Obviously the AC GP is a mammon worshiper, one of those poor fools who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. One of those poor fools who ask me "you're retiring? But what are you going to do??" Well, duh, any damned thing I want! Some people, like the poor fool you responded to, live to work. I work to live.
And as I've been writing in my spare time which I'll have lots more of, I'm greatly offended by the GP's post. What's the point of my wasting time writing a novel if nobody will waste their time reading it?
Besides, I'm guessing that the above AC was slacking off at work "wasting time" posting on slashdot. Lots of hypocrites who don't even realize that they are.
Off-earth colonies, whether lunar or Martian, would help the evolution of humans better suited for the stress of space.
You've been reading Nobots, haven't you? You're missing a few things, though. One is the timeframes it takes for a species like ours to evolve. And to evolve into a new ecosystem, you have to have some of the old ecosystem left; that's why the dinosaurs disappeared after being here for millions of years; the ecosystem changed too rapidly. AFAIK the latest useful evolution of the human body was lactose tolerance, which appeared thousands of years ago, and still there are people who can't tolerate lactose. Rather than evolution, the "evolution" will have to be like roundup-ready corn "evolved" -- artificially.
Yet still, you're not going to breed a human who can withstand Mars' low air pressure and radiation.
OK, there are three candidates on your ballot, all three are millionaires. How am I, a voter, possibly going to vote out the 1%? You have to either be very rich, or know someone very rich to even run for office. That's why only half of eligible voters don't vote, there's nobody worth voting for because the ballot has no candidates who would represent YOU.
I long for the days when technology was driven by real needs, and not just by pointless hipster desires. Earlier advances brought us some real gains. I remember when the PC first came out. They allowed for a lot of tedious work to be done much more efficiently. They allowed us to do marvelous things that we couldn't do before. That type of practical technology is on its way out these days. Now all we get are hipster-driven shitfests.
Whoever said "youth is wasted on the young" was absolutely right. Those days are still here, kid! If you had been alive in the 1970s you would have said the same thing about Pong and Space Invaders, while Wozniac and others were developing PCs. Some incredibly useful things that have come along in the last two decades: cell phones, digital HD flat screen TVs, feature phones (more useful than cells), CrystaLens eye implants, cochlear ear implants, hand transplants, tablets (believe it or not, these are used in industry), cars that park themselves... hell, kid, what the fuck do you want, a new miracle every damned week?
The proper question would be "what chemicals mixed in what quantities under what conditions will produce a brain?" The answer is, we just don't know that, but we do know that it works nothing like a computer, abacus, or slide rule.
My point - deliberately simplistically made - is that a brain is just a physical object acting subject to the laws of physics
My point is that they're "constructed" completely differently. Boats and airplanes are both subject to the same laws of physics, but planes don't float and boats don't fly. Before you can build a brain you'll have to understand how it works, and we simply have no clue how the brain works or even what thought actually is. But it's certain that the brain works nothing like a computer.
This, I always thought, was always rather a silly and pithy quote from Jesus. As Christian theology makes clear, you will be judged regardless of if you do or do not judge.
Christian theology doesn't teach that you are judged for your sins. It teaches that you're judged on your good works, your sins have already been paid for in blood. The more good you do on Earth, the more your reward will be in heaven. "And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all: For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had."
This is the real meaning of the parable of the talents. Just going to church doesn't cut it. If that's all you do for God you've buried your talent, while the guy feeding the poor in Africa has the ten talents.
That people feel they are entitled to steal someone else's work and not compensate that person (or group)?
Steal? Sorry, you just outed yourself as an MPAA shill or a moron (or as the moderation says, a troll). If you're raped, do you scream murder? Let me educate you on the difference between copyright infringement and stealing.
Copyright infringement: you upload an MPAA movie tracker to a tracker service. Note that downloading it is neither illegal nor immoral. Upload that movie and if you're caught, it will cost you thousands of dollars. Nobody has lost anything; the copyright holder still has his copyright. Nothing was lost. And in fact, if it's an indie title without shitloads of marketing, piracy can MAKE money for the artists.
Stealing: You shoplift a DVD from WalMart. WalMart is out the cost of that DVD you stole. If you're caught, it's a misdemeanor and a few hundred dollar fine.
BTW, note my sig. I encourage you to pirate my book. It's free marketing, nobody's going to buy a book they've never heard of by an author they've never read.
We would also take apart old/broken TV sets that were awaiting disposal, and other electronics.
You were lucky you survived. Those old TVs had huge amounts of energy stored in those big can capacitors; a CRT TV doesn't have to be plugged in to kill you. All it takes is touching it in the wrong place.
I have tried, there is no way to actually talk to a real person, or to get anything else but one of a few algorithmic responses.
You know, when you troll you really should log off first, your lame sig isn't going to prevent your trolls from being downmodded. I've had to return exactly one item; a laptop battery that didn't fit my laptop. No problem contacting them, no problem returning it, no need to contact my CC company because Amazon did it themselves.
I've bought books and DVDs from them, not once has anything been damaged.
If you'd left out the part about "no way to contact them" I'd have told you to complain to the company that shipped the item (the ones I've gotten were shipped by UPS). But that "no way to contact them" is a dead giveaway that you've never bought anything from Amazon, much less had to return anything.
The risk angle is that only a fool takes big foolish risks. If you have a hundred thousand and start a restaurant, and that hundred grand is all you have, you're an idiot, not brave. Only one in ten new businesses succeed.
Now, if a restaurant cost a hundred grand and you have three hundred grand, there's no real risk. So what if you lose that hundred grand, you still have twice that and it's far more than most people have.
You have only a hundred grand you don't blow it starting a business, you buy varied stocks and bonds. Short of a 1929, a 2007, or a fraudster there's no risk at all.
As to your country friend, all the people I know who live in the country are well off.
It all adds up, somehow, to something we call consciousness, along with the attendant emotions. Why can't a solely electronic system do the same?
For the same reason you can't make a radio out of a horse. Radios are electronic, not chemical. Brains are chemical, not electronic. Your computer is nothing more than an extremely huge abacus, using electrons as beads. Now tell me, how many beads do you need to add to your abacus before it becomes self-aware?
The issue stems from the 1950s when the media started calling big mainframe computers (with less processing power than a musical Hallmark card) "electronic brains". What with all the sci-fi AI in books, movies, and TV, it's no wonder you kids are confused. Computers work nothing like brains, and brains work nothing like computers.
Look, if it's not science, then it shouldn't be taught in a science class. It's that simple.
Exactly. It should be taught in philosophy class, along with the Bhuddist and other religious "theories" (The Bhuddists in Thailand have a similar to Abrahamic but interestingly different story).
By the way, atheists don't care what other people believe as long as they keep it to themselves.
I'm a Christian, and don't care what others believe whether or not they keep it to themselves. Many Christians aren't like that. However, your statement "atheists don't care what other people believe as long as they keep it to themselves" is as patently incorrect as "Christians don't care what others believe." All you have to do is look at almost any slashdot thread, you'll see offtopic Christianity and Religion in general bashing. Some atheists believe religion itself is evil and want it destroyed completely.
"Her" falls for one of the classic AI misconceptions. That intelligence is equal to kindness, empathy and other human traits. These traits are a result of hormones acting on the brain or other inherited traits.
Kindness, empathy, thought itself is a chemical reaction, nothing more.
Unless programmed into the computer it wouldn't feel curiosity, anger, happiness etc.
You can't program emotions into a computer. You can, however, program it to mimic emotion, as well as thought. But just because it quacks like a duck doesn't make it a duck, ask any dead duck shot by a hunter with a duck call.
J. Kirk Wiebe is retired from the National Security Agency, where he worked for more than 32 years. He received the NSA's second highest award, the Meritorious Civilian Service Award; the Director of CIA's Meritorious Unit Award; and a Letter of Commendation from the secretary of the Air Force, among other awards. He was an NSA whistleblower on matters of privacy involving massive electronic surveillance.
The linked article that Weibe wrote answers your question in depressing detail.
Do you really expect anyone to take anything else you say seriously when you start out with something as transparently wrong as that?
His point was, I think, that the CEO doesn't work any harder than you do, and most likely you work a hell of a lot harder than him. Also, he's probably American, and we have no safety net like civilized countries do.
How is it that we have millions of prosperous people in this country, including many who are the children of first-generation immigrants?
Like my uncle? My grandparents weren't immigrants, but they were dirt poor. So how did my uncle get rich? The same way as everyone else -- dumb luck. He was lucky enough to be born intelligent, creative, and with good eye-hand coordination. Then a stroke of bad luck was actually good luck, his ship was torpedoed in WWII and he met his future partner, a born salesman, who had lost his leg in the war. Dan was talking to him in the hospital, saw the leg the Army had given him, and said "I can make a better leg than this." When he got out of the hospital, he did. His partner would walk up to a wounded soldier, who would say "what the hell would you know about it?" and Dan's partner just rolled up his pants leg. Instant sale, because you'd never guess the guy's leg was gone.
Had he not been fortunate enough to be born with good genes, and then to meet a one-legged salesman, he would never have gotten rich.
The other way is like his nephew, my cousin, who "earned" his wealth rather unethically.
If your family is rich and their friends are all rich, it's incredibly unlikely that you won't remain rich. If you're poor and your family is poor and you get a poor education, you should buy lottery tickets because luck is the only way a poor man gets rich. Or better yet, resign yourself to the fact that you'll never be rich and just try to stay out of jail.
I agree that this mentality is wrong, but credit where credit is due - these guys tend to be willing to take significant risks that most of us shirk away from.
Risks, my ass. I have no sympathy for losing gamblers. Yeah, the developer risks losing some money (and he'd be the world's biggest fool if he gambled everything) building that high rise, the people who are working for him risk their LIVES. Look at the top ten most dangerous occupations, "wall street gambler" and "quiki mart owner" aren't on the list. The qwiki mart owner isn't the one who a crackhead sticks a gun in their face in a robbery. Risk? Shit, son, look at the real world. The rich man takes no risks that I would call "risks".
If you inherit ten million dollars and invest half of it, how is that in any way a risk? It's impossible to turn ten bucks into twenty, but inevitable to turn ten million into twenty million.
Not just in things that are sweetened, but literally everything. I won't buy Green Giant vegetables because they taste simply terrible, highly dosed with that damned sweetener. Damn it, vegetables aren't supposed to be sweet! Why should brocolli, cheese, and macaroni taste like candy??
But it isn't just HFCS, it's portions. When I was ten there were no Big Macs or Quarter Pounders, let alone the half and three quarter pound burgers you see a lot of places. The amount of food on a restaurant plate has at least doubled if not tripled in the last 50 years. Take soft drinks at again, McDonalds. Small, medium, large. Just like now, right? Nope. A small was eight ounces, medium was twelve, large sixteen. Now the sixteen ounce is the "small" size.
And real restaurants are just as bad or even worse than McDonalds. I always wind up taking half the meal home, because they serve one person enough food for two. Speaking of, protip: if you visit Springfield, do NOT order a horseshoe unless you're grossly obese and used to huge quantities of food. No matter what establishment, get a ponyshoe. It's enough for two people, a horseshoe would feed an entire African village. THAT's why we're fat, we burn fewer calories than we consume.
Also, food was more expensive back then, its price hasn't risen nearly as much as other things.
When I see the phrase "good enough for laymen" on slashdot, I know that/. has gone a LONG way downhill.
We're all laymen, except for the geologists here. You have a PhD in high energy physics? Still a layman, you don't know any more about geology than I do.
That said, the educational attainments of slashdotters seems to have slid greatly considering the number of grocer's apostrophes and homophone idiocy I see here lately so I do agree with your point. I attribute it to the fact that when slashdot was new, almost everybody on the internet was a nerd.
The clever part is that it automatically recovered
It wasn't just a Gmail problem, or there was a huge coincidence. I tried to look something up on Google on my phone Friday around then, got a 404 and the phone rebooted itself (Android).
Funny how businesses that attract competent talent don't require union protections to keep their employees around.
The head of a then non-union airline said in the early 1980s "any company that gets a union deserves one." Treat your workers fairly and they will have no need for a union. Fuck them over and watch them organize.
Second of all, all you parents in the room, all this bitching about poor teachers is a pretty recent thing,
Bullshit, son. People were bitching about their kids' teachers when I was a kid, and I started school in 1958. My third grade teacher was fired for her incompetence; the union didn't help because the other teachers wanted her out, too.
and it coincides with the emergence of a few things - The first is that you are no longer doing your jobs as fucking parents, letting your kids do whatever the fuck they want
There have always been bad parents. There always will be bad parents. Your bad parenting should not affect my kid's education.
without discipline and demanding that they be allowed to dress like whores and use cell phones in class for "safety" reasons
How is "dressing like whores" or carrying a phone causing kids to get bad educations?
in case one of your otherwise right-thinking kids you addled up with psychotropic drugs because of a bullshit "ADD" diagnosis
You're accusing an awful lot of medical doctors of malpractice. Ritalin requires a doctor's prescription.
when, again, you decided real parenting was too hard and thought your kid was crazy for wanting to play outside and not stuck to the fucking X-Box for 12 hours a day.
My daughter lives in Cincinnati and works in a GameStop in Kentucky. Her description of he customers pretty much fits the stereotype, meth heads selling used (probably stolen) games, women in rags bring children in rags in and buying a brand new Playstation and the expensive games that go with them...
Learning languages involves hours of practise with memorising ability being paramount; a skill difficult for many people.
I've always been terrible at memorization but I managed to learn Thai and Spanish and several computer languages. Names, dates, phone numbers... I'm glad they invented smartphones so I no longer have to remember numbers.
I never saw the utility of Esperanto, since nobody speaks it.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously the AC GP is a mammon worshiper, one of those poor fools who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. One of those poor fools who ask me "you're retiring? But what are you going to do??" Well, duh, any damned thing I want! Some people, like the poor fool you responded to, live to work. I work to live.
And as I've been writing in my spare time which I'll have lots more of, I'm greatly offended by the GP's post. What's the point of my wasting time writing a novel if nobody will waste their time reading it?
Besides, I'm guessing that the above AC was slacking off at work "wasting time" posting on slashdot. Lots of hypocrites who don't even realize that they are.
Off-earth colonies, whether lunar or Martian, would help the evolution of humans better suited for the stress of space.
You've been reading Nobots, haven't you? You're missing a few things, though. One is the timeframes it takes for a species like ours to evolve. And to evolve into a new ecosystem, you have to have some of the old ecosystem left; that's why the dinosaurs disappeared after being here for millions of years; the ecosystem changed too rapidly. AFAIK the latest useful evolution of the human body was lactose tolerance, which appeared thousands of years ago, and still there are people who can't tolerate lactose. Rather than evolution, the "evolution" will have to be like roundup-ready corn "evolved" -- artificially.
Yet still, you're not going to breed a human who can withstand Mars' low air pressure and radiation.
OK, there are three candidates on your ballot, all three are millionaires. How am I, a voter, possibly going to vote out the 1%? You have to either be very rich, or know someone very rich to even run for office. That's why only half of eligible voters don't vote, there's nobody worth voting for because the ballot has no candidates who would represent YOU.
I wish I were still young and naive.
I long for the days when technology was driven by real needs, and not just by pointless hipster desires. Earlier advances brought us some real gains. I remember when the PC first came out. They allowed for a lot of tedious work to be done much more efficiently. They allowed us to do marvelous things that we couldn't do before. That type of practical technology is on its way out these days. Now all we get are hipster-driven shitfests.
Whoever said "youth is wasted on the young" was absolutely right. Those days are still here, kid! If you had been alive in the 1970s you would have said the same thing about Pong and Space Invaders, while Wozniac and others were developing PCs. Some incredibly useful things that have come along in the last two decades: cell phones, digital HD flat screen TVs, feature phones (more useful than cells), CrystaLens eye implants, cochlear ear implants, hand transplants, tablets (believe it or not, these are used in industry), cars that park themselves... hell, kid, what the fuck do you want, a new miracle every damned week?
Off your lawn, my ass...
The proper question would be "what chemicals mixed in what quantities under what conditions will produce a brain?" The answer is, we just don't know that, but we do know that it works nothing like a computer, abacus, or slide rule.
My point - deliberately simplistically made - is that a brain is just a physical object acting subject to the laws of physics
My point is that they're "constructed" completely differently. Boats and airplanes are both subject to the same laws of physics, but planes don't float and boats don't fly. Before you can build a brain you'll have to understand how it works, and we simply have no clue how the brain works or even what thought actually is. But it's certain that the brain works nothing like a computer.
This, I always thought, was always rather a silly and pithy quote from Jesus. As Christian theology makes clear, you will be judged regardless of if you do or do not judge.
Christian theology doesn't teach that you are judged for your sins. It teaches that you're judged on your good works, your sins have already been paid for in blood. The more good you do on Earth, the more your reward will be in heaven. "And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all:
For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had."
This is the real meaning of the parable of the talents. Just going to church doesn't cut it. If that's all you do for God you've buried your talent, while the guy feeding the poor in Africa has the ten talents.
That people feel they are entitled to steal someone else's work and not compensate that person (or group)?
Steal? Sorry, you just outed yourself as an MPAA shill or a moron (or as the moderation says, a troll). If you're raped, do you scream murder? Let me educate you on the difference between copyright infringement and stealing.
Copyright infringement: you upload an MPAA movie tracker to a tracker service. Note that downloading it is neither illegal nor immoral. Upload that movie and if you're caught, it will cost you thousands of dollars. Nobody has lost anything; the copyright holder still has his copyright. Nothing was lost. And in fact, if it's an indie title without shitloads of marketing, piracy can MAKE money for the artists.
Stealing: You shoplift a DVD from WalMart. WalMart is out the cost of that DVD you stole. If you're caught, it's a misdemeanor and a few hundred dollar fine.
BTW, note my sig. I encourage you to pirate my book. It's free marketing, nobody's going to buy a book they've never heard of by an author they've never read.
We would also take apart old/broken TV sets that were awaiting disposal, and other electronics.
You were lucky you survived. Those old TVs had huge amounts of energy stored in those big can capacitors; a CRT TV doesn't have to be plugged in to kill you. All it takes is touching it in the wrong place.
I have tried, there is no way to actually talk to a real person, or to get anything else but one of a few algorithmic responses.
You know, when you troll you really should log off first, your lame sig isn't going to prevent your trolls from being downmodded. I've had to return exactly one item; a laptop battery that didn't fit my laptop. No problem contacting them, no problem returning it, no need to contact my CC company because Amazon did it themselves.
I've bought books and DVDs from them, not once has anything been damaged.
If you'd left out the part about "no way to contact them" I'd have told you to complain to the company that shipped the item (the ones I've gotten were shipped by UPS). But that "no way to contact them" is a dead giveaway that you've never bought anything from Amazon, much less had to return anything.
The risk angle is that only a fool takes big foolish risks. If you have a hundred thousand and start a restaurant, and that hundred grand is all you have, you're an idiot, not brave. Only one in ten new businesses succeed.
Now, if a restaurant cost a hundred grand and you have three hundred grand, there's no real risk. So what if you lose that hundred grand, you still have twice that and it's far more than most people have.
You have only a hundred grand you don't blow it starting a business, you buy varied stocks and bonds. Short of a 1929, a 2007, or a fraudster there's no risk at all.
As to your country friend, all the people I know who live in the country are well off.
A "hormone acting on the brain" is just a chemical process. An active brain is just a bundle of electrical impulses.
No, it's not. There are electrical impulses, but as all atoms have electrons, all chemical reactions have some electrical properties. But the brain's action is chemical, not electrical.
It all adds up, somehow, to something we call consciousness, along with the attendant emotions. Why can't a solely electronic system do the same?
For the same reason you can't make a radio out of a horse. Radios are electronic, not chemical. Brains are chemical, not electronic. Your computer is nothing more than an extremely huge abacus, using electrons as beads. Now tell me, how many beads do you need to add to your abacus before it becomes self-aware?
The issue stems from the 1950s when the media started calling big mainframe computers (with less processing power than a musical Hallmark card) "electronic brains". What with all the sci-fi AI in books, movies, and TV, it's no wonder you kids are confused. Computers work nothing like brains, and brains work nothing like computers.
Look, if it's not science, then it shouldn't be taught in a science class. It's that simple.
Exactly. It should be taught in philosophy class, along with the Bhuddist and other religious "theories" (The Bhuddists in Thailand have a similar to Abrahamic but interestingly different story).
By the way, atheists don't care what other people believe as long as they keep it to themselves.
I'm a Christian, and don't care what others believe whether or not they keep it to themselves. Many Christians aren't like that. However, your statement "atheists don't care what other people believe as long as they keep it to themselves" is as patently incorrect as "Christians don't care what others believe." All you have to do is look at almost any slashdot thread, you'll see offtopic Christianity and Religion in general bashing. Some atheists believe religion itself is evil and want it destroyed completely.
"Her" falls for one of the classic AI misconceptions. That intelligence is equal to kindness, empathy and other human traits. These traits are a result of hormones acting on the brain or other inherited traits.
Kindness, empathy, thought itself is a chemical reaction, nothing more.
Unless programmed into the computer it wouldn't feel curiosity, anger, happiness etc.
You can't program emotions into a computer. You can, however, program it to mimic emotion, as well as thought. But just because it quacks like a duck doesn't make it a duck, ask any dead duck shot by a hunter with a duck call.
Was this really the last resort?
Yes.
J. Kirk Wiebe is retired from the National Security Agency, where he worked for more than 32 years. He received the NSA's second highest award, the Meritorious Civilian Service Award; the Director of CIA's Meritorious Unit Award; and a Letter of Commendation from the secretary of the Air Force, among other awards. He was an NSA whistleblower on matters of privacy involving massive electronic surveillance.
The linked article that Weibe wrote answers your question in depressing detail.
Do you really expect anyone to take anything else you say seriously when you start out with something as transparently wrong as that?
His point was, I think, that the CEO doesn't work any harder than you do, and most likely you work a hell of a lot harder than him. Also, he's probably American, and we have no safety net like civilized countries do.
How is it that we have millions of prosperous people in this country, including many who are the children of first-generation immigrants?
Like my uncle? My grandparents weren't immigrants, but they were dirt poor. So how did my uncle get rich? The same way as everyone else -- dumb luck. He was lucky enough to be born intelligent, creative, and with good eye-hand coordination. Then a stroke of bad luck was actually good luck, his ship was torpedoed in WWII and he met his future partner, a born salesman, who had lost his leg in the war. Dan was talking to him in the hospital, saw the leg the Army had given him, and said "I can make a better leg than this." When he got out of the hospital, he did. His partner would walk up to a wounded soldier, who would say "what the hell would you know about it?" and Dan's partner just rolled up his pants leg. Instant sale, because you'd never guess the guy's leg was gone.
Had he not been fortunate enough to be born with good genes, and then to meet a one-legged salesman, he would never have gotten rich.
The other way is like his nephew, my cousin, who "earned" his wealth rather unethically.
If your family is rich and their friends are all rich, it's incredibly unlikely that you won't remain rich. If you're poor and your family is poor and you get a poor education, you should buy lottery tickets because luck is the only way a poor man gets rich. Or better yet, resign yourself to the fact that you'll never be rich and just try to stay out of jail.
I agree that this mentality is wrong, but credit where credit is due - these guys tend to be willing to take significant risks that most of us shirk away from.
Risks, my ass. I have no sympathy for losing gamblers. Yeah, the developer risks losing some money (and he'd be the world's biggest fool if he gambled everything) building that high rise, the people who are working for him risk their LIVES. Look at the top ten most dangerous occupations, "wall street gambler" and "quiki mart owner" aren't on the list. The qwiki mart owner isn't the one who a crackhead sticks a gun in their face in a robbery. Risk? Shit, son, look at the real world. The rich man takes no risks that I would call "risks".
If you inherit ten million dollars and invest half of it, how is that in any way a risk? It's impossible to turn ten bucks into twenty, but inevitable to turn ten million into twenty million.
Not just in things that are sweetened, but literally everything. I won't buy Green Giant vegetables because they taste simply terrible, highly dosed with that damned sweetener. Damn it, vegetables aren't supposed to be sweet! Why should brocolli, cheese, and macaroni taste like candy??
But it isn't just HFCS, it's portions. When I was ten there were no Big Macs or Quarter Pounders, let alone the half and three quarter pound burgers you see a lot of places. The amount of food on a restaurant plate has at least doubled if not tripled in the last 50 years. Take soft drinks at again, McDonalds. Small, medium, large. Just like now, right? Nope. A small was eight ounces, medium was twelve, large sixteen. Now the sixteen ounce is the "small" size.
And real restaurants are just as bad or even worse than McDonalds. I always wind up taking half the meal home, because they serve one person enough food for two. Speaking of, protip: if you visit Springfield, do NOT order a horseshoe unless you're grossly obese and used to huge quantities of food. No matter what establishment, get a ponyshoe. It's enough for two people, a horseshoe would feed an entire African village. THAT's why we're fat, we burn fewer calories than we consume.
Also, food was more expensive back then, its price hasn't risen nearly as much as other things.
When I see the phrase "good enough for laymen" on slashdot, I know that /. has gone a LONG way downhill.
We're all laymen, except for the geologists here. You have a PhD in high energy physics? Still a layman, you don't know any more about geology than I do.
That said, the educational attainments of slashdotters seems to have slid greatly considering the number of grocer's apostrophes and homophone idiocy I see here lately so I do agree with your point. I attribute it to the fact that when slashdot was new, almost everybody on the internet was a nerd.
The clever part is that it automatically recovered
It wasn't just a Gmail problem, or there was a huge coincidence. I tried to look something up on Google on my phone Friday around then, got a 404 and the phone rebooted itself (Android).
Funny how businesses that attract competent talent don't require union protections to keep their employees around.
The head of a then non-union airline said in the early 1980s "any company that gets a union deserves one." Treat your workers fairly and they will have no need for a union. Fuck them over and watch them organize.
So "You're like a child molestor" is ok, but "You are a fraud" is not?
"You're like a child molester" is ok, but "You are a child molester" is not. One is an opinion, one is an accusation. What's so hard to understand?
Second of all, all you parents in the room, all this bitching about poor teachers is a pretty recent thing,
Bullshit, son. People were bitching about their kids' teachers when I was a kid, and I started school in 1958. My third grade teacher was fired for her incompetence; the union didn't help because the other teachers wanted her out, too.
and it coincides with the emergence of a few things - The first is that you are no longer doing your jobs as fucking parents, letting your kids do whatever the fuck they want
There have always been bad parents. There always will be bad parents. Your bad parenting should not affect my kid's education.
without discipline and demanding that they be allowed to dress like whores and use cell phones in class for "safety" reasons
How is "dressing like whores" or carrying a phone causing kids to get bad educations?
in case one of your otherwise right-thinking kids you addled up with psychotropic drugs because of a bullshit "ADD" diagnosis
You're accusing an awful lot of medical doctors of malpractice. Ritalin requires a doctor's prescription.
when, again, you decided real parenting was too hard and thought your kid was crazy for wanting to play outside and not stuck to the fucking X-Box for 12 hours a day.
Hmm... have you tried haldol? Ask your doctor.
My daughter lives in Cincinnati and works in a GameStop in Kentucky. Her description of he customers pretty much fits the stereotype, meth heads selling used (probably stolen) games, women in rags bring children in rags in and buying a brand new Playstation and the expensive games that go with them...
Learning languages involves hours of practise with memorising ability being paramount; a skill difficult for many people.
I've always been terrible at memorization but I managed to learn Thai and Spanish and several computer languages. Names, dates, phone numbers... I'm glad they invented smartphones so I no longer have to remember numbers.
I never saw the utility of Esperanto, since nobody speaks it.