but playing with this game. It's all about balance.
Of course, their employees also don't have the last name Microsoft. So (hopefully) we shouldn't be surprised that they're not acting like the corporations in that book.
Of course, if TN has no income tax, I guess there would be no credit for it on this guy's NY taxes. *shrug*