The NES Advantage joystick solved the problem by having a heavy wide base (approx. 6" x 8" or 15cm x 20cm) and a joystick with very little physical resistance to movement. You just put the thing on the floor, table, or your lap and you could use the joystick just like the ones attached to the arcade machines. It was even wedge-shaped so the whole thing tilted towards the player, like the arcade machine. The buttons were big and easy to hit and came with the most wonderful tunable rapid repeat settings. Contra sure was easier with auto-fire at maximum rate...
You'd be guessing wrong, buddy. After years of high school Latin I get where per and cent come from and I do think about etymology. I'm a former professional journalist and copy editor. I didn't ask _why_ it was that way or imply it was wrong, I just pointed out as a parenthetical aside a difference in usage that I'd never noticed. I don't see the need to be all show-offy and pedantic (but I like redundancy).
And I get that the 6.6 is wrong. Chalk it up to my logic being infected by the original poster.
And, no, I no longer like metal. I like jazz and hip-hop, which apparently keeps me well out of the statistical norm for geniuses, but then again I'm not left-handed, asthmatic, nor do I wear eyeglasses, all of which are more likely in gifted kids than the general population. I guess I'm just a trend-bucking genius... (and getting show-offy, I fear)
And is it just me, or are people attacking the wrong thing in my post. The 6.6 is wrong, sure, but are you saying that because I made a logic error the original poster is right? We're heading for infinitely recursing logic errors, it seems.
Sadly, I like jazz and hip-hop, so I guess my logic skills suck.
If your kid is a genius they are 6.6 times more likely to like rock than heavy metal. That doesn't translate into if you like rock you're 6.6 times as likely to be a genius.
Then again, if you like heavy metal, it means nothing about being a genius, except that if you are one, you're more likely to be disfunctional.
The researchers surveyed 1,057 members of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth - a body whose 120,000 student members are within the top five per cent academically in the 11-19 age range.
Asked for their favourite type of music, 39 per cent said rock, 18 per cent R&B and 14 per cent pop. Six per cent said heavy metal and a third rated it in their top five genres.
The heavy metal fans in the study had lower self-esteem and more difficulties in family relationships and friendships.
So over six times as many gifted kids use rock music to cope with being S.M.R.T., and the heavy metal kids are more likely to have low self-esteem and difficulties with relationships.
How the hell is this good news for teen metal fans or parents of same? If your kid likes metal, they might be a genius, but a maladjusted one with little confidence. Alternately, if your kids likes rock, they are 6.6 times more likely to be a genius.
The summary is a true masterwork of spin and the Telegraph editors should be spanked for skewing the article so blatantly.
Also, I had no idea percent was two words in British English...
The Mayan calendar is actually more accurate with respect to solar time than the Gregorian.
Here's a Tulaa World newspaper article I wrote years ago about various calendar systems.
Wikipedia describes the 13.0.0.0.0 myth as occurring because the last cycle of the world ended just before that rollover. However, the really really long count in the Mayan calendar implies there are 13^20 long count cycles from the end of the world.
If they want free ideas from teh intarweb, I say we give them the kind of quality one can only expect from late night posting trolls.
Here's my entry: ==== Title: The New Operating Paradigm Keywords:econ, windows, os, browser, mind-blowing, RSS
body: We're just now on Web 2.0, and there are people already writing and blogging about Web 2.1. Pretty soon we'll be on Web 3.1, and just like Windows 3.1, that means a new paradigm of using computers. When the browser becomes the operating system in a few months' time, people will personalize their computing environments like they personalize their office or dorm room. Econometricians will seek their own profit-maximizing fiscally-embedded platform from which to make their trades. That will be "Economist X, the Operating System."
How awesome is that? ====
Another fifteen or twenty thousand of those and they'll spend all summer just looking for the few kernels of free corn in a sea of jabbering chaff...
Thanks for the info! I had no idea that the citizenship requirement has always been there. I've always had my passport with me just in case, but I've never been asked for it. I guess the most surprising thing about all of this is that there's been no real policy changes, just a tightening of implementation.
I'll just have to start thinking of Canada as actually being a different country, not just the state with better beer, hotter strip clubs, and narrow highways.
I don't think it's FUD so much as it's genuine surprise. I think it's a worthy article not because Canada is doing something wrong, per se, it's just such a difference from the way things were before. It used to be with a US driver's license getting into Canada was like stopping at a toll booth where you didn't need to pay. It took 30 seconds or less and had little or no real meaning.
Now, things are very different because the US government is sharing conviction data electronically with the Canadian government. I don't know if on the balance it's a good or bad thing for privacy, security, etc. I was just hoping, naively perhaps, that a healthy discussion on Slashdot would help me figure out how I stand on this.
Plus, it's a good way to get the word out that things are different and people need to be prepared for a very different experience at the Canadian border. It's not like this has been publicized at all. At least when airport security changes, there's lots of news, but I live in New England and this is the first I've heard about any of it.
Honestly, if I won the lottery, I don't think I'd give a whit about documentation. I might take a few phone calls, but we all pretty much admitted we'd be on the first plane to somewhere with no cell coverage, let alone email.
In any event there were coworkers I'd rather imagine dead than independently wealthy.
At my old company, a small startup, nearly everyone was the posessor of "hit by a bus" level knowledge about something. In order to keep meetings from growing overly morbid, we introduced the "wins the lottery" idea, providing a case where the key employee leaves for reasons other than death by Greyhound.
Re:And like feng shui, IT'S BULLSHIT!
on
Slashdot's Vastu
·
· Score: 1
Upon review of the site and their design recommendations, it's clear that Vastu is the product of a mildly retarded gopher.
However, I maintain that the spectacular failure of Vastu is not inherently due to its being based on ideas not wholly rational.
The failure of Vastu is due to a total lack of good taste.
Re:And like feng shui, IT'S BULLSHIT!
on
Slashdot's Vastu
·
· Score: 1
Good composition is in fact a well-studied field with thousands of years of refinement. Let us not forget the golden ratio and the golden mean. There are lots of variables, but I would opine that there are certain constants most reasonable people can agree on.
If someone chooses to use words like "balancing fire and earth" to create a system of rules, then if those rules are a useful way to proceed towards something with good composition, what's the harm?
It seems to me you don't have any idea if this is a beneficial practice or not, you simply reject it out of hand because the reasons given for why it works aren't rational. Big fucking deal, things can work even if the people who practice them don't have any idea why they work.
I would say that jumping on the Vastu bandwagon because of mystical beliefs is not rationally defensible, but leaping to conclusions that it CANNOT work because their rationale is not rational is also not defensible.
I am not saying that Vastu is a good thing, or even a useful thing, but you have no idea either. You simply reject it because the rules are not derived from the first principles of logic.
Try living in a world with the potential for things to work even when not driven by logic. Humans are not primarly logical beasts, so it makes sense that at least some of our practices should not be founded exclusively on logic.
I'm not saying you have to use Vastu to design your sites, but your implicit assumption that anyone who does is an idiot is remarkably unimaginable. There are more paths to truth than your Western devotion to individualistic rationalism. Descartes was not the end of the discussion on human thought.
Re:And like feng shui, IT'S BULLSHIT!
on
Slashdot's Vastu
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How can attention to good composition be bullshit?
Will putting a water fountain in a "harsh corner" improve your finances? Of course not, not in a direct causitive way.
Does living in a shithole make you less motivated and less likely to attract friends and influential people to help you make money? Fuckin A right it does.
So, does paying attention to your surroundings and having a well-put together harmonious environment overall improve your life? How could it not?
Only people with a double-digit IQ believe that the world is Manichean and things are only completely useful or completely worthless...
I'm currently enrolled at MIT, and just yesterday I was picking up some things from the printer in a public computer cluster and came across an assignment for students in an advanced materials science class to update wikipedia.
The professor had assigned the students, individually and collectively, to improve the wikipedia articles on the topics they were covering in class using history printouts and the state of the article as the basis for their grades.
New Scientist has an editorial in last week's issue regarding this very issue in which the author raises a number of points:
Turbines can make a LOT of noise, especially if they are not perfectly tuned. That is certainly a concern for nearby households.
They demand maintenance, without which they become serious hazards. Given the state of repair of your neighbor's automobile, do you trust him to spend money each year to maintain the windmill?
Turbines don't work unless they are above the disruptive effects of other towers, necessitating heights of up to 11 meters above the surrounding roofs and antennae. That's a lot of windmill sticking in the air, especially if you live in an area prone to high winds.
If everyone has one, everyone's efficiency goes down because of turbulent interference.
So, even if the efficiencies are high enough in the lab, and even if homeowners start driving prices down through economies of scale, and even if no one complains about their view being corrupted by dozens of spinning blades, there are still a host of difficult barriers here.
Seems to me that wind micropower is going to be popular for ranches and remote households, just like the windmills of old, and not many others.
The problem is not that JBoss doesn't come with great documentation, but that when people post very informative step-by-step instructions to the JBoss forums, JBoss deletes them, as it interferes with their support billing.
Try to find docs on how to port your configuration from 3.x to 4.0 and you'll find very little help. It was on the forums. It's not now.
That's dirty pool.
Note that you cannot get just an English (or any other humanities) degree all by itself.
You have to either double major in a science or do a joint major, which is pretty much two beefy minors, one in the humanities major, the other in a hard science.
Sure, but what if what I want is something like "less" or "nano"?
Those aren't even remotely intuitive names.
Using autocomplete is the same is listing/usr/bin, essentially, and useful only if you can remember the command name if you see it, or if the command is usefully named.
Sadly, that is not a common practice with legacy shell commands.
Don't knock a book. Tactile and spatial memory is useless for PDFs and man pages.
For many of us, the physical format actually helps with recall. When I'm learning a new system or tool, being able to recall that the command I need is described close to the middle of the book and has a big bolded red header on the facing page is very handy.
Sure, if you already know you need a particular command, man pages are great. But if you have no idea what the command is called, how the hell are you ever going to find it? Random typing? Searching/usr/bin?
The Gregorian Reformation is assumed to have occurred in 1752 on the 3rd of September. By
this time, most countries had recognized the reformation (although a few did not recognize
it until the early 1900's.) Ten days following that date were eliminated by the reforma-
tion, so the calendar for that month is a bit unusual.
Slashdot Mirror
The NES Advantage joystick solved the problem by having a heavy wide base (approx. 6" x 8" or 15cm x 20cm) and a joystick with very little physical resistance to movement. You just put the thing on the floor, table, or your lap and you could use the joystick just like the ones attached to the arcade machines. It was even wedge-shaped so the whole thing tilted towards the player, like the arcade machine. The buttons were big and easy to hit and came with the most wonderful tunable rapid repeat settings. Contra sure was easier with auto-fire at maximum rate...
More real, as at least they both play their own instruments and write their own songs.
You'd be guessing wrong, buddy. After years of high school Latin I get where per and cent come from and I do think about etymology. I'm a former professional journalist and copy editor. I didn't ask _why_ it was that way or imply it was wrong, I just pointed out as a parenthetical aside a difference in usage that I'd never noticed. I don't see the need to be all show-offy and pedantic (but I like redundancy).
And I get that the 6.6 is wrong. Chalk it up to my logic being infected by the original poster.
And, no, I no longer like metal. I like jazz and hip-hop, which apparently keeps me well out of the statistical norm for geniuses, but then again I'm not left-handed, asthmatic, nor do I wear eyeglasses, all of which are more likely in gifted kids than the general population. I guess I'm just a trend-bucking genius... (and getting show-offy, I fear)
And is it just me, or are people attacking the wrong thing in my post. The 6.6 is wrong, sure, but are you saying that because I made a logic error the original poster is right? We're heading for infinitely recursing logic errors, it seems.
Sadly, I like jazz and hip-hop, so I guess my logic skills suck.
If your kid is a genius they are 6.6 times more likely to like rock than heavy metal. That doesn't translate into if you like rock you're 6.6 times as likely to be a genius.
Then again, if you like heavy metal, it means nothing about being a genius, except that if you are one, you're more likely to be disfunctional.
So over six times as many gifted kids use rock music to cope with being S.M.R.T., and the heavy metal kids are more likely to have low self-esteem and difficulties with relationships.
How the hell is this good news for teen metal fans or parents of same? If your kid likes metal, they might be a genius, but a maladjusted one with little confidence. Alternately, if your kids likes rock, they are 6.6 times more likely to be a genius.
The summary is a true masterwork of spin and the Telegraph editors should be spanked for skewing the article so blatantly.
Also, I had no idea percent was two words in British English...
The Mayan calendar is actually more accurate with respect to solar time than the Gregorian.
Here's a Tulaa World newspaper article I wrote years ago about various calendar systems.
Wikipedia describes the 13.0.0.0.0 myth as occurring because the last cycle of the world ended just before that rollover. However, the really really long count in the Mayan calendar implies there are 13^20 long count cycles from the end of the world.
If they want free ideas from teh intarweb, I say we give them the kind of quality one can only expect from late night posting trolls.
Here's my entry:
====
Title: The New Operating Paradigm
Keywords:econ, windows, os, browser, mind-blowing, RSS
body: We're just now on Web 2.0, and there are people already writing and blogging about Web 2.1. Pretty soon we'll be on Web 3.1, and just like Windows 3.1, that means a new paradigm of using computers. When the browser becomes the operating system in a few months' time, people will personalize their computing environments like they personalize their office or dorm room. Econometricians will seek their own profit-maximizing fiscally-embedded platform from which to make their trades. That will be "Economist X, the Operating System."
How awesome is that?
====
Another fifteen or twenty thousand of those and they'll spend all summer just looking for the few kernels of free corn in a sea of jabbering chaff...
Thanks for the info! I had no idea that the citizenship requirement has always been there. I've always had my passport with me just in case, but I've never been asked for it. I guess the most surprising thing about all of this is that there's been no real policy changes, just a tightening of implementation.
I'll just have to start thinking of Canada as actually being a different country, not just the state with better beer, hotter strip clubs, and narrow highways.
I don't think it's FUD so much as it's genuine surprise. I think it's a worthy article not because Canada is doing something wrong, per se, it's just such a difference from the way things were before. It used to be with a US driver's license getting into Canada was like stopping at a toll booth where you didn't need to pay. It took 30 seconds or less and had little or no real meaning.
Now, things are very different because the US government is sharing conviction data electronically with the Canadian government. I don't know if on the balance it's a good or bad thing for privacy, security, etc. I was just hoping, naively perhaps, that a healthy discussion on Slashdot would help me figure out how I stand on this.
Plus, it's a good way to get the word out that things are different and people need to be prepared for a very different experience at the Canadian border. It's not like this has been publicized at all. At least when airport security changes, there's lots of news, but I live in New England and this is the first I've heard about any of it.
Like +C+?
Thanks for demonstrating that even open-minded coders like yourself still need a good QA team, even if it's just to fix the little language typos...
Honestly, if I won the lottery, I don't think I'd give a whit about documentation. I might take a few phone calls, but we all pretty much admitted we'd be on the first plane to somewhere with no cell coverage, let alone email. In any event there were coworkers I'd rather imagine dead than independently wealthy.
At my old company, a small startup, nearly everyone was the posessor of "hit by a bus" level knowledge about something. In order to keep meetings from growing overly morbid, we introduced the "wins the lottery" idea, providing a case where the key employee leaves for reasons other than death by Greyhound.
Upon review of the site and their design recommendations, it's clear that Vastu is the product of a mildly retarded gopher.
However, I maintain that the spectacular failure of Vastu is not inherently due to its being based on ideas not wholly rational.
The failure of Vastu is due to a total lack of good taste.
Good composition is in fact a well-studied field with thousands of years of refinement. Let us not forget the golden ratio and the golden mean. There are lots of variables, but I would opine that there are certain constants most reasonable people can agree on.
If someone chooses to use words like "balancing fire and earth" to create a system of rules, then if those rules are a useful way to proceed towards something with good composition, what's the harm?
It seems to me you don't have any idea if this is a beneficial practice or not, you simply reject it out of hand because the reasons given for why it works aren't rational. Big fucking deal, things can work even if the people who practice them don't have any idea why they work.
I would say that jumping on the Vastu bandwagon because of mystical beliefs is not rationally defensible, but leaping to conclusions that it CANNOT work because their rationale is not rational is also not defensible.
I am not saying that Vastu is a good thing, or even a useful thing, but you have no idea either. You simply reject it because the rules are not derived from the first principles of logic.
Try living in a world with the potential for things to work even when not driven by logic. Humans are not primarly logical beasts, so it makes sense that at least some of our practices should not be founded exclusively on logic.
I'm not saying you have to use Vastu to design your sites, but your implicit assumption that anyone who does is an idiot is remarkably unimaginable. There are more paths to truth than your Western devotion to individualistic rationalism. Descartes was not the end of the discussion on human thought.
Will putting a water fountain in a "harsh corner" improve your finances? Of course not, not in a direct causitive way.
Does living in a shithole make you less motivated and less likely to attract friends and influential people to help you make money? Fuckin A right it does.
So, does paying attention to your surroundings and having a well-put together harmonious environment overall improve your life? How could it not?
Only people with a double-digit IQ believe that the world is Manichean and things are only completely useful or completely worthless...
The professor had assigned the students, individually and collectively, to improve the wikipedia articles on the topics they were covering in class using history printouts and the state of the article as the basis for their grades.
So, even if the efficiencies are high enough in the lab, and even if homeowners start driving prices down through economies of scale, and even if no one complains about their view being corrupted by dozens of spinning blades, there are still a host of difficult barriers here.
Seems to me that wind micropower is going to be popular for ranches and remote households, just like the windmills of old, and not many others.
The problem is not that JBoss doesn't come with great documentation, but that when people post very informative step-by-step instructions to the JBoss forums, JBoss deletes them, as it interferes with their support billing. Try to find docs on how to port your configuration from 3.x to 4.0 and you'll find very little help. It was on the forums. It's not now. That's dirty pool.
Note that you cannot get just an English (or any other humanities) degree all by itself. You have to either double major in a science or do a joint major, which is pretty much two beefy minors, one in the humanities major, the other in a hard science.
Sure, but what if what I want is something like "less" or "nano"?
/usr/bin, essentially, and useful only if you can remember the command name if you see it, or if the command is usefully named.
Those aren't even remotely intuitive names.
Using autocomplete is the same is listing
Sadly, that is not a common practice with legacy shell commands.
Don't knock a book. Tactile and spatial memory is useless for PDFs and man pages.
/usr/bin?
For many of us, the physical format actually helps with recall. When I'm learning a new system or tool, being able to recall that the command I need is described close to the middle of the book and has a big bolded red header on the facing page is very handy.
Sure, if you already know you need a particular command, man pages are great. But if you have no idea what the command is called, how the hell are you ever going to find it? Random typing? Searching
How about a lecture on how to share a bug tracking system across time zones with 50 part-time developers and an open submission system from users?
If I had $100 for every time I've had to teach a developer how to use Bugzilla, I wouldn't have to keep teaching developers anything, I'd be retired.
Teach them bug tracking before they leave school, for the good of all and the sanity of us poor QA folk.