What impressed me the most about Portal was that I was never frustrated with the inability to find my way through a puzzle I guess you didn't try the bonus puzzles, eh? Try making your way through the turret level when there's no way to disable the turrets!
The puzzles were all quite challenging, but never annoying or frustrating Heh, try the bonus versions of the puzzles if you want to see frustration (particularly the last three).
I'm not sure if it is the same in the US, but I really miss the CDMA network [I think CDMA is EDGE, or similar]. Nope... EDGE is a GSM technology. CDMA's 3G network is EVDO, which is comparable to UMTS/HSDPA in terms of bandwidth, but AFAIK it doesn't have the latency problems that the submitter complains about with HSDPA. It's a shame that people like the submitter assume there's only one kind of 3G network.
People often forget, that the Democracy -- in its original, direct-governing fashion -- is what condemned Socrates to death. It's a mistake to blame direct governance for that, though. The same thing could happen in a republic, if it had the support of the representatives (which is much easier to get than the support of the population, since there are only a few representatives).
The solution isn't to condemn direct democracy. It's to have a written constitution that makes certain issues off-limits, like the Bill of Rights, and make it more difficult to amend the constitution than to pass an average law. You can still put the voting power directly in the people's hands - just require 2/3 or 3/4 instead of a simple majority for extreme cases.
One of the problems with a Democracy is if the majority of the people voting (or the population majority if you have 100% voting population) are pushing one particular issue, be it racial issue, public floggings, etc., that issues wins, no questions. Of course, in a republic, if the majority of the representatives voting are pushing one particular issue, that issue wins... right? And that's even fewer people to convince, coerce, or bribe.
The way to stop blatant abuses like floggings or discrimination isn't to reduce the number of people who can vote on those issues; that only makes it easier to perpetuate the abuses. Instead, the solution is a constitution that places limits on what can be approved by a simple majority. You know, "Congress shall make no law..." and so on. You can still amend the constitution to get rid of those limits, but it requires a lot more than 51% of the votes.
A law that gives a single person power over every other person in society, and requires a police force that can come into your home to enforce it.. really, it's not a hard sell to show it is unjust. And not just any power - the power of censorship. Copyright says that I can prevent everyone else from saying something as long as I said it first, or as long as it has some tenuous connection to something I've said before. I wonder how many of the posters here who support this type of censorship are opposed to laws against hate speech, which, although it's also a form of censorship, at least has a better justification than putting a buck in someone's pocket.
Like playing Xbox360 games you mean? I suspect very strongly that this is what's going to happen. Well then, you're in for a surprise. At that Sudbury Valley school I posted a link to, video games are available, and yet the students spend plenty of time on other things. Even video games can only capture a kid's attention for a finite time.
Then why, despite everything, are there government programs to help illiterate adults in modern day Australia. I might ask you the same question. There are schools in Australia, right? And students are required to attend? But somehow that hasn't wiped out illiteracy. Maybe you just can't beat knowledge into people, eh?
My conclusion is that some people don't want to learn anything, others do, and that distinction is independent of whether you force them to go to school or not. Take someone who doesn't want to learn, force him to attend school, and he'll just end up causing trouble and dropping out as soon as he can. Take someone who does want to learn, let him spend his days however he chooses (like a human being), and he'll learn from the library, from other people, from playing games, from working on his own projects, or somewhere else.
Even with everything we try there are STILL people who don't know how to read sufficiently well. Making it optional in some reverse-psychology plan won't necessarily make everything better. [...] it's too idealistic to say that if we let people choose to learn, more would choose to do so than at the present time. Perhaps you misunderstood... it's not a reverse psychology plan. I'm not envisioning that letting kids stay home from school will somehow make them want to go to school even more. I'm saying (1) they don't need to learn everything in the school curriculum, (2) school isn't the only place to learn that stuff anyway, and (3) schools will be better places if the students who don't want to be there are allowed to leave. The primary goal is not to increase school attendance, but to respect the rights of young people and to improve schools for those who choose to attend.
Just because they're being tried doesn't mean that they're working. From what I've heard, some have produced above average results, some below average and most pretty much on the line. The one thing they have in common is that they force people to come. Even if they produced nothing but average results, don't you think kids would be more willing to go to school if they knew that their "school day" would be whatever they decided to make of it?
you're the one blowing hot air. you know as well as i know as well as an 80 year old knows that there's a difference between mature for a 14 year old and mature enough for college. If you're so sure there is a difference, then you should be able to explain what it is, so go right ahead. I'm listening.
sure, maturity doesn't have a good measurement, but development does. and at 14, a child (yes, developmentally, both physically and mentally, still a child), is not ready for life outside the family. You keep saying that, but repetition is not evidence.
in pretty much every developed nation, you don't see 14 year olds out on their own. That's right, but do you know why? Because the law prevents them from living on their own. It's not that they can't or don't want to - it's that they aren't allowed to. The law prevents them from signing contracts and holding most jobs, and it requires them to spend their days in school instead of working.
i don't know what you're getting at here, but it's a whole lot more hot air than anything i've said. No, not really. That's my point. If you say "14 year olds aren't mature", all you're doing is expressing an opinion, and your opinion is no better than else's unless you can come up with evidence to support it. So far, you haven't done that; you've just repeated phrases like "still a child" and "not ready" as if repeating them makes them true. If I say "yes, 14 year olds are mature", or even "no one is mature until age 50", without any evidence or reasoning to back those statements up, then that's exactly as much hot air as you're spouting, no more and no less.
clearly you don't know a whole lot about human development. That's funny, I was thinking the same about you.
by what reasoning can you say that 14 years old is pretty much an adult? let's see... can't drive, can't vote, can't live on your own, can't even join the military. i'd say that a 14 year old is nowhere near an adult. Legally, that's true. But sometimes the law is wrong, and I'd say this is one of those times.
the reason i have for a child (yes a 14 year old is a child) not going to college is that most children are not mature enough (not to say that 18 year olds are very mature) to deal with what goes on at colleges. not only that, but they won't be able to get the most out of college. i'm talking about the social experiences, not just the educational ones (which i will say are more important). Unless you can come up with a way to measure how "mature" someone is, statements like this are nothing but hot air. You say 14 year olds aren't mature enough, but if I say "yes they are!", you have no way to respond except to pound the table and claim that you're right and I'm wrong. That's because the word "mature" has no objective meaning here.
You might want to draw the line at 18 or 21, but what happens when some geezer comes along and says a 30 year old is still a child, and no one should go to college until they're at least 55, because that's when people really start to become mature? Again, since you've decided to rest your claim on your personal beliefs about "maturity", you have no way to argue that your line is any better than his.
Supposing however that it works differently. That after dropping the mandate, the country that does it will see literacy rates begin to fall as well as the overall average of education in that country. Well, as long as we're just supposing... what if after dropping the mandate, our economy starts to grow at an unprecedented rate, as the billions of man-hours per year that were previously being wasted studying such things as the rules of volleyball, the symbolism of books about talking bunnies, and the innards of fetal pigs are instead directed into more productive pursuits?
Reading is a prerequisite for pretty much everything else in life, and written text is all around us. There are plenty of opportunities and motivations for literacy outside of a classroom. As for the "overall average of education", such a metric presumes that the number of hours spent in school is the only worthwhile measure of a person's knowledge and skill.
School might not be fun, it might very well be like a prison, but that's too bad, because it's the most important thing the government can do for you. The state funded school system is the result of centuries of struggle for the right of all people to receive a fair and equal opportunity at the beginning of their lives. Providing all people the opportunity is the important part. Forcing all people to attend, not so much. No one ever struggled to have their freedom taken away.
School is forced onto students because given a chance, most students would choose NOT to bother and many of their parents won't force them. Given a chance, most people will also choose not to work in a coal mine, or drink urine, or watch Battlefield Earth. I eagerly await your proposal to mandate those activities for everyone, since apparently the fact that someone doesn't want to do something is enough justification to force them into doing it.
In essence, even if certain students cause problems. They still learn something, they're worth teaching and a poor learning environment is just the price we have to live with. They'll still learn something no matter where they are. Most of the important stuff I learned wasn't taught in school, and there are several schools based on the idea that if you put kids in an environment where learning is possible, and let them spend their time however they want, most of them will find something that interests them, and that's what they'll devote their time to.
And for those kids who do not attend? What happens to them? What do you do when they are adults and cannot support themselves? Not saying you are wrong, but I'm curious is to what the rest of your game plan is. I see no reason to treat them any differently from any other group of people who choose not to support themselves. What do you do when a factory worker is laid off and doesn't have a broad enough education to get a job in another field? Solve that problem and you'll have your answer.
I don't think it's as much of a problem as you make it out to be, though. Kids will learn something, no matter where they are and what they're doing; that's what kids do. There are several schools based on the idea that if you put kids together in a resource-filled environment where they can spend their time doing whatever they feel like, most of them will find something that interests them, and they'll end up learning a lot of valuable stuff even without classes, tests, and daily schedules. I went to a regular public school, but still, the skills that I use to support myself have very little to do with the classes I was required to take in school.
I can see where you're trying to go with this. It's important to realize while analyzing Watership Down may not be the most important thing to you, some people may love it. I'm sure they do, and I'm not saying they shouldn't have the opportunity to do so. But there's no need to force it on everyone else.
Reading a whole bunch of books, however, can't really hurt someone. It can hurt them in the same ways that forcing them to waste their time on anything else could hurt them: first, it takes time away that they could be spending on something more valuable. I knew since junior high that programming was my thing, and now I'm able to make a living as a developer, despite never having formally studied CS, thanks to all the learning I did on my own. Every hour I had to spend memorizing the nonsense words spouted by imaginary bunnies was one hour I couldn't spend furthering my career.
Second, I would argue that forcing someone to spend time at something they'd rather not be doing is inherently hurtful. You can't rob someone of their time without hurting them. It hurts to have your will subjugated to someone else.
When you're in college, you can go ahead and specialize, but grade school isn't the place for a kid to decide what subjects are "useful" or not. One might just as easily and arbitrarily say "when you're 40, you can go ahead and specialize, but your teens, twenties, and thirties aren't the time to decide what subjects are 'useful' or not".
I'd say we should respect someone's decision on this as soon as they're able to express it. They can always go back and learn something later if they decide it's useful after all, but if you force them to spend their time something that turns out to be useless, they can never get that time back.
Damn, so close. Maybe I would've remembered it correctly if I'd had some other use for that information, at some point in my life, that would've reinforced it in my mind.;)
In fact, in most U.S. states (and most of the western world), the age of consent is 16 or lower. No need to argue about whether a 17 year old is "underage enough"... in most places, she's not underage, period.
Indeed all the stupid things they make kids learn these days. I wish I hadn't been stuck having to learn about math, written and oral communication, or economics. Those things just never seem to come up in my day to day job as a software engineer. It's not like I ever have to convert word problems into equations that a computer can solve, or give a presentation to my bosses, or even write an e-mail. Funny how you forgot the subjects that really are useless for most people, like... local history. Decades later, I still remember that the Ohlone tribe inhabited the area around Santa Cruz, and I know there's a region of Washington called the Willamette Valley, but I'll be damned if I've ever found a use for that knowledge (other than writing this comment).
How about gym class? Yes, teaching kids to stay physically active is important. But do they really need to be tested on their knowledge of volleyball rules?
Or how about English class - not the writing part, but the literary analysis part. Think fast: what's the symbolism of the light in the fog from The Great Gatsby? Why does Rose breast-feed an old man at the end of The Grapes of Wrath? What did "fleef" mean in Watership Down? More importantly... who the hell cares?
Students do not *normally* come to school to learn anymore. Of course not! They come to school because the law says that's where they have to spend their weekdays. It's a wonder that any of them spend their time any more productively than prisoners do.
You get rid of the kids who cause trouble. Put them in a program to help them with their difficulties. Better yet, just stop forcing those kids to attend. It shouldn't come as a surprise that you'll have a better learning environment if the only students there are the ones who want to learn.
In fact, Marillion also did something very close to the model I've been pushing: their album Anoraknophobia was financed by their fans. Instead of making the music first (at a loss) and then hoping to collect enough money later to make up for it, they collected the money first.
Hillary and Barrack both voted for the PATRIOT Act and the war. So did Fred Thompson and Mit Romney. Those aren't the only candidates running. If you don't agree with the rest of Ron Paul's positions, perhaps you should look into the other Democratic candidates (since there are no anti-war GOP candidates other than Paul).
RK numbers in Excel. They're not quite how you described them, though. It's a 32-bit value that can hold a 30-bit floating point number or a 30-bit integer (the last 2 bits are for the type), and if a number can't be represented either way, Excel will save it as a 64-bit IEEE float.
That's an interesting way to put it, and I've never seen anyone saying it quite as open as this. You don't want a better phone; you just want one with more features. That's why the iPhone is not for you and will never be. I, however, will gladly trade some of my P990i's features for a bit more stability and usability. Well, I count being "better" as a feature in itself.;)
I just don't see how the iPhone actually is better. It's shinier, yes, but my SCH-U740 is stable and usable already. I suppose it could stand to take one less button press to find a contact, but that's what voice dialing is for. The music player is ugly and makes poor use of screen space, but I already have an iPod, and I'm not about to replace it with a phone that can only hold 1/3 of my music. Other than that, all the glitz in the iPhone's interface just seems like fixing what isn't broken.
No, my point is just that you can sell more phones by bringing them to the carriers people already use, instead of expecting them to switch carriers to use your phone.
Those people may have chosen their carrier based on some pricing plan that isn't available from AT&T, like 7:00 nights or the ability to call their friends and relatives on the same network for free. Or because they had customer service or billing issues with another carrier. Or because the carrier they chose gives them the best network reception at home or work. Or they may just not want to pay $175 to terminate their existing contract when they're already going to have to pay full price for the phone.
Seriously man, who should Apple give a crap about more? The 120million people still on the antiquated CDMA system that exists only in the US, and somewhat in Japan (which are quite different), or the rest of the world who are almost ALL on GSM? You seem to be misinformed; maybe I can help you out. CDMA was developed after GSM, and the fundamental idea behind it -- the air interface in which all parties broadcast simultaneously on the same frequencies -- was adopted in GSM's 3G system. It's also deployed in dozens of countries.
Your right though, I don't know you (great comeback since theres NO FUCKING WAY I know if you piss your bed still or not), but if your phone has everything you need, why are you bitching about the iPhone? Hey, thanks for asking that question. It really made me wonder why I'd do such a thing, so I looked back over my posts in this thread, and guess what I found? It turns out I wasn't bitching about the iPhone at all, I was just pointing out some facts about the US cellular market. What a surprise! Again, thanks for asking such an insightful question.
Your cheap lil contract phone your bankroll will allow is just what you need. Others? We are happy to spend more for something different that suits us better. Awesome, we have something in common! I'm willing to spend more for something that suits me better too. However, I already have a browser, video player, music player, camera, video recorder, GPS navigation, Bluetooth, voice dictation, QWERTY keyboard, removable/expandable memory (and battery), 3G tethering, etc. on my phone. In order for a phone to suit me better than the one I already have, it has to have more of the features I'm interested in, not fewer.
Till then, my swiss army knife phone works fine for me, just wish it was thinner (side effect of 3G radios size right now). Hmm, that's a shame. My 3G phone is only 8 mm thick when it's open (15 mm closed). I'd send you a link so you could get one for yourself, but you might have a hard time getting it to work wherever you are.
As it stands though it looks like the only way you'll have an iPhone is from the 2nd hand market. Apple will likely never bring it down to the bargain basement price you want outside of an inventory flush so they can sell the next gen. Let me help you out again. That "bargain basement price" is actually the standard price for phones around here. It's a quaint little custom we have: if we have to sign a 2-year contract in order to buy a phone, we usually expect to get a discount on the phone's price. Pretty crazy, huh? But that's America for you, backwards and antiquated! Anyway, just glad to be of assistance in cluing a fellow Slashdotter in on a bit of trivia.
Slashdot Mirror
The solution isn't to condemn direct democracy. It's to have a written constitution that makes certain issues off-limits, like the Bill of Rights, and make it more difficult to amend the constitution than to pass an average law. You can still put the voting power directly in the people's hands - just require 2/3 or 3/4 instead of a simple majority for extreme cases.
The way to stop blatant abuses like floggings or discrimination isn't to reduce the number of people who can vote on those issues; that only makes it easier to perpetuate the abuses. Instead, the solution is a constitution that places limits on what can be approved by a simple majority. You know, "Congress shall make no law..." and so on. You can still amend the constitution to get rid of those limits, but it requires a lot more than 51% of the votes.
If it's the same one I received, the number to call is 800-333-9956.
My conclusion is that some people don't want to learn anything, others do, and that distinction is independent of whether you force them to go to school or not. Take someone who doesn't want to learn, force him to attend school, and he'll just end up causing trouble and dropping out as soon as he can. Take someone who does want to learn, let him spend his days however he chooses (like a human being), and he'll learn from the library, from other people, from playing games, from working on his own projects, or somewhere else. Even with everything we try there are STILL people who don't know how to read sufficiently well. Making it optional in some reverse-psychology plan won't necessarily make everything better. [...] it's too idealistic to say that if we let people choose to learn, more would choose to do so than at the present time. Perhaps you misunderstood... it's not a reverse psychology plan. I'm not envisioning that letting kids stay home from school will somehow make them want to go to school even more. I'm saying (1) they don't need to learn everything in the school curriculum, (2) school isn't the only place to learn that stuff anyway, and (3) schools will be better places if the students who don't want to be there are allowed to leave. The primary goal is not to increase school attendance, but to respect the rights of young people and to improve schools for those who choose to attend. Just because they're being tried doesn't mean that they're working. From what I've heard, some have produced above average results, some below average and most pretty much on the line. The one thing they have in common is that they force people to come. Even if they produced nothing but average results, don't you think kids would be more willing to go to school if they knew that their "school day" would be whatever they decided to make of it?
You might want to draw the line at 18 or 21, but what happens when some geezer comes along and says a 30 year old is still a child, and no one should go to college until they're at least 55, because that's when people really start to become mature? Again, since you've decided to rest your claim on your personal beliefs about "maturity", you have no way to argue that your line is any better than his.
Reading is a prerequisite for pretty much everything else in life, and written text is all around us. There are plenty of opportunities and motivations for literacy outside of a classroom. As for the "overall average of education", such a metric presumes that the number of hours spent in school is the only worthwhile measure of a person's knowledge and skill. School might not be fun, it might very well be like a prison, but that's too bad, because it's the most important thing the government can do for you. The state funded school system is the result of centuries of struggle for the right of all people to receive a fair and equal opportunity at the beginning of their lives. Providing all people the opportunity is the important part. Forcing all people to attend, not so much. No one ever struggled to have their freedom taken away. School is forced onto students because given a chance, most students would choose NOT to bother and many of their parents won't force them. Given a chance, most people will also choose not to work in a coal mine, or drink urine, or watch Battlefield Earth. I eagerly await your proposal to mandate those activities for everyone, since apparently the fact that someone doesn't want to do something is enough justification to force them into doing it. In essence, even if certain students cause problems. They still learn something, they're worth teaching and a poor learning environment is just the price we have to live with. They'll still learn something no matter where they are. Most of the important stuff I learned wasn't taught in school, and there are several schools based on the idea that if you put kids in an environment where learning is possible, and let them spend their time however they want, most of them will find something that interests them, and that's what they'll devote their time to.
I don't think it's as much of a problem as you make it out to be, though. Kids will learn something, no matter where they are and what they're doing; that's what kids do. There are several schools based on the idea that if you put kids together in a resource-filled environment where they can spend their time doing whatever they feel like, most of them will find something that interests them, and they'll end up learning a lot of valuable stuff even without classes, tests, and daily schedules. I went to a regular public school, but still, the skills that I use to support myself have very little to do with the classes I was required to take in school.
Second, I would argue that forcing someone to spend time at something they'd rather not be doing is inherently hurtful. You can't rob someone of their time without hurting them. It hurts to have your will subjugated to someone else. When you're in college, you can go ahead and specialize, but grade school isn't the place for a kid to decide what subjects are "useful" or not. One might just as easily and arbitrarily say "when you're 40, you can go ahead and specialize, but your teens, twenties, and thirties aren't the time to decide what subjects are 'useful' or not".
I'd say we should respect someone's decision on this as soon as they're able to express it. They can always go back and learn something later if they decide it's useful after all, but if you force them to spend their time something that turns out to be useless, they can never get that time back.
Damn, so close. Maybe I would've remembered it correctly if I'd had some other use for that information, at some point in my life, that would've reinforced it in my mind. ;)
In fact, in most U.S. states (and most of the western world), the age of consent is 16 or lower. No need to argue about whether a 17 year old is "underage enough"... in most places, she's not underage, period.
How about gym class? Yes, teaching kids to stay physically active is important. But do they really need to be tested on their knowledge of volleyball rules?
Or how about English class - not the writing part, but the literary analysis part. Think fast: what's the symbolism of the light in the fog from The Great Gatsby? Why does Rose breast-feed an old man at the end of The Grapes of Wrath? What did "fleef" mean in Watership Down? More importantly... who the hell cares?
That's a string bet - not allowed. Take back your raise; the bet stands at three buffers.
In fact, Marillion also did something very close to the model I've been pushing: their album Anoraknophobia was financed by their fans. Instead of making the music first (at a loss) and then hoping to collect enough money later to make up for it, they collected the money first.
EVDO is already available across the US from Sprint and Verizon, with speeds comparable to HSDPA.
RK numbers in Excel. They're not quite how you described them, though. It's a 32-bit value that can hold a 30-bit floating point number or a 30-bit integer (the last 2 bits are for the type), and if a number can't be represented either way, Excel will save it as a 64-bit IEEE float.
I just don't see how the iPhone actually is better. It's shinier, yes, but my SCH-U740 is stable and usable already. I suppose it could stand to take one less button press to find a contact, but that's what voice dialing is for. The music player is ugly and makes poor use of screen space, but I already have an iPod, and I'm not about to replace it with a phone that can only hold 1/3 of my music. Other than that, all the glitz in the iPhone's interface just seems like fixing what isn't broken.
No, my point is just that you can sell more phones by bringing them to the carriers people already use, instead of expecting them to switch carriers to use your phone.
Those people may have chosen their carrier based on some pricing plan that isn't available from AT&T, like 7:00 nights or the ability to call their friends and relatives on the same network for free. Or because they had customer service or billing issues with another carrier. Or because the carrier they chose gives them the best network reception at home or work. Or they may just not want to pay $175 to terminate their existing contract when they're already going to have to pay full price for the phone.