Yeah that's true. But it helps to have a goal in life, and for that you'll have to figure out what your values are I guess. Sure we are all the product of random shit, our actions mean little, and there is no life after death. But we also are all the product of billions of years of fortunate events, and we might as well make life easier for each other while we're here.
If getting a 9-5 job can help me provide for my family, then I'll do my best to ignore the absurdity of life and, in the immortal words of Joe Dirt, I'll "keep on keepin' on!"
I was "gifted"...I hate the fucking world with a passion...I hope to find sone hint of something greater, and some proof that this civilization is not just a pack of marching morons.
That's the cost of intelligence I suppose. You can be blind to the truth with a big fucking grin on your face, or you can embrace logic and reason, and become totally jadedin the process.
Thanks for the reply! Though I don't have a prodigy level IQ, I still find myself in similar situations. I'm pretty much "good" at everything (graphic design, programming, business, science, debate), but I'm honestly an expert at nothing. It's good to know that being a jack of all trades can be a good thing!
I don't see anything wrong with having special progams within the public school system. But I do see a problem with having government sponsored prodigy only schools. If the parents want their children to have more resources than the others, then they should foot the bill.
I'm 21 myself. They never let people skip grades when I was in school though, but I guess my dad skipped a grade back in the very early 60's. Maybe the gifted program replaced the policy of skipping kids ahead?
I have to say that I know exactly what the original poster is talking about (though i've never taken an IQ test). But I think you're absolutely right. You have to put in the effort to learn what may not interest you. And elitist schools and gifted programs tend to churn out elitist people that think they are gifted(original poster).
Are you from Ontario by any chance? I was in the same type of program, starting in grade 2, and it was a really great class to be in. This was almost 15 years ago now, but I assume they still have the program. Actually, I was in a similar program for a few months in grade 7, but quit after my friends expressed their view of my "special" class! Looking back on the grade 7 version, we didn't really do a whole lot of learning. The hippy art teacher (think beavis and buthead's), just let us paint a few lockers in modern art style.
Smart kids are definitely left out.
I agree with you for sure. In middle school I had some great teachers though who would always give me more challenging work; like me reading National Geographics (and looking at Amazonian boobies of course) instead of Curious George.
Not having needed any studying skills for the very relaxed pace in high school, I was quickly blown by by those who high school was geared for. Of course, I could have done the work, but didn't. I am not blaming the system, but I think the system could use adjustment.
By the time I made it to college I was so unused to homework that I just could not keep up either. As of last week I am now dropping out of my second college program, and it is precisely because of this. I'm lazy as hell, sure, but I know I could do a lot better in school now if I had better developed my homework and study skills earlier in life.
I'm a well off, twenty-something white guy and I have no excuse for failing! I really wish I had someone to blame sometimes...
Grass doesn't have to exist just because trees exist. Stegosaurs could eat plants on the ground...it's not like any amount of brain power could allow them to climb trees anyways.
Given how quickly tech advances, and how impossible it becomes to find stuff that works a decade after its obsolete, I wouldn't worry - these cylinders have already outlasted 12"/8"/5.25"/3.5" floppies, 8 track and cassette audio tapes, vcrs, paper tape and punch cards. They'll still be around in another 100 years.
You know, there's one thing that's different between mp3s and the formats that you mentioned: those are all physical mediums and mp3s are digital. You can copy an mp3 a thousand times and you wont be sacrificing any quality at all.
Just save the files with a copy of winamp and you're all set for another 100 years. We wont be rid of all x86 pcs for a long time yet.
It really is amazing what scientists are doing for us. The speed that technology is developed is unbelievable really. I just want to ask: what are you all doing to make the world a better place?
Disclaimer: I'm not doing a hell of a lot myself...
Exactly! If more people only realised that being able to change one's mind is a good thing we wouldn't have Bush in office....but, but, he flip-flops!!!
What if the XBOX 360 was intended as the main gaming platform for a company for the next five years and they touted it to be incredibly powerful and include high definition support and then they couldn't even manage to make games run on that "high end" hardware today at more than 30fps without toning down the quality?
First Generation games are always less than perfect on new consoles. The developers just made a tradeoff for more eyecandy and slighty less resolution. Really no big deal since even five years from now I'm sure most people playing the game will be playing it on regulr tv's.
But they're not simply upscaling, the game is actually rendered at 720p, so it will have sharp edges, and sharp-to-semifuzzy-textures. It will look just as sharp as a PC playing at 1280x720.
It looks a bit odd, though. Take this screenshot [bungie.net] as an example - there are some really lumpy pixels on the cables and archway to the left of the picture.
Actually, I've just spent the last ten minutes making some rubbishy animated GIFs comparing differences between screenshots.
Here's one comparing Xbox and Xbox360 shots [hylobatidae.org] - there's definitely a difference, but there are horrible jagged pixels on the wires to the left on both of them.
Here's another comparing Xbox and Xbox360 shots again [hylobatidae.org] - go on, tell me which one's which.;-) One of them is slightly better, with anti-aliasing on a lot of edges, but what's going on with Sarge's holster? Chunky pixels!
And finally, my favourite. Comparing the 1280x720 image with a version scaled down to 640x360 and back again [hylobatidae.org]. Here I chucked away three-quarters of the information in the screenshot (I did a nearest-neighbour scale down to 640x360 in The GIMP, a cubic scale up to 1280x720 and applied 40% sharpening). First of all, try to tell them apart - there are some slight differences on near-horizontal lines, but otherwise the 1280x720 image might as well have been rendered at 640x360 then scaled up to the larger size.
Either these are extremely bad screenshots (they did mention having to grab the video), or there's something very strange going on. I hope it's the former, but there still isn't much improvement over the original Xbox...
Observant! I just learned of it a few weeks ago. After doing a search on google, I see that, surprisingly, I'm only the second person to write it in that context on the net.... Damn, I almost invented a joke!
Slashdot Mirror
06-googleplex.jpg :-)
Cute, the trademark sign in a heart!
I'm sure they'll grow up to become good business(wo)men.
I think the "g" looks like Raphael the ninja turtle.
Yeah that's true. But it helps to have a goal in life, and for that you'll have to figure out what your values are I guess. Sure we are all the product of random shit, our actions mean little, and there is no life after death. But we also are all the product of billions of years of fortunate events, and we might as well make life easier for each other while we're here.
If getting a 9-5 job can help me provide for my family, then I'll do my best to ignore the absurdity of life and, in the immortal words of Joe Dirt, I'll "keep on keepin' on!"
If you don't want to click through 15 pages of ads you can view the pics here: just pics though, no text
I was "gifted"...I hate the fucking world with a passion...I hope to find sone hint of something greater, and some proof that this civilization is not just a pack of marching morons.
That's the cost of intelligence I suppose. You can be blind to the truth with a big fucking grin on your face, or you can embrace logic and reason, and become totally jadedin the process.
Thanks for the reply! Though I don't have a prodigy level IQ, I still find myself in similar situations. I'm pretty much "good" at everything (graphic design, programming, business, science, debate), but I'm honestly an expert at nothing. It's good to know that being a jack of all trades can be a good thing!
I don't see anything wrong with having special progams within the public school system. But I do see a problem with having government sponsored prodigy only schools. If the parents want their children to have more resources than the others, then they should foot the bill.
I'm 21 myself. They never let people skip grades when I was in school though, but I guess my dad skipped a grade back in the very early 60's. Maybe the gifted program replaced the policy of skipping kids ahead?
I have to say that I know exactly what the original poster is talking about (though i've never taken an IQ test). But I think you're absolutely right. You have to put in the effort to learn what may not interest you. And elitist schools and gifted programs tend to churn out elitist people that think they are gifted(original poster).
Are you from Ontario by any chance? I was in the same type of program, starting in grade 2, and it was a really great class to be in. This was almost 15 years ago now, but I assume they still have the program. Actually, I was in a similar program for a few months in grade 7, but quit after my friends expressed their view of my "special" class! Looking back on the grade 7 version, we didn't really do a whole lot of learning. The hippy art teacher (think beavis and buthead's), just let us paint a few lockers in modern art style.
Can you tell us what you now do for a living? It really must have been hard trying to live up to those expectations!
Smart kids are definitely left out.
I agree with you for sure. In middle school I had some great teachers though who would always give me more challenging work; like me reading National Geographics (and looking at Amazonian boobies of course) instead of Curious George.
Not having needed any studying skills for the very relaxed pace in high school, I was quickly blown by by those who high school was geared for. Of course, I could have done the work, but didn't. I am not blaming the system, but I think the system could use adjustment.
By the time I made it to college I was so unused to homework that I just could not keep up either. As of last week I am now dropping out of my second college program, and it is precisely because of this. I'm lazy as hell, sure, but I know I could do a lot better in school now if I had better developed my homework and study skills earlier in life.
I'm a well off, twenty-something white guy and I have no excuse for failing! I really wish I had someone to blame sometimes...
Grass doesn't have to exist just because trees exist. Stegosaurs could eat plants on the ground ...it's not like any amount of brain power could allow them to climb trees anyways.
Helmet: Yogurt. Yogurt. I hate Yogurt. Even with strawberries.
Sandurz: I'll call the attack squad, sir.
Helmet: No, we can't go in there. Yogurt has the Schwartz. It's far too powerful.
Sandurz: But, sir, your ring. Don't you have the Schwartz, too?
Helmet: No, he got the up-side. I got the down-side. You see, there's two sides to every Schwartz.
--Sorry if I'm not the first to post this. My wireless connection is all screwy...
Given how quickly tech advances, and how impossible it becomes to find stuff that works a decade after its obsolete, I wouldn't worry - these cylinders have already outlasted 12"/8"/5.25"/3.5" floppies, 8 track and cassette audio tapes, vcrs, paper tape and punch cards. They'll still be around in another 100 years.
You know, there's one thing that's different between mp3s and the formats that you mentioned: those are all physical mediums and mp3s are digital. You can copy an mp3 a thousand times and you wont be sacrificing any quality at all.
Just save the files with a copy of winamp and you're all set for another 100 years. We wont be rid of all x86 pcs for a long time yet.
Slightly off topic so mod me to hell, but... are there any custom distros of solaris worth downloading yet?
Can't wait till I can get rid of my fear/disgust of earwigs! Those fuckers are nasty!
No sequal is worth $60, no matter how pretty it looks.
Unless you don't already own the prequal...
It really is amazing what scientists are doing for us. The speed that technology is developed is unbelievable really. I just want to ask: what are you all doing to make the world a better place?
Disclaimer: I'm not doing a hell of a lot myself...
These aren't off the shelf desktops. What else would you expect them to run, windows ME?
HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, SCO UNIX, Mac OS X, free/open/netBSD...? Palm OS?
Exactly my thoughts.
Exactly! If more people only realised that being able to change one's mind is a good thing we wouldn't have Bush in office. ...but, but, he flip-flops!!!
What if the XBOX 360 was intended as the main gaming platform for a company for the next five years and they touted it to be incredibly powerful and include high definition support and then they couldn't even manage to make games run on that "high end" hardware today at more than 30fps without toning down the quality?
First Generation games are always less than perfect on new consoles. The developers just made a tradeoff for more eyecandy and slighty less resolution. Really no big deal since even five years from now I'm sure most people playing the game will be playing it on regulr tv's.
We're lazy man!
;-) One of them is slightly better, with anti-aliasing on a lot of edges, but what's going on with Sarge's holster? Chunky pixels!
And finally, my favourite. Comparing the 1280x720 image with a version scaled down to 640x360 and back again [hylobatidae.org]. Here I chucked away three-quarters of the information in the screenshot (I did a nearest-neighbour scale down to 640x360 in The GIMP, a cubic scale up to 1280x720 and applied 40% sharpening). First of all, try to tell them apart - there are some slight differences on near-horizontal lines, but otherwise the 1280x720 image might as well have been rendered at 640x360 then scaled up to the larger size.
Either these are extremely bad screenshots (they did mention having to grab the video), or there's something very strange going on. I hope it's the former, but there still isn't much improvement over the original Xbox...
^ his previous post:
But they're not simply upscaling, the game is actually rendered at 720p, so it will have sharp edges, and sharp-to-semifuzzy-textures. It will look just as sharp as a PC playing at 1280x720. It looks a bit odd, though. Take this screenshot [bungie.net] as an example - there are some really lumpy pixels on the cables and archway to the left of the picture. Actually, I've just spent the last ten minutes making some rubbishy animated GIFs comparing differences between screenshots. Here's one comparing Xbox and Xbox360 shots [hylobatidae.org] - there's definitely a difference, but there are horrible jagged pixels on the wires to the left on both of them. Here's another comparing Xbox and Xbox360 shots again [hylobatidae.org] - go on, tell me which one's which.
Observant! I just learned of it a few weeks ago. After doing a search on google, I see that, surprisingly, I'm only the second person to write it in that context on the net.... Damn, I almost invented a joke!
I plan to notify Nintendo's piracy center because it ticks me off that someone is making money by ripping Nintendo off.
Why?