What I don't get is why they don't (AFAIK) put an optical coating on the glossy screen. This would be the best of both worlds: deep blacks and less glare. Optical coatings used to be standard on high-end CRTs.
Or am I wrong, and they are optically coated and I haven't noticed? I don't own one.
I'll just comment that it's pretty sad when anybody who doesn't want taxpayer support of religion is dismissed as a "leftist".
I didn't intend the term "the left" as a dismissal, and I don't understand why you think I did. I agree that "left" and "right" are very broad-brush concepts, but I think they can be useful nonetheless. In any case I lean left on many issues myself; this happens to be one where I disagree with the mainstream left, and I think it's an interesting one.
First, a lot of vouchers would end up subsidizing religious education. Previous posts have covered this issue.
I addressed it too, you may notice. I'm not denying there will be some of that. What I question is people's priorities when they say it's more important to prevent that than to have successful, effective schools. I would happily accept a few more parents sending their children to religious schools (as some already do) in order to have the Jaime Escalantes of the country teaching calculus and other hard subjects to many thousands of kids who currently never have a chance to learn them. Doesn't that sound like a good trade to you too??
Please read TFA, if you haven't already, or read it again. Look at the incredible damage that's being done by the current system.
I agree that charter schools are a step in the right direction, but I don't think they're enough. The power of the teachers' unions has to be broken.
Schools do not just appear. They take a great deal of financing and legal paperwork. Your dream of grassroots school systems sprouting up is fantastically misguided.
The existence and history of the homeschooling movement indicates very much to the contrary. What is a homeschooling household, but a grassroots school sprouted up around a single family? A properly designed voucher system would encourage groups of parents, when they feel they have no better alternative, to homeschool their kids together. That's a school! The vouchers would help with the cost of educational materials, and what more is needed?
You seem to have absorbed the idea that education is something that comes only from large institutions. The truth is, education is a thoroughly individual activity that requires nothing but access to information and to people who already understand that information. In this Internet age, those things are more readily available than ever.
Chiefly because exposing school systems to a competitive market implicitly accepts that some schools will fall into even worse decay that they currently are. Poor schools become poorer, with little funding to hire better teachers or acquire better books.
As schools are not objects which can house an infinite number of students, some students will be forced to attend those schools caught in that downward spiral
This doesn't make any sense. There's no limit on the number of schools that can be created. Vouchers make it easier for parents to remove their children from failing schools and put them in better ones. Poorly run schools will quickly lose all their students and shut down. It's the current system that keeps failing schools in operation, not a voucher system!
Gradillas has an explanation for the decline of A.P. calculus at Garfield: Escalante and Villavicencio were not allowed to run the program they had created on their own terms. In his phrase, the teachers no longer "owned" their program. He's speaking metaphorically, but there's something to be said for taking him literally.
In the real world, those who provide a service can usually find a way to get it to those who want it, even if their current employer disapproves. If someone feels that he can build a better mousetrap than his employer wants to make, he can find a way to make it, market it, and perhaps put his former boss out of business. Public school teachers lack that option.
There are very few ways to compete for education dollars without being part of the government school system. If that system is inflexible, sooner or later even excellent programs will run into obstacles.
I've never understood why the left, which has supported the idea of a single-payer health care system, can't get its head around vouchers, which amount to a single-payer education system. No, a voucher system isn't perfect; yes, there will be abuses. But look at the ongoing train wreck of a system we have now!
In a voucher system, Jaime Escalante would have been massively successful, probably at the top of an organization teaching thousands of students. So what if some fundamentalists use their vouchers to send their kids to religious schools? Vouchers would finally give us a way to end the culture of mediocrity that has such a death grip on our schools now.
First off, I'm always careful not to leave an active minibuffer lying around -- if I ever accidentally switch out of it while it's active, as soon as I notice I've done that, I go back to it and C-g out of it.
Secondly, I use C-Tab instead of C-x o -- I think this binding is available by default -- and then bind C-` to backward-other-window. This makes getting around the windows fast and easy.
Me too; I've been nearly paperless for a good 25 years. I almost never print out working material; I occasionally print things to file or send to someone else. I suppose it takes a little determination, but really it isn't that difficult, or hasn't been for me.
Large monitors certainly help. I tile six Emacs subwindows across a 1920x1200 screen (two vertically x 3 horizontally), and I have plenty of ability to look at multiple pieces of source code at the same time.
I'm amazed no one has mentioned SuperMemo. It's based on an actual scientific theory of how to optimize the value of memorization effort. There's a Chinese character library for it already.
Did you look at the Nokia N810? Good battery life, check. Runs Linux, check. ARM, check. Around $200, check. Reads PDFs and other non-DRM ebooks, check. Good screen resolution (800x480), check. And, it has a physical keyboard and fits in a hip pouch -- I carry mine everywhere, which I couldn't do with a tablet.
Another famous example of corporate inbreeding is the taboo against American auto workers driving Japanese cars. I think this taboo had a lot to do with why Detroit lost so much ground to the Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s. Without the direct, everyday experience of comparing the quality of the cars they were building to those from Honda and Toyota, they just couldn't understand how far behind they really were and what was going to be needed to catch up. The truth is, GM and Ford management should have purchased Japanese cars themselves, given them away by lottery to 10% or 20% of their employees, and required those employees to drive them to work every day!
People need to get over their high-school-loyalty mindset and realize that having at least some employees familiar with the competition's product is critical.
I was of the same opinion as you, until I saw a sony e-reader, then a friend's Kindle. They absolutely blow LCDs and CRTs away for reading purposes, they simulate printed paper to such an extent that you can't read them in the darkness, they need a active light source around like you need for real books.
This is a feature?
Anyway, I'm with the GP. I've seen a Kindle and I don't see what the excitement is about. It doesn't seem any better to me -- in fact, IIRC, the contrast was rather poor. And as far as a TFT with a backlight "melting your eyes" -- they do have brightness controls, and some laptops have ambient light sensors that turn the brightness down automatically. I think I keep my backlights dimmer than most people do, but given that, I don't have a problem.
I have an N810 and I agree -- the screen is plenty good enough, I've never had a problem with the battery life, and I carry it everywhere in a hip pouch.
I think the big problem with the N810 is with the marketing -- what's an "Internet Tablet"? I think they should call it a "pocket netbook", which describes it much better.
Wow, quite a story. Glad you came out okay. And it's certainly interesting to know there really was a problem with the 5000 Turbo.
But that doesn't explain what happened in this case, in a completely different car (and non-turbo as far as I know). Brake failures are so rare, and so noteworthy in their own right, it seems astronomically unlikely that one would occur at the same moment as the accelerator failing (unless, as in your case, one failure caused the other).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm sure curious how it could have happened.
I don't understand the part about "no brakes". Some years ago, when the Audi 5000 (IIRC) was under fire for a similar problem, one of the car magazines (Car & Driver, IIRC) did a test where they compared the stopping distance from 60 mph at closed throttle (the normal case) to that at full throttle. They reported the stopping distances were identical -- the brakes were so much stronger than the engine that the engine's torque had no effect at all.
What could have happened in this case? Does anyone have any idea?
Fusion itself has already been sustained in [tokamaks] for several seconds, a feat a laser confinement mechanism cannot do. Laser mechanisms have a longer way to go in order to be credible fusion power plants.
--
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
So, you're saying that the people working on laser fusion are Fools?
For the record, my kids aren't hypothetical. And while I absolutely hope they are never hurt by a pedophile, there are only certain lengths I'm willing to go to in order to reduce that risk, because to go to greater lengths means almost certain harm from greater risks.
Starting to say "Well...all speech is free speech except THAT!" is the true slippery slope.
Thank you for this. I'm not a parent, so I can't express this as express this as forcefully, but I agree 100%.
I think a big part of the problem is projection. The majority of child sexual abuse is within families. People want to distract themselves from that uncomfortable reality. I bet there are lots of parents who have had fleeting pedophilic thoughts -- thoughts they would never act on, in most cases, but which they also can't admit even to themselves. Much safer to fear the pedophiles out there.
But god help you if you draw 2 stick figures and put an arrow pointing to one with a little side note reading "Age 15". For that you are a criminal at least as bad as people who gang rape children.
Very very very well said. We are perilously close to decreeing a thoughtcrime.
Why do people persist in uppercasing "raw" as if it were an acronym??? I suppose if you wanted to be sure people realized you were using a technical term, you could capitalize it: "The file is in Raw Format". But uppercase???
Particularly the amount we're willing to pay here in California. It never ceases to astound me that the state that is home to the technology capital of the world is so blind to the importance of educating the next generation. It's just unfathomable.
Here's another thought: China is about to find itself with a severe shortage of young women, now that it has become possible to choose the sex of a baby, and many are choosing boys. I bet sex robots will be a massive business there.
Slashdot Mirror
I would agree with you ... but I can't actually find the quote in either article linked from the summary. Where did you see it, exactly?
Even if this one isn't, you can be sure those will start to appear now.
What I don't get is why they don't (AFAIK) put an optical coating on the glossy screen. This would be the best of both worlds: deep blacks and less glare. Optical coatings used to be standard on high-end CRTs.
Or am I wrong, and they are optically coated and I haven't noticed? I don't own one.
I didn't intend the term "the left" as a dismissal, and I don't understand why you think I did. I agree that "left" and "right" are very broad-brush concepts, but I think they can be useful nonetheless. In any case I lean left on many issues myself; this happens to be one where I disagree with the mainstream left, and I think it's an interesting one.
I addressed it too, you may notice. I'm not denying there will be some of that. What I question is people's priorities when they say it's more important to prevent that than to have successful, effective schools. I would happily accept a few more parents sending their children to religious schools (as some already do) in order to have the Jaime Escalantes of the country teaching calculus and other hard subjects to many thousands of kids who currently never have a chance to learn them. Doesn't that sound like a good trade to you too??
Please read TFA, if you haven't already, or read it again. Look at the incredible damage that's being done by the current system.
I agree that charter schools are a step in the right direction, but I don't think they're enough. The power of the teachers' unions has to be broken.
The existence and history of the homeschooling movement indicates very much to the contrary. What is a homeschooling household, but a grassroots school sprouted up around a single family? A properly designed voucher system would encourage groups of parents, when they feel they have no better alternative, to homeschool their kids together. That's a school! The vouchers would help with the cost of educational materials, and what more is needed?
You seem to have absorbed the idea that education is something that comes only from large institutions. The truth is, education is a thoroughly individual activity that requires nothing but access to information and to people who already understand that information. In this Internet age, those things are more readily available than ever.
This doesn't make any sense. There's no limit on the number of schools that can be created. Vouchers make it easier for parents to remove their children from failing schools and put them in better ones. Poorly run schools will quickly lose all their students and shut down. It's the current system that keeps failing schools in operation, not a voucher system!
I've never understood why the left, which has supported the idea of a single-payer health care system, can't get its head around vouchers, which amount to a single-payer education system. No, a voucher system isn't perfect; yes, there will be abuses. But look at the ongoing train wreck of a system we have now!
In a voucher system, Jaime Escalante would have been massively successful, probably at the top of an organization teaching thousands of students. So what if some fundamentalists use their vouchers to send their kids to religious schools? Vouchers would finally give us a way to end the culture of mediocrity that has such a death grip on our schools now.
I think that would be slightly better, but the way I have it is quite usable -- considerably easier than C-x o.
First off, I'm always careful not to leave an active minibuffer lying around -- if I ever accidentally switch out of it while it's active, as soon as I notice I've done that, I go back to it and C-g out of it.
Secondly, I use C-Tab instead of C-x o -- I think this binding is available by default -- and then bind C-` to backward-other-window. This makes getting around the windows fast and easy.
Me too; I've been nearly paperless for a good 25 years. I almost never print out working material; I occasionally print things to file or send to someone else. I suppose it takes a little determination, but really it isn't that difficult, or hasn't been for me.
Large monitors certainly help. I tile six Emacs subwindows across a 1920x1200 screen (two vertically x 3 horizontally), and I have plenty of ability to look at multiple pieces of source code at the same time.
I'm amazed no one has mentioned SuperMemo. It's based on an actual scientific theory of how to optimize the value of memorization effort. There's a Chinese character library for it already.
Did you look at the Nokia N810? Good battery life, check. Runs Linux, check. ARM, check. Around $200, check. Reads PDFs and other non-DRM ebooks, check. Good screen resolution (800x480), check. And, it has a physical keyboard and fits in a hip pouch -- I carry mine everywhere, which I couldn't do with a tablet.
Another famous example of corporate inbreeding is the taboo against American auto workers driving Japanese cars. I think this taboo had a lot to do with why Detroit lost so much ground to the Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s. Without the direct, everyday experience of comparing the quality of the cars they were building to those from Honda and Toyota, they just couldn't understand how far behind they really were and what was going to be needed to catch up. The truth is, GM and Ford management should have purchased Japanese cars themselves, given them away by lottery to 10% or 20% of their employees, and required those employees to drive them to work every day!
People need to get over their high-school-loyalty mindset and realize that having at least some employees familiar with the competition's product is critical.
I don't get it either. It certainly doesn't have anything to make me want to switch from Common Lisp.
Calispel looks interesting... I may have a use for it. Thanks for posting!
This is a feature?
Anyway, I'm with the GP. I've seen a Kindle and I don't see what the excitement is about. It doesn't seem any better to me -- in fact, IIRC, the contrast was rather poor. And as far as a TFT with a backlight "melting your eyes" -- they do have brightness controls, and some laptops have ambient light sensors that turn the brightness down automatically. I think I keep my backlights dimmer than most people do, but given that, I don't have a problem.
I have an N810 and I agree -- the screen is plenty good enough, I've never had a problem with the battery life, and I carry it everywhere in a hip pouch.
I think the big problem with the N810 is with the marketing -- what's an "Internet Tablet"? I think they should call it a "pocket netbook", which describes it much better.
Wow, quite a story. Glad you came out okay. And it's certainly interesting to know there really was a problem with the 5000 Turbo.
But that doesn't explain what happened in this case, in a completely different car (and non-turbo as far as I know). Brake failures are so rare, and so noteworthy in their own right, it seems astronomically unlikely that one would occur at the same moment as the accelerator failing (unless, as in your case, one failure caused the other).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm sure curious how it could have happened.
I don't understand the part about "no brakes". Some years ago, when the Audi 5000 (IIRC) was under fire for a similar problem, one of the car magazines (Car & Driver, IIRC) did a test where they compared the stopping distance from 60 mph at closed throttle (the normal case) to that at full throttle. They reported the stopping distances were identical -- the brakes were so much stronger than the engine that the engine's torque had no effect at all.
What could have happened in this case? Does anyone have any idea?
So, you're saying that the people working on laser fusion are Fools?
Thank you for this. I'm not a parent, so I can't express this as express this as forcefully, but I agree 100%.
I think a big part of the problem is projection. The majority of child sexual abuse is within families. People want to distract themselves from that uncomfortable reality. I bet there are lots of parents who have had fleeting pedophilic thoughts -- thoughts they would never act on, in most cases, but which they also can't admit even to themselves. Much safer to fear the pedophiles out there.
Very very very well said. We are perilously close to decreeing a thoughtcrime.
Yes, I've seen that. (But then there's the phrase "MAC address", where it stands for Media Access Control.)
Come to think of it, I see "SPAM" a lot these days as well.
Why do people persist in uppercasing "raw" as if it were an acronym??? I suppose if you wanted to be sure people realized you were using a technical term, you could capitalize it: "The file is in Raw Format". But uppercase???
Particularly the amount we're willing to pay here in California. It never ceases to astound me that the state that is home to the technology capital of the world is so blind to the importance of educating the next generation. It's just unfathomable.
Interesting point.
Here's another thought: China is about to find itself with a severe shortage of young women, now that it has become possible to choose the sex of a baby, and many are choosing boys. I bet sex robots will be a massive business there.