And what about when a brown US citizen doesn't have any ID on him and ends up in detention for a few MONTHS? This isn't some hypothetical; there are documented cases of this happening. Some are included in: http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/usa-jailed-without-justice
So you think "We the people" didn't mean the citizens, eh?
How the hell could 'we the people' have meant citizens? That's completely nonsensical. 'We the people' is part of the preamble; it is explaining who is creating the nation and why. So, how can a nation be created by its own citizens? You can't be a citizen of a nation that doesn't yet exist. Sure, we had the Articles of Confederation, but the Constitution was founding an entirely new government, and therefore an entirely new nation. You can't be citizens of a nation before you found it.
And do you really think the Founding Fathers would have been so sloppy in their word choice? It's not like they never used the word 'citizen' anywhere. If they assumed 'people' meant 'citizen', then why does the word 'citizen' appear at all in the Constitution? And if they had meant 'citizen', why not just say that?
Blanket statements like that make it less likely that I'd get an EA game other than maybe an RTS. II don't like most of the genres that have multiplayer as a given anyway.
After the way they obliterated the Command and Conquer series, I wouldn't trust them with an RTS either...
And what soldier do you expect is going to obey the orders to nuke or smart-bomb NYC, for example? I think police would be a bigger problem than the military in such a situation -- not that they don't have some damn large weaponry of their own. But hell, look at the recent situations in the Middle East if you have any doubt of that...specifically Egypt.
I'm not sure software and movies/TV are really comparable though.
When I get music, I usually pay for it, even when it's available for free -- because I want to support the artists, usually there are political implications with the artists (not supporting the RIAA) and the music (more directly) and I want to support those. Plus I know it's good, I know I'll listen to it a lot, and I know they're going to put out more as long as they have the money to.
When I get TV shows, I usually donate if they're good. It takes a lot of money, they're always asking for donations, and _I need to know how the season ends_.
With movies...I'll donate if it's really good, to encourage the writer/director to make more.
With OSS...usually they don't ask for donations. Sometimes there's a donate link, but I've never yet seen one say 'if people donate $X we can add feature Y!' like you get with other forms of entertainment. Never seen 'we need $X or the project will cease to exist!'. And if the project fails...well, I still have the software. I can still use it. It may not be improved, but obviously it already does what I need it for or I wouldn't have it. And if it's open source, someone else may pick up development...or I could try to do so myself.
Basically, with music/movies/TV shows you get the feeling that _this is their job_, that _this is costing them money_ (props, equipment, etc...) and that _they'll stop if they don't get paid_. With software -- and this may just be a marketing failure in some cases -- the sense I always get is this is something they're doing for fun; they're using equipment they already own and would have bought anyway, and they don't care all that much if they get paid. So while it would be nice to kick in a couple bucks more now and then, it just doesn't feel...important. The feeling I always get is that donations for music go to living expenses of the artists usually; movie/tv donations go to pay actors and equipment and bills; and donations for open source software goes to beer and pizza.
It certainly can't work for all classes, but I've seen online homework that was VERY effective. Possibly better than paper copies.
Our intro physics classes used an online homework system. First, it was free for all students -- guess it was paid in bulk by the university, I'm not really sure. But anyway, it was straight questions from the book, but the numbers changed. Everyone got a different question (well, one of a few dozen possibilities) and you had 5 attempts, with your score decreasing on each attempt. If you got a question wrong it would tell you what section in the book to review. So basically it was like just getting homework assigned from the book except it was harder to cheat and gave instant feedback, at the expense of possible partial credit if you would have had an instructor that chose to offer that.
Also - it wouldn't be such an obvious scam if you could purchase only the access code and acquire your book from the secondary market. In all instances that I've seen, the access codes come only with new books.
In all instances I've seen the online access codes are sold bundled with the new book, and separately alongside, so we the students are able to buy the book used, and buy an access code. Interesting that you haven't seen this.
You are correct about this; in most cases I've also seen the codes sold separately. However, they "discount" the codes when bundled with a new book -- so much so that it's often cheaper to buy the bundle than to buy a used book and a new code. A $200 book/code bundle or a $120 code plus a $100 used book? Perhaps the stores near the OP simply don't stock the new codes because of this...
Of course, your best bet is to buy the international editions of the books. Usually it's worth eating the loss if you can't resell it, it's that much cheaper. Although I also know people who've been able to turn a profit by buying books used online and reselling them locally at the end of the semester...
Yup. Can't tell you how many times I've heard professors say 'my department head says students LOVE using [technology X] and I need to use [technology X] more, so I'm going to...'
On rare occasions, you'd get a professor who would actually say 'my department head says students LOVE using [technology X] and that I need to use it more. Would you prefer that?' to which the response was always a nearly unanimous NO. Universities buy into these things, and then they need to see their investment as being valuable so they blame the professors when it's not being used. In reality, the professors don't want it, the students don't want it...nobody wants to use this crap, they just want to buy it and brag about it.
That'll only work in some classes. Junior/Senior level classes that would probably work well. Freshman courses half the class would be going to the administration to complain that they spent all this money on these books that the professor isn't using. And then the administration would go to the professor and try to coerce them into using the books.
In fact, they already do that, even when nobody complains. When I was taking German classes a couple years back, there was an online component (that was rarely used because NOBODY like it) -- and the administration got reports on how many students had created an account vs. how many were enrolled in the course. And if all the students hadn't bought an account, it was considered the professor's responsibility to ensure that they did.
As someone else already said, if you don't buy the access code you can't submit homework. It's all done online.
In addition, the schools actually get statistics of how many students buy the codes in each class -- so then if you don't buy the code, the administration starts harassing the prof and the prof has to start harassing the students (usually by assigning more online homework so the students who didn't buy the pass start seeing their grades decline until they either buy it or drop the class)
In my experience, math profs refuse to put up with this crap, because they know Calculus doesn't change all that much, and they'd rather teach on a blackboard and from a book. Comp Sci profs can build a better system themselves, and do. (they'd rather give a coding project and grade it with a shell script) Science profs will sometimes tolerate it in huge lectures where they can't really grade all the homework themselves, but they generally opt for free (at least to the students) systems if possible. Language classes ALWAYS had an online component at my school. In other humanities classes it was pretty common too. And since you're required to take a certain amount of those, it's getting to the point where it is literally impossible to graduate without purchasing a couple of these online access codes.
Most parents would rather their children didn't play high school sports, except for dads who played high school sports and want to live vicariously thru junior, so they can brag about down at the plant during lunch break from their meaningless drone jobs that high school sports prepared them for.
What the hell parents are those? My _mother_ (who never did any sports herself) required my brother and I each participate in at least two sports in highschool. It was good social interaction (the only place in highschool I was able to make lasting friendships) and it was pretty much the only exercise we got.
Maybe you and your parents don't consider anything but facts and knowledge to be important, but in my experience most parents want children who are socially adept, physically fit, AND intelligent. No reason you can't try to get all three.
What high school actually has sports as part of school though? I ran track, winter track, and cross country in highschool/jr. high. It was a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure it's the only reason I'm not overweight right now. It was also the only place I met people and made friends. Maybe once a month we'd miss a class or two, but mostly it was after school. I also got to know a lot of my teachers (who were also our coaches) better. Hell it gave me extra time to ask my Calc teacher any questions I had. When we had meets I could even do my homework right there and talk to him immediately if anything came up. But that's obviously not always the case and simply a side benefit.
The real point is, it made those six years of my life a hell of a lot more fun. It gave me something to do and work for over the summer. It was actually fairly stimulating mentally, as you're going to have a hard time going out for an hour run through the woods or even just a two minute run around the track without thinking about SOMETHING. I also knew a couple kids on the football team who only bothered to study for their classes because they wouldn't be allowed to play otherwise!
School sports don't interfere with education; they provide incentive to learn, they improve 'moral' and the general atmosphere, and they can actually improve mental discipline. The only possible reason I can come up with why they would be removed is if you were trying to save money -- but the coaches were on a volunteer basis and the uniforms were only replaced every 15-20 years, and the facilities are frequently paid for by donations -- so I don't see how it's a significant cost comparatively.
I once heard a story about a very early demonstration of electricity. I believe it was in France, though I can't recall exactly who the scientist was. But anyway, he was giving this big demonstration about how he could connect two coils of wire, wrap one around a compass, and then by moving a magnet through the other, it would make the compass needle move. After the demonstration, a woman approached him and basically said 'this is all very interesting, but what _use_ is it?' to which he replied 'of what use is a newborn baby?' -- i.e., I have no clue; we're not there yet, but I'm sure we'll figure out something.
That discovery is why you can post on Slashdot. Why we have computers. And lightbulbs. Cars, jets, telephones, shit there's probably not a single item that you own that would have been possible as it currently exists without electricity. Obviously it's pretty important part of modern life. What if people had thought like you, and never continued research into this phenomenon because it didn't appear to have any practical use?
God yes. I used to be a huge fan of Mandriva after trying a dozen or two different distros throughout highschool. I was reinstalling the entire system at least once a year to get the latest version, and getting stuck in dependency hell CONSTANTLY, which I _thought_ was one of the things a package manager was supposed to help avoid. Switched to Arch around 3 years ago, the only time I've reinstalled was when I got a new laptop. And my system is never more than a month out of date. And it's easier to use/configure (no more 'do I set this through KDE or MCC?'), more stable than anything I've ever used, and just generally exactly what I want with near zero effort.
It's not for everyone I suppose, but aside from the occasional KDE bug (which are getting rarer every month since it's always updated,) Arch with KDE is the PERFECT OS for me. Well, I wish I could shave a couple seconds off the boot time too, but I haven't yet found any distro that will do any better. Most are worse because they run a bunch of services you don't want. And once my computer starts getting old and slow, I'll just drop KDE for something like RazorQT.
Yea, that's exactly what we need, let's just finish the corporate buyout of our government and go from a corporate controlled government to a pure corporate government...
Remember, most government taxation is appropriating funds from a more effective use determined by the market, and instead putting them to less effective use as determined by bureaucrats.
Yes, because paying some jackass CEO a few million a year to go golfing is TOTALLY better than providing food/shelter/healthcare to those in need.
Most Linus users don't know their kernel version anyways. They just know their distro, and maybe distro version...
My distro doesn't have versions, you insensitive clod!
Seriously though, HUGE fan of Arch, and as far as I can tell if you're going to give one number to indicate what "version" your entire system is on Arch, it's probably gonna be the kernel version. Then again, I suppose Arch and "Most Linux users" may be mutually exclusive sets...
It could have been phrased better, I admit, but the way it's phrased is pretty common. I also don't see how you possibly got '84% of the system's light output' in a section where they were clearly comparing it to our Sun. The use of the word 'however' is a pretty clear indicator that they're continuing the current comparison, not jumping off to something completely different.
If I said to you 'my car is just as big as John's but only needs half the gas' would you think I mean half of the entire world's supply of gasoline, or that my car has twice the fuel efficiency of John's?
...until the police decide to hassle you and throw you in jail for not giving them ID. It happens. Particularly in the south to people with brown skin, but hell just the other day in Pennsylvania I had an office demand _multiple_ pieces of ID while I was walking into a restaurant.
I know. This article would have made more sense 2-4 years ago I'd say. 2008-2010 were bad years for Linux in my book. Terrible time with hardware compatibility. Cheap wifi cards were in every computer and none of them had Linux drivers.
But today? Today you install Linux and everything just works. Running Arch on my new HP laptop is a beautiful experience.
Well I mean I'm never the guy trying to some kind of race or some bullshit -- but if someone else does, I'm gonna try to embarrass them:)
And yea, I'm a 22 year old male, so it probably is a testosterone and youth thing.
But I do use that horsepower for other things as well. I mean I'd hate to have to try to merge onto the highway I take to work, where the average speed is 75-80MPH and there's not much of a ramp in something with only 85HP. I mean I'm sure you do it, people clearly do it, but it's a lot easier when you have some power to accelerate up to speed in a small gap. But mostly it's just fun to drive.
Well, relatively small compared to other cars on the road, not compared to what Pontiac is making. Perhaps the fact that the G6 was their second biggest car was part of the reason they no longer exist? I mean, shit, it's smaller than a Nissan Altima. Not by a ton, but the G6 is considered a Compact, the Altima is Mid-Size. And especially with so many people driving SUVs and such, I'd say that yes, my G6 is relatively small.
Well, it wasn't a brand new Mustang -- not sure how old it was, but the numbers I'm coming up with are that my Pontiac is 220HP, a 2000 Mustang is 190 unless they opted for the larger engine. Or maybe it was just poorly maintained, hell if I know.
Slashdot Mirror
And what about when a brown US citizen doesn't have any ID on him and ends up in detention for a few MONTHS? This isn't some hypothetical; there are documented cases of this happening. Some are included in:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/usa-jailed-without-justice
So you think "We the people" didn't mean the citizens, eh?
How the hell could 'we the people' have meant citizens? That's completely nonsensical. 'We the people' is part of the preamble; it is explaining who is creating the nation and why. So, how can a nation be created by its own citizens? You can't be a citizen of a nation that doesn't yet exist. Sure, we had the Articles of Confederation, but the Constitution was founding an entirely new government, and therefore an entirely new nation. You can't be citizens of a nation before you found it.
And do you really think the Founding Fathers would have been so sloppy in their word choice? It's not like they never used the word 'citizen' anywhere. If they assumed 'people' meant 'citizen', then why does the word 'citizen' appear at all in the Constitution? And if they had meant 'citizen', why not just say that?
Blanket statements like that make it less likely that I'd get an EA game other than maybe an RTS. II don't like most of the genres that have multiplayer as a given anyway.
After the way they obliterated the Command and Conquer series, I wouldn't trust them with an RTS either...
And what soldier do you expect is going to obey the orders to nuke or smart-bomb NYC, for example? I think police would be a bigger problem than the military in such a situation -- not that they don't have some damn large weaponry of their own. But hell, look at the recent situations in the Middle East if you have any doubt of that...specifically Egypt.
I'm not sure software and movies/TV are really comparable though.
When I get music, I usually pay for it, even when it's available for free -- because I want to support the artists, usually there are political implications with the artists (not supporting the RIAA) and the music (more directly) and I want to support those. Plus I know it's good, I know I'll listen to it a lot, and I know they're going to put out more as long as they have the money to.
When I get TV shows, I usually donate if they're good. It takes a lot of money, they're always asking for donations, and _I need to know how the season ends_.
With movies...I'll donate if it's really good, to encourage the writer/director to make more.
With OSS...usually they don't ask for donations. Sometimes there's a donate link, but I've never yet seen one say 'if people donate $X we can add feature Y!' like you get with other forms of entertainment. Never seen 'we need $X or the project will cease to exist!'. And if the project fails...well, I still have the software. I can still use it. It may not be improved, but obviously it already does what I need it for or I wouldn't have it. And if it's open source, someone else may pick up development...or I could try to do so myself.
Basically, with music/movies/TV shows you get the feeling that _this is their job_, that _this is costing them money_ (props, equipment, etc...) and that _they'll stop if they don't get paid_. With software -- and this may just be a marketing failure in some cases -- the sense I always get is this is something they're doing for fun; they're using equipment they already own and would have bought anyway, and they don't care all that much if they get paid. So while it would be nice to kick in a couple bucks more now and then, it just doesn't feel...important. The feeling I always get is that donations for music go to living expenses of the artists usually; movie/tv donations go to pay actors and equipment and bills; and donations for open source software goes to beer and pizza.
It certainly can't work for all classes, but I've seen online homework that was VERY effective. Possibly better than paper copies.
Our intro physics classes used an online homework system. First, it was free for all students -- guess it was paid in bulk by the university, I'm not really sure. But anyway, it was straight questions from the book, but the numbers changed. Everyone got a different question (well, one of a few dozen possibilities) and you had 5 attempts, with your score decreasing on each attempt. If you got a question wrong it would tell you what section in the book to review. So basically it was like just getting homework assigned from the book except it was harder to cheat and gave instant feedback, at the expense of possible partial credit if you would have had an instructor that chose to offer that.
Also - it wouldn't be such an obvious scam if you could purchase only the access code and acquire your book from the secondary market. In all instances that I've seen, the access codes come only with new books.
In all instances I've seen the online access codes are sold bundled with the new book, and separately alongside, so we the students are able to buy the book used, and buy an access code. Interesting that you haven't seen this.
You are correct about this; in most cases I've also seen the codes sold separately. However, they "discount" the codes when bundled with a new book -- so much so that it's often cheaper to buy the bundle than to buy a used book and a new code. A $200 book/code bundle or a $120 code plus a $100 used book? Perhaps the stores near the OP simply don't stock the new codes because of this...
Of course, your best bet is to buy the international editions of the books. Usually it's worth eating the loss if you can't resell it, it's that much cheaper. Although I also know people who've been able to turn a profit by buying books used online and reselling them locally at the end of the semester...
Yup. Can't tell you how many times I've heard professors say 'my department head says students LOVE using [technology X] and I need to use [technology X] more, so I'm going to...'
On rare occasions, you'd get a professor who would actually say 'my department head says students LOVE using [technology X] and that I need to use it more. Would you prefer that?' to which the response was always a nearly unanimous NO. Universities buy into these things, and then they need to see their investment as being valuable so they blame the professors when it's not being used. In reality, the professors don't want it, the students don't want it...nobody wants to use this crap, they just want to buy it and brag about it.
That'll only work in some classes. Junior/Senior level classes that would probably work well. Freshman courses half the class would be going to the administration to complain that they spent all this money on these books that the professor isn't using. And then the administration would go to the professor and try to coerce them into using the books.
In fact, they already do that, even when nobody complains. When I was taking German classes a couple years back, there was an online component (that was rarely used because NOBODY like it) -- and the administration got reports on how many students had created an account vs. how many were enrolled in the course. And if all the students hadn't bought an account, it was considered the professor's responsibility to ensure that they did.
As someone else already said, if you don't buy the access code you can't submit homework. It's all done online.
In addition, the schools actually get statistics of how many students buy the codes in each class -- so then if you don't buy the code, the administration starts harassing the prof and the prof has to start harassing the students (usually by assigning more online homework so the students who didn't buy the pass start seeing their grades decline until they either buy it or drop the class)
In my experience, math profs refuse to put up with this crap, because they know Calculus doesn't change all that much, and they'd rather teach on a blackboard and from a book. Comp Sci profs can build a better system themselves, and do. (they'd rather give a coding project and grade it with a shell script) Science profs will sometimes tolerate it in huge lectures where they can't really grade all the homework themselves, but they generally opt for free (at least to the students) systems if possible. Language classes ALWAYS had an online component at my school. In other humanities classes it was pretty common too. And since you're required to take a certain amount of those, it's getting to the point where it is literally impossible to graduate without purchasing a couple of these online access codes.
Most parents would rather their children didn't play high school sports, except for dads who played high school sports and want to live vicariously thru junior, so they can brag about down at the plant during lunch break from their meaningless drone jobs that high school sports prepared them for.
What the hell parents are those? My _mother_ (who never did any sports herself) required my brother and I each participate in at least two sports in highschool. It was good social interaction (the only place in highschool I was able to make lasting friendships) and it was pretty much the only exercise we got.
Maybe you and your parents don't consider anything but facts and knowledge to be important, but in my experience most parents want children who are socially adept, physically fit, AND intelligent. No reason you can't try to get all three.
What high school actually has sports as part of school though? I ran track, winter track, and cross country in highschool/jr. high. It was a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure it's the only reason I'm not overweight right now. It was also the only place I met people and made friends. Maybe once a month we'd miss a class or two, but mostly it was after school. I also got to know a lot of my teachers (who were also our coaches) better. Hell it gave me extra time to ask my Calc teacher any questions I had. When we had meets I could even do my homework right there and talk to him immediately if anything came up. But that's obviously not always the case and simply a side benefit.
The real point is, it made those six years of my life a hell of a lot more fun. It gave me something to do and work for over the summer. It was actually fairly stimulating mentally, as you're going to have a hard time going out for an hour run through the woods or even just a two minute run around the track without thinking about SOMETHING. I also knew a couple kids on the football team who only bothered to study for their classes because they wouldn't be allowed to play otherwise!
School sports don't interfere with education; they provide incentive to learn, they improve 'moral' and the general atmosphere, and they can actually improve mental discipline. The only possible reason I can come up with why they would be removed is if you were trying to save money -- but the coaches were on a volunteer basis and the uniforms were only replaced every 15-20 years, and the facilities are frequently paid for by donations -- so I don't see how it's a significant cost comparatively.
I once heard a story about a very early demonstration of electricity. I believe it was in France, though I can't recall exactly who the scientist was. But anyway, he was giving this big demonstration about how he could connect two coils of wire, wrap one around a compass, and then by moving a magnet through the other, it would make the compass needle move. After the demonstration, a woman approached him and basically said 'this is all very interesting, but what _use_ is it?' to which he replied 'of what use is a newborn baby?' -- i.e., I have no clue; we're not there yet, but I'm sure we'll figure out something.
That discovery is why you can post on Slashdot. Why we have computers. And lightbulbs. Cars, jets, telephones, shit there's probably not a single item that you own that would have been possible as it currently exists without electricity. Obviously it's pretty important part of modern life. What if people had thought like you, and never continued research into this phenomenon because it didn't appear to have any practical use?
God yes. I used to be a huge fan of Mandriva after trying a dozen or two different distros throughout highschool. I was reinstalling the entire system at least once a year to get the latest version, and getting stuck in dependency hell CONSTANTLY, which I _thought_ was one of the things a package manager was supposed to help avoid. Switched to Arch around 3 years ago, the only time I've reinstalled was when I got a new laptop. And my system is never more than a month out of date. And it's easier to use/configure (no more 'do I set this through KDE or MCC?'), more stable than anything I've ever used, and just generally exactly what I want with near zero effort.
It's not for everyone I suppose, but aside from the occasional KDE bug (which are getting rarer every month since it's always updated,) Arch with KDE is the PERFECT OS for me. Well, I wish I could shave a couple seconds off the boot time too, but I haven't yet found any distro that will do any better. Most are worse because they run a bunch of services you don't want. And once my computer starts getting old and slow, I'll just drop KDE for something like RazorQT.
Yea, for free, with contract...meaning the phone is being paid as part of his monthly contract cost, which means he's paying for the phone.
But yea, getting one on Craigslist would work...but you're still increasing their market share and ending up with a crippled device...
Yea, that's exactly what we need, let's just finish the corporate buyout of our government and go from a corporate controlled government to a pure corporate government...
Remember, most government taxation is appropriating funds from a more effective use determined by the market, and instead putting them to less effective use as determined by bureaucrats.
Yes, because paying some jackass CEO a few million a year to go golfing is TOTALLY better than providing food/shelter/healthcare to those in need.
When will this quick versioning madness end?!!?
Most Linus users don't know their kernel version anyways. They just know their distro, and maybe distro version...
My distro doesn't have versions, you insensitive clod!
Seriously though, HUGE fan of Arch, and as far as I can tell if you're going to give one number to indicate what "version" your entire system is on Arch, it's probably gonna be the kernel version. Then again, I suppose Arch and "Most Linux users" may be mutually exclusive sets...
It could have been phrased better, I admit, but the way it's phrased is pretty common. I also don't see how you possibly got '84% of the system's light output' in a section where they were clearly comparing it to our Sun. The use of the word 'however' is a pretty clear indicator that they're continuing the current comparison, not jumping off to something completely different.
If I said to you 'my car is just as big as John's but only needs half the gas' would you think I mean half of the entire world's supply of gasoline, or that my car has twice the fuel efficiency of John's?
...until the police decide to hassle you and throw you in jail for not giving them ID. It happens. Particularly in the south to people with brown skin, but hell just the other day in Pennsylvania I had an office demand _multiple_ pieces of ID while I was walking into a restaurant.
I know. This article would have made more sense 2-4 years ago I'd say. 2008-2010 were bad years for Linux in my book. Terrible time with hardware compatibility. Cheap wifi cards were in every computer and none of them had Linux drivers.
But today? Today you install Linux and everything just works. Running Arch on my new HP laptop is a beautiful experience.
Well I mean I'm never the guy trying to some kind of race or some bullshit -- but if someone else does, I'm gonna try to embarrass them :)
And yea, I'm a 22 year old male, so it probably is a testosterone and youth thing.
But I do use that horsepower for other things as well. I mean I'd hate to have to try to merge onto the highway I take to work, where the average speed is 75-80MPH and there's not much of a ramp in something with only 85HP. I mean I'm sure you do it, people clearly do it, but it's a lot easier when you have some power to accelerate up to speed in a small gap. But mostly it's just fun to drive.
Well, relatively small compared to other cars on the road, not compared to what Pontiac is making. Perhaps the fact that the G6 was their second biggest car was part of the reason they no longer exist? I mean, shit, it's smaller than a Nissan Altima. Not by a ton, but the G6 is considered a Compact, the Altima is Mid-Size. And especially with so many people driving SUVs and such, I'd say that yes, my G6 is relatively small.
Well, it wasn't a brand new Mustang -- not sure how old it was, but the numbers I'm coming up with are that my Pontiac is 220HP, a 2000 Mustang is 190 unless they opted for the larger engine. Or maybe it was just poorly maintained, hell if I know.