Only workaround would be to require everyone to have an IQ of 100 or above to be permitted to procreate. But that's not politically correct.
It would also not help. Most mental deficiencies are caused by environmental factors, not heredity. Problems in childbirth and drug (especially alcohol) use are by far the most common causes of mental retardation.
As to the untestable hypothesis that we're getting dumber, the theorist (I almost said "researcher", duh!) has missed a few clues. The main strength of our species isn't that we're all really smart, it's that one really smart guy comes along once in a while and tames fire, invents the spear, invents pottery, invents calculus, etc, and the rest of us can learn from that person.
There's no reason to think that random chance, barring evolutionary pressures, wouldn't even things out. I read that humans almost became extinct at one time (I don't remember how long ago it was) but that is the sort of evolutionary pressure that results in huge shifts in a species' change.
I seriously doubt that Aristotle could have comprehended calculus or designed a Mars rover.
That said, people sure seem stupider than they were when I was young -- but that's not nearly a long enough time for evolutionary pressures. And I would posit that people are getting smarter, not dumber, because a thousand years ago there were far more things that would hinder a child's developing brain, from lead paint that they didn't know made kids stupid, to drinking mothers, who didn't know was retarding their fetus' abilities, to falling off of horses and things like that. It's far easier to protect young brains today than just fifty years ago, and things have gotten better over the centuries as we learn.
If it isn't, maybe it is wholly legitimate for people to expect that Microsoft keep patching it for as long as people use it
Yes. When you ship a defective prioduct (and bugs ARE defects), you should rectify that defect. Anything less is IMO stealing from your customers. If a design flaw is found in a 1995 ford that causes fuel to leak, they'll fix it at no cost to the owner and considerable cost to Ford. Why should software makers not be held to the same standards as those who manufacture physical things?
I do feel especially bad for Asian's and Whites... conjurers ideas that Latino's and blacks either can't go as high... As a student who went through school doing the least amount I could while still being able to graduate
It's a wonder you ever did graduate. Your writing "abilities" lends me to believe that you didn't even graduate high school, let alone college.
They way I see it, MS will continue down this point-click-click-click-click paradigm, forever making things more difficult and frustrating to do. They should be trying to SIMPLIFY their interface and experience, not 'Techify' it with junk that only makes the user work harder to do the same work. It's a wonder they don't get that.
It's not that they don't get it, it's that they don't have to get it. Almost every non-Apple sold has Windows preinstalled; they get paid even if the end user wipes the drive and installs a different OS. They don't care what you think -- they don't have to. If you buy a computer they get your money.
Lots of computer users have a rather negative experience with Windows. At work they have locked down low power systems. At home they have cheap systems loaded to the gills with crapware.
That's not the problem I have with Windows. My problems with Windows is the need to reboot every time you install or update an application (they are getting better at this), inability to have a default password for a single-user machine that the PC itself will enter on boot, the fact that when you do reboot you have to reopen all of your apps and docs, and its lack of features that other OSes like BSD and Linux have. I also dislike the fact that they are incompatible with everyone else, and seem to do so on purpose. My Linux box networks with my XP box with no problem, but it's flaky interfacing with the W7 box, which tells me (incorrectly) that it needs W7 pro on the network to network. I also dislike the fact that vulns go unpatched for far too long. Hell, this is just the start of my list of "why I don' like Windows."
The XP box would be running Linux, but I need EAC and it's Windows only. The notebook is still running W7 out of my own laziness.
I would rather say, though, that IV was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC.... given that I was 10 years old
I was about 25 and it was still fantastic. I see all these comments from folks your age who say "EP 1-3 ruined my childhood memories," but as someone who saw all of them as an adult, EP VI was the very worst, far worse than EPs 1-3. That one just looked cheap, even when it was new. Especially the Ewok costumes; film makers did better back in the '30s.
I have Windows 8. As a semi-power-user, the learning curve took me all of a day.
I can't afford to waste a day relearning an interface that has no advantages over the old interface. Sure, the new interface has advantages to Microsoft, but not its users. At least, I haven't read or heard of anything in the new OS that would require it to be completely changed.
It took all of five minutes to migrate from XP to Mandrake ten years ago, and the underlying processes are completely different than Windows.
The problem with religious charity, aka tithing, is that it is not truly charitable. It is about giving money to something that benefits the giver whereas true charity is altruistic with no expectation of benefit to the giver.
That may be true of religions that demand tithes, such as Mormonism, but is not true of most Christian religions. Most pastors encourage tithing but don't require it. And at least at my church, most of what is tithed goes to the poor. And a Christian is not only encouraged to tithe, but to "give alms"; that is, drop a few bucks in the homeless guy's jar and not let anyone know you did so. From your link:
1 : benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity 2 a : generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering; also : aid given to those in need b : an institution engaged in relief of the poor c : public provision for the relief of the needy 3 a : a gift for public benevolent purposes b : an institution (as a hospital) founded by such a gift 4 : lenient judgment of others
Religious giving covers all four definitions except #3.
One such example is the way the Knights of Columbus -- a religious charity affiliated with the catholic church -- spent $1.9M between 2008 and 2009 to fight same-sex marriage laws in Washington State.
Agreed, that's not charity. But how much of what is given to the Catholic church (one of my least favorite churches) goes to stuff like this compared to feeding Kenyans?
Same thing with the way Mormons are expected to pay a 10% tithe to the Mormon Church.
Not expected; Mormons are required, unlike most Christian faiths. Calling that "charity"s like calling income taxes "charity." BTW, I like that church even less than the Catholic church.
IMO, there should be no deductions for charity; a tax dodge isn't charity.
But back to the conservative vs liberal, don't paint conservatives as Christians and liberals as Godless heathens. The fact is, Christ wasn't only a liberal but a radical liberal. Caiaphas and the other pharisees were conservatives, who executed him for his radical talk of feeding the poor, housing the homeless, giving free medical treatment to the sick, paying your taxes without bitching about them, speaking out against the rich and powerful.
Anyone who considers himself a conservative Christian has some serious mental wars with himself, if he's ever actually read his bible.
To anyone calling himself a Christian who says "God hates fags", you're wrong. God loves gays, but he hates gays' sins as much as he hates yours or mine, and the gay-basing Christian's sins may be worse; homosexual acts weren't on Moses' tablets, but adultery and covetness are. Oh yeah, Christ's main message was forgiveness and tolerance and nonjudgementalism.
You could hand him cash - they still have that, they just don't have that out-dated form of transferring money. I can't see the benefit of cheques.
Checks make receipts unnecessary. With cash he'll have to write a reciept. The check will be proof of payment to a judge, a receipt maybe or maybe not.
Legislators were persuaded of the need; passed the laws, and then the laws did not have the intended effect of fewer deaths/injuries due to vehicle accidents.
But dumb people do dumb things and not much has changed overall.
people haven't changed, but cars sure have. Since I started driving they got rid of metal dashes, added seat belts, air bags, antilock brakes, and replaced the old drum brakes with the far more effective disk brakes.
So the idiot driver is still going to wreck her car, but it will be harder to do and she's more likely to survive the crash.
In the case of some enzymes, they are called 'kinetically perfect', meaning that they are so fast the only way we have of explaining the reaction speed is that every time the molecule they work on collides with the enzyme, the reaction immediately happens. Mind-blowingly, some enzymes are even faster than this
So... thiotimoline is an enzyme? Biochemist Dr. Asimov was wrong about its composition?
If you prohibit higher gas prices, you guarantee shortages.
If you don't prohibit price gouging you still gurantee shortages... among all but the rich. What worked during WWII, the two embargos in the '70s, and the current shortage in New Jersey is rationing. Price controls to make sure it's affordable, rationing to ensure it's available.
Its not that simple. The unwashed masses does not become educated just because they got a education. The unwashed masses does not want a revolution either
Oh, the hilarious irony! More? "Is you a unwashed mass, del_diablo?"
(Played for humor only, I suspect English isn't your native language, although you do a lot better than many native speakers at slashdot! Mi Espanol no es muy bueno...)
Slashdot Mirror
Only workaround would be to require everyone to have an IQ of 100 or above to be permitted to procreate. But that's not politically correct.
It would also not help. Most mental deficiencies are caused by environmental factors, not heredity. Problems in childbirth and drug (especially alcohol) use are by far the most common causes of mental retardation.
As to the untestable hypothesis that we're getting dumber, the theorist (I almost said "researcher", duh!) has missed a few clues. The main strength of our species isn't that we're all really smart, it's that one really smart guy comes along once in a while and tames fire, invents the spear, invents pottery, invents calculus, etc, and the rest of us can learn from that person.
There's no reason to think that random chance, barring evolutionary pressures, wouldn't even things out. I read that humans almost became extinct at one time (I don't remember how long ago it was) but that is the sort of evolutionary pressure that results in huge shifts in a species' change.
I seriously doubt that Aristotle could have comprehended calculus or designed a Mars rover.
That said, people sure seem stupider than they were when I was young -- but that's not nearly a long enough time for evolutionary pressures. And I would posit that people are getting smarter, not dumber, because a thousand years ago there were far more things that would hinder a child's developing brain, from lead paint that they didn't know made kids stupid, to drinking mothers, who didn't know was retarding their fetus' abilities, to falling off of horses and things like that. It's far easier to protect young brains today than just fifty years ago, and things have gotten better over the centuries as we learn.
He probably has a mental picture of a lion at the end of a rope. He just misspelled "lion."
If it isn't, maybe it is wholly legitimate for people to expect that Microsoft keep patching it for as long as people use it
Yes. When you ship a defective prioduct (and bugs ARE defects), you should rectify that defect. Anything less is IMO stealing from your customers. If a design flaw is found in a 1995 ford that causes fuel to leak, they'll fix it at no cost to the owner and considerable cost to Ford. Why should software makers not be held to the same standards as those who manufacture physical things?
Give the guy a "brake," he's only five years old!
So, shills are trolls now, or trolls are shills?
When it comes to moderation, yes, since there is no "shill" mod.
I do feel especially bad for Asian's and Whites... conjurers ideas that Latino's and blacks either can't go as high... As a student who went through school doing the least amount I could while still being able to graduate
It's a wonder you ever did graduate. Your writing "abilities" lends me to believe that you didn't even graduate high school, let alone college.
They way I see it, MS will continue down this point-click-click-click-click paradigm, forever making things more difficult and frustrating to do. They should be trying to SIMPLIFY their interface and experience, not 'Techify' it with junk that only makes the user work harder to do the same work. It's a wonder they don't get that.
It's not that they don't get it, it's that they don't have to get it. Almost every non-Apple sold has Windows preinstalled; they get paid even if the end user wipes the drive and installs a different OS. They don't care what you think -- they don't have to. If you buy a computer they get your money.
Lots of computer users have a rather negative experience with Windows. At work they have locked down low power systems. At home they have cheap systems loaded to the gills with crapware.
That's not the problem I have with Windows. My problems with Windows is the need to reboot every time you install or update an application (they are getting better at this), inability to have a default password for a single-user machine that the PC itself will enter on boot, the fact that when you do reboot you have to reopen all of your apps and docs, and its lack of features that other OSes like BSD and Linux have. I also dislike the fact that they are incompatible with everyone else, and seem to do so on purpose. My Linux box networks with my XP box with no problem, but it's flaky interfacing with the W7 box, which tells me (incorrectly) that it needs W7 pro on the network to network. I also dislike the fact that vulns go unpatched for far too long. Hell, this is just the start of my list of "why I don' like Windows."
The XP box would be running Linux, but I need EAC and it's Windows only. The notebook is still running W7 out of my own laziness.
I would rather say, though, that IV was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC.... given that I was 10 years old
I was about 25 and it was still fantastic. I see all these comments from folks your age who say "EP 1-3 ruined my childhood memories," but as someone who saw all of them as an adult, EP VI was the very worst, far worse than EPs 1-3. That one just looked cheap, even when it was new. Especially the Ewok costumes; film makers did better back in the '30s.
I have Windows 8. As a semi-power-user, the learning curve took me all of a day.
I can't afford to waste a day relearning an interface that has no advantages over the old interface. Sure, the new interface has advantages to Microsoft, but not its users. At least, I haven't read or heard of anything in the new OS that would require it to be completely changed.
It took all of five minutes to migrate from XP to Mandrake ten years ago, and the underlying processes are completely different than Windows.
But it's an acceptable operating system
Not to me it isn't.
ROTJ was going well until the Ewoks came on screen
Everyone bitches about EP 1-3 (esp.2), but in my mind, EP VI was the very worst Star Wars movie made.
That said, I liked all six. Somehow, I don't think I'll like VII.
Sounds like the rest of the world is finally catching up to the Linux desktop!
Is that a troll or a joke? Sometimes it's hard to tell.
I do my own taxes and have never taken that deduction.
The black market was always there.
The desktop market isn't a "tiny piece" of anything, it's bigger than most markets.
The problem with religious charity, aka tithing, is that it is not truly charitable. It is about giving money to something that benefits the giver whereas true charity is altruistic with no expectation of benefit to the giver.
That may be true of religions that demand tithes, such as Mormonism, but is not true of most Christian religions. Most pastors encourage tithing but don't require it. And at least at my church, most of what is tithed goes to the poor. And a Christian is not only encouraged to tithe, but to "give alms"; that is, drop a few bucks in the homeless guy's jar and not let anyone know you did so. From your link:
Religious giving covers all four definitions except #3.
One such example is the way the Knights of Columbus -- a religious charity affiliated with the catholic church -- spent $1.9M between 2008 and 2009 to fight same-sex marriage laws in Washington State.
Agreed, that's not charity. But how much of what is given to the Catholic church (one of my least favorite churches) goes to stuff like this compared to feeding Kenyans?
Same thing with the way Mormons are expected to pay a 10% tithe to the Mormon Church.
Not expected; Mormons are required, unlike most Christian faiths. Calling that "charity"s like calling income taxes "charity." BTW, I like that church even less than the Catholic church.
IMO, there should be no deductions for charity; a tax dodge isn't charity.
But back to the conservative vs liberal, don't paint conservatives as Christians and liberals as Godless heathens. The fact is, Christ wasn't only a liberal but a radical liberal. Caiaphas and the other pharisees were conservatives, who executed him for his radical talk of feeding the poor, housing the homeless, giving free medical treatment to the sick, paying your taxes without bitching about them, speaking out against the rich and powerful.
Anyone who considers himself a conservative Christian has some serious mental wars with himself, if he's ever actually read his bible.
To anyone calling himself a Christian who says "God hates fags", you're wrong. God loves gays, but he hates gays' sins as much as he hates yours or mine, and the gay-basing Christian's sins may be worse; homosexual acts weren't on Moses' tablets, but adultery and covetness are. Oh yeah, Christ's main message was forgiveness and tolerance and nonjudgementalism.
People should read more.
They can still bounce, or I could call up the bank and ask them to cancel my chequebook, and still write them out. Sure, it's fraudulent
And you will go to jail for it, guranteed (at least in my state).
You could hand him cash - they still have that, they just don't have that out-dated form of transferring money. I can't see the benefit of cheques.
Checks make receipts unnecessary. With cash he'll have to write a reciept. The check will be proof of payment to a judge, a receipt maybe or maybe not.
Legislators were persuaded of the need; passed the laws, and then the laws did not have the intended effect of fewer deaths/injuries due to vehicle accidents.
Incorrect.
You nevah heard o' the A-Team, foo? Where Murdoch, foo? I sent him to find a big woosh fo' you!
But dumb people do dumb things and not much has changed overall.
people haven't changed, but cars sure have. Since I started driving they got rid of metal dashes, added seat belts, air bags, antilock brakes, and replaced the old drum brakes with the far more effective disk brakes.
So the idiot driver is still going to wreck her car, but it will be harder to do and she's more likely to survive the crash.
With Linux you're guranteed that underhanded shit like this doesn't happen.
As to the topic at hand, Why would a mouse need to connect to the internet? Why, to buy cheese from Amazon, of course.
In the case of some enzymes, they are called 'kinetically perfect', meaning that they are so fast the only way we have of explaining the reaction speed is that every time the molecule they work on collides with the enzyme, the reaction immediately happens. Mind-blowingly, some enzymes are even faster than this
So... thiotimoline is an enzyme? Biochemist Dr. Asimov was wrong about its composition?
If you prohibit higher gas prices, you guarantee shortages.
If you don't prohibit price gouging you still gurantee shortages... among all but the rich. What worked during WWII, the two embargos in the '70s, and the current shortage in New Jersey is rationing. Price controls to make sure it's affordable, rationing to ensure it's available.
During an emergency only, of course.
Its not that simple. The unwashed masses does not become educated just because they got a education. The unwashed masses does not want a revolution either
Oh, the hilarious irony! More? "Is you a unwashed mass, del_diablo?"
(Played for humor only, I suspect English isn't your native language, although you do a lot better than many native speakers at slashdot! Mi Espanol no es muy bueno...)