How about we attempt to encourage kids to become responsible participants in society by getting them to think critically about society through having them read and discuss social topics?
If you've some problem with Australia, you are free to ignore stories that mention it. Even those that are highly relevant to issues recently in the news in the US.
Those of us who are not as nearsighted as you can in the meantime read, discuss, and maybe learn something about what eventually happens after kids who rig school elections are allowed to go on to rigging real elections--and we'll be able to do so without being distracted by your petty bitching, thanks very much.
I don't have a citation at hand, but I seem to recall reading sometime back that research done on the inmates in Spandau suggests that the maximum time that a human can tolerate imprisonment without being permanently psychologically damaged by it is on the order of 9 years.
Hello, I've been writing books for close to 20 years. In addition, for most of the last decade, I've also been a co-maintainer of ~30,000 pages of technical documentation for a well-known family of Open Source software products (one of which is used on Slashdot's backend). This documentation is updated and re-published in toto on a daily basis, in about a dozen end-user formats.
If you're an author, then you're supposed to be writing meaningful content. This means that you should be concentrating on data and semantics.
Presentation and layout should not be your concern--leave this to the professionals (editors and layout people).
Otherwise, use DocBook XML and MathML to author your content, then transform to PDF, RTF, Word, HTML, or whatever end-user format(s) are required using the appropriate toolchain and transforms. There are heaps and heaps of XSLT stylesheets out there for this purpose. You can tweak these as desired/necessary, and it's at this stage--and not before--that you should be even the slightest bit worried about how things look.
If there is one thing that many years in this game have taught me, it's that futzing with presentation issues while you're trying to write merely serves as a huge distraction. And that it is counterproductive to reinvent the wheel for every writing project, which is what formats that munge together content and presentation at the expense of semantics invariably force you to do.
I know it's fashionable around here to disparage XML, but text + semantic markup + styles/transforms works very, very well for producing dense technical material that preserves semantics while providing an easy way to publish something that's pleasing to the eye. For the last 10 years or so, I've refused to use anything else for this purpose. I strongly encourage anyone who's planning to write anything over a few paragraphs in length to check it out.
As for collaboration--why do you even have to ask? Pick a revision control system and use it. Depending on the project and who I'm working with, this would be SVN or BZR for me, but there are many choices. Choose one of them.
Because the most expensive solution is always the best one FOR THE CHILDREN!
Spending the most money possible shows we really care about our kids. You want to spend less money than the maximum possible? You don't care about our kids!
Me: It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. Retired PLA Colonel: Likewise. Tell me, young man, did your father or perhaps your grandfather fight in Korea? Me: Actually, I had a couple of great-uncles who saw action there. He: I too fought in Korea. You realise that they and I were probably shooting at each other over there, right? Me: Well... I'd not thought about it, but I suppose so. He: Did they come home? Me: Yes, they did. He: Then I am most happy for you and your family, because many did not. Young man, I think you know that some very bad things happened in those days... Me: So I have heard and read, sir. He: I think that was a very long time ago, and the world has changed since then. Don't you agree? Me: Absolutely, sir, absolutely. He: (*takes my hand and pumps it enthusiastically*) Well, then, let's have a drink together to honour your uncles and all the brave comrades who fought for what they believed in, because that was a very long time ago... and now we are all a little older and wiser, and now we know that we should just all be good friends, don't you think? Me: Sir! Yes, sir!
And then I took a double-shot of something that was named after a mountain, smelt like flowers, and went down like jet fuel... And the old soldier had to steady me because it damn near knocked me to the floor.:)
I've a photo of the old colonel and me together, taken that day. I keep it on the shelf above my desk. I consider it one of my most prized mementoes.
If America left South Korea, North and South would reunify just as quickly, under the capitalist system of the South.
Excuse me? The DPRK has the 4th-largest army in the world, and the highest percentage of military personnel per capita of any country in the world. They have about one and a quarter million military personnel. They have nukes, too. And Seoul is close enough to the border that they could just about lob one at it with a slingshot.
If the US abandoned South Korea, the North would be able to resist the temptation of all those material goodies they know the South have and they don't for... I dunno... a few weeks, maybe?
Oh, there might eventually be reunification, but it would be neither quick nor bloodless, and there are no guarantees that it wouldn't be as a peninsula-wide DPRK.
(My partner has an iPhone 5, BTW, but she still prefers pinyin.)
Pinyin is not nearly as slow as people make it out to be. Google Pinyin in particular is very good at providing choices based on context, and recognises phrases. If I type "wotingshuo" and then hit the 1 or Enter key, I get just what you'd expect.
Which I cannot reproduce here thanks to antediluvian/full-retard Slashcode. So you will just have to take my word for it, I guess.
I also question the premise that handwriting is faster than typing. I can certainly type much faster than I can write with a pen, and this is true for me whether I'm using Latin, Cyrillic, or Hanzi characters. "wo [I]" is 7 pen strokes or 2 keystrokes. "zou [walk]" is 7 pen strokes or 3 keystrokes. Even if you count an extra keystroke for each character (to select from the pick-list), I find that's a lot fewer keystrokes, and they tend to be much faster. I can type "wozoulu1huijia1"--15 keystrokes--much faster than I can make the 43 pen strokes needed to write out the Hanzi for "I'm walking home". This is also true in English--16 keystrokes for "I'm walking home" vs 31 pen strokes for writing it by hand.
For an operator of even moderate proficiency, the keyboard is very likely to be faster, regardless of language/character set.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the real world is not as neatly compartmentalised as you would like it to be, and these are high school kids, not grad students?
How about we attempt to encourage kids to become responsible participants in society by getting them to think critically about society through having them read and discuss social topics?
One of the reasons we live in dangerous times is due to the fact that those who ignore history tend to wind up repeating it.
If you've some problem with Australia, you are free to ignore stories that mention it. Even those that are highly relevant to issues recently in the news in the US.
Those of us who are not as nearsighted as you can in the meantime read, discuss, and maybe learn something about what eventually happens after kids who rig school elections are allowed to go on to rigging real elections--and we'll be able to do so without being distracted by your petty bitching, thanks very much.
Cheers.
Can anybody imagine a US congressman collecting Weaver from the prison gates and deploying him to an office on Capitol Hill?
Yes, easily. Why do you even have to ask?
Chinese people buy these things, too. I've been there and seen it done.
Excuse me, I said "people" because I meant "people".
Thank you.
I don't have a citation at hand, but I seem to recall reading sometime back that research done on the inmates in Spandau suggests that the maximum time that a human can tolerate imprisonment without being permanently psychologically damaged by it is on the order of 9 years.
Hello, I've been writing books for close to 20 years. In addition, for most of the last decade, I've also been a co-maintainer of ~30,000 pages of technical documentation for a well-known family of Open Source software products (one of which is used on Slashdot's backend). This documentation is updated and re-published in toto on a daily basis, in about a dozen end-user formats.
If you're an author, then you're supposed to be writing meaningful content. This means that you should be concentrating on data and semantics.
Presentation and layout should not be your concern--leave this to the professionals (editors and layout people).
Otherwise, use DocBook XML and MathML to author your content, then transform to PDF, RTF, Word, HTML, or whatever end-user format(s) are required using the appropriate toolchain and transforms. There are heaps and heaps of XSLT stylesheets out there for this purpose. You can tweak these as desired/necessary, and it's at this stage--and not before--that you should be even the slightest bit worried about how things look.
If there is one thing that many years in this game have taught me, it's that futzing with presentation issues while you're trying to write merely serves as a huge distraction. And that it is counterproductive to reinvent the wheel for every writing project, which is what formats that munge together content and presentation at the expense of semantics invariably force you to do.
I know it's fashionable around here to disparage XML, but text + semantic markup + styles/transforms works very, very well for producing dense technical material that preserves semantics while providing an easy way to publish something that's pleasing to the eye. For the last 10 years or so, I've refused to use anything else for this purpose. I strongly encourage anyone who's planning to write anything over a few paragraphs in length to check it out.
As for collaboration--why do you even have to ask? Pick a revision control system and use it. Depending on the project and who I'm working with, this would be SVN or BZR for me, but there are many choices. Choose one of them.
Because the most expensive solution is always the best one FOR THE CHILDREN!
Spending the most money possible shows we really care about our kids. You want to spend less money than the maximum possible? You don't care about our kids!
It's a technology "solution" to a social and institutional problem.
It's not obvious to me, either. Pray enlighten us, O Wise One.
Ignorant it is.
Looks to me like Meego's DOA, and it appears that Mer and Tizen are not yet viable.
BTW, I've not received any direct answer to my first question.
"Here, here." Is valid.
True.
It is indicative of agreement.
False. You are thinking of "Hear, hear".
They revoked his passport.
Born US citizens cannot have their citizenship revoked.
I think it's pretty fucking sad when the US is obliged to promise explicitly, on a recurring basis, not to torture people.
Sorry, I'm not clear on which "free" China it is that I'm supposedly a lackey of. Kindly elucidate.
Afterwards, we can discuss who's paying you to post nonsense.
Foshan, Guangdong, PRC, January 2011:
Me: It's a pleasure to meet you, sir.
Retired PLA Colonel: Likewise. Tell me, young man, did your father or perhaps your grandfather fight in Korea?
Me: Actually, I had a couple of great-uncles who saw action there.
He: I too fought in Korea. You realise that they and I were probably shooting at each other over there, right?
Me: Well... I'd not thought about it, but I suppose so.
He: Did they come home?
Me: Yes, they did.
He: Then I am most happy for you and your family, because many did not. Young man, I think you know that some very bad things happened in those days...
Me: So I have heard and read, sir.
He: I think that was a very long time ago, and the world has changed since then. Don't you agree?
Me: Absolutely, sir, absolutely.
He: (*takes my hand and pumps it enthusiastically*) Well, then, let's have a drink together to honour your uncles and all the brave comrades who fought for what they believed in, because that was a very long time ago... and now we are all a little older and wiser, and now we know that we should just all be good friends, don't you think?
Me: Sir! Yes, sir!
And then I took a double-shot of something that was named after a mountain, smelt like flowers, and went down like jet fuel... And the old soldier had to steady me because it damn near knocked me to the floor. :)
I've a photo of the old colonel and me together, taken that day. I keep it on the shelf above my desk. I consider it one of my most prized mementoes.
If America left South Korea, North and South would reunify just as quickly, under the capitalist system of the South.
Excuse me? The DPRK has the 4th-largest army in the world, and the highest percentage of military personnel per capita of any country in the world. They have about one and a quarter million military personnel. They have nukes, too. And Seoul is close enough to the border that they could just about lob one at it with a slingshot.
If the US abandoned South Korea, the North would be able to resist the temptation of all those material goodies they know the South have and they don't for... I dunno... a few weeks, maybe?
Oh, there might eventually be reunification, but it would be neither quick nor bloodless, and there are no guarantees that it wouldn't be as a peninsula-wide DPRK.
That was a racist flaimbait, not a comment.
It's not as though any of Japan's neighbors are necessarily going to like it...
The Taiwanese are sure to like it (though not their government).
You have got to be kidding.
Hong Kong and Macau would like to have a chat with you.
Along with these other places.
Do you really hate history so very much?
(Nod to JC.)
So does Android.
(My partner has an iPhone 5, BTW, but she still prefers pinyin.)
Pinyin is not nearly as slow as people make it out to be. Google Pinyin in particular is very good at providing choices based on context, and recognises phrases. If I type "wotingshuo" and then hit the 1 or Enter key, I get just what you'd expect.
Which I cannot reproduce here thanks to antediluvian/full-retard Slashcode. So you will just have to take my word for it, I guess.
I also question the premise that handwriting is faster than typing. I can certainly type much faster than I can write with a pen, and this is true for me whether I'm using Latin, Cyrillic, or Hanzi characters. "wo [I]" is 7 pen strokes or 2 keystrokes. "zou [walk]" is 7 pen strokes or 3 keystrokes. Even if you count an extra keystroke for each character (to select from the pick-list), I find that's a lot fewer keystrokes, and they tend to be much faster. I can type "wozoulu1huijia1"--15 keystrokes--much faster than I can make the 43 pen strokes needed to write out the Hanzi for "I'm walking home". This is also true in English--16 keystrokes for "I'm walking home" vs 31 pen strokes for writing it by hand.
For an operator of even moderate proficiency, the keyboard is very likely to be faster, regardless of language/character set.