I think the whole thing speaks volumes to the disconnect between academia and reality. While an education in the high points of historical philosophy might be of limited use, much of that is pure nonsense intended to filter out undesirable applicants who, while quite capable of learning and performing, lack the "breeding" to be accepted. It was a great way to ensure that only like-minded people got degrees and continued the cycle.
Colleges have gotten a lot better in the past century, but they still spend a lot of time making sure you think how they want you to think, or at least can pretend to.
Disclaimer: I'm a college opt-out who was accepted to Harvard but didn't go (I applied just because I could). I decided there was a better way into the real world that the bullshit you have to endure at university. Take that how you want.
In online FPS, what you might call rubber banding is the effect felt when you're scrambling around a corner only to be shot by someone with a 150 ping and the server drags you back due to their latency. It's a phenomenon I first saw in Counter-Strike after a major netcode update and I quickly dubbed it "bungie bullets". I encountered situations where I saw myself run into cover half a dozen times, only to be dragged back out into the line of fire and be shot by the same lagging player again.
Now I don't want the poor guy with a 150 ping to never get a hit just because his ISP sucks. It's probably not his fault. But I've seen a number of games "correct" my position on the map so that the guy who is more than 1/10th of a second behind me can get his hit. It doesn't happen in all games so I know it's not the only way to resolve ping differences.
I don't think you should be able to own a gene, but YOUR particular combination of genes is so unlikely to happen again that it can be considered unique. Each person should own their own genetic combination, and any use of that combination or a derivative of it for profit should entitle that person to a share of the profits.
There's solid reasoning behind protecting a patent on GM lab animals. I'm no geneticist, but I would assume that there is a significant investment involved in splicing human genes into a rat in such a way that they will reliably develop early onset AD. If they aren't able to profit from that investment, you remove one very useful motive in developing such things.
That said, there's got to be a point at which we say "okay, so you made another GM rat with human genes. The process for this is well-established and all you did was repeat something that's been done dozens of times before."
A fair compromise might be to adjust time limits on patents according to their topic. Genetic patents using existing genes should not be protected as long as a truly engineered/synthetic gene (I've not heard of any actually existing, but it's only a matter of time).
After reading TFA, it sounds to me like the issue isn't with the use of the gene, but with the use of genetically modified rats, which should be protected under the same laws as GM crops. The article indicates the patent is actually on the "mouse models" and not the gene itself.
Not defending the suit, just playing trolls' advocate for a moment.
Movies: For a few weeks, you can watch it for ~$8-15 per person in an expensive theater Some movies will then move to cheaper theaters for a few weeks. Not long after that, the movie will be released for home distribution at a fixed price. Once sales to people willing to pay the "I got it first" premium, prices will begin to drop. It eventually ends up on the Wal-Mart $5 DVD rack, unless there is enough demand to keep the prices up.
If you are genuinely willing to pay but don't like the current price, wait. Or buy used. But people don't do that...they pirate. Which brings me back to my assertion: it's not because they aren't willing to pay the current asking price, it's because they think they don't have to. It's because they can.
And be careful on what you say. Unless you've personally read "all of the accredited research" you should avoid blanket statements.
The driving force behind piracy has always been, and will always be, "because we can". People have made unlicensed copies of things since the technology existed not because the original was too expensive, but because piracy was cheaper. Too many middle-class Americans do it for me to believe it has that much to do with cost.
Even if a factor behind piracy is the high price of content, it's self-defeating. Companies have lost the incentive to lower the price of content when sales slow down. People not willing to pay $20 for a DVD can wait for it to come down to $5. But they don't, they pirate, and now the company doesn't stand to sell as many units at $5 than they might have, so they're less likely to reduce the price. One might argue that piracy hurts the tendency to lower prices by removing demand for low-priced content.
She's a science teacher. Beside that, SIXTH GRADE. If they can't spell and follow grammar rules by sixth grade, no one teacher is going to correct the problem.
My wife teaches sixth grade science, and she has seen a remarkable decline in the spelling abilities of her students in the eight years she has been teaching. Older teachers say the same thing: as texting became prolific, spelling errors increased dramatically. Studies be damned, when you look at what kids are actually doing in school, they seem to think that what they write in SMS messages is acceptable English for school assignments.
A simple screen shot means that the picture itself can go viral, even if the person's name is lost in the process. The internet has been kind enough to let most of these people remain anonymous so far. We don't care about the names of drunken college girls, we just like to laugh at and/or ogle them.
If you have the presence of mind to know that you don't want a future employer seeing the picture, you have the presence of mind not to post it, right? So long as things like this are optional (and they damn well better remain so) they will remain unused by the very people who they would benefit: the stupid.
Are you really implying that copyright law shouldn't be enforced because there are worse things going on in the world?
There are serial killers out there, but I sincerely hope the police make some sort of effort at catching the guys who stole $4,000 worth of tools from my father-in-law last week.
Whatever your opinion on copyright law, you've got to admit that copying another person's work and SELLING IT without them getting a cut is a dick move and shouldn't be tolerated.
Where do you live that housing prices have skyrocketed? We had the bubble generated by speculators and the fools who bought all their flipped houses, but that popped years ago.
My parents and in-laws are buying up foreclosed properties at a fraction of their original values. We're fixing them up to rent out immediately (rent houses are in demand) and sell one at a time once the market improves. The market is GREAT for people looking to pick up some money-making properties. Between the two families we're expecting to see an additional $250,000 profit in the next five years. If the housing market keeps on this way for a little while longer, that number will likely double. This project is going to pay for my kids' college, and that's not for another 12 years.
My only complaint is that there seems to be very little consequence for poor play in modern games. Halo with its shield for example. Batman: ARkham Asylum is the same way: you finish a fight sequence, your health goes back up...it's quite hard to die in MOST parts of the game. I think for the most part the author misses games where consequences lasted more than 30 seconds, where losses stayed with you and you didn't get a free reset every save point.
Of course there are plenty of games where that isn't the case, but it's easy to find a lot of examples of games that serve the lowest common denominator.
As an adult who went 28 years before getting ADHD medication, I rather liked the whole "no appetite" thing:)
I think it's important for ADHD kids to learn to deal with their differences (note: imho ADHD is not a disorder, or a problem, or a deficiency, we're just a particular set of personality traits that do not do well in modern social norms that require most people to sit still and perform repetitive tasks all day every day) without medication. After I was diagnosed at 28, friends who have ADHD kids started asking me about medication and such. I strongly suggested they avoid it as long as they can; I think it's important for the kids to be able to recognize the differences in their own behavior when using medication, and to learn to cope with their tendencies without it first.
I took Concerta for four months, then stopped. I learned how much of a difference it made in me, and learned to recognize in the morning when I was going to have a particularly ADHD day. When I start the day like that, I pick up a coffee on the way to work. That's all the stimulant I need.
By Frozen Bubble, do you mean Bubble Bobble, the original arcade game which was then ported to consoles and made the authors large wads of cash?
I never implied that simplicity meant low quality. There are some games with very "simple" gameplay that are are fun to play again and again.
My point stands: if a game is for sale and you play it for more than a few hours, you should buy it. The author(s) invested time and money into creating the content you are enjoying and deserve a reward.
If it's too expensive, stop playing and wait for it to come down in price. If you want to play it so badly you can't wait, BUY IT.
He was speaking in terms of PC games. I've not seen a lot of high-quality PC games given away (Alien Swarm is the one recent exception that I know of).
The whole point of this article is what I've said in every piracy argument I've been involved in: if no one buys quality PC games, they won't be made any more. Buy the games you play. I'll go even further than the author: don't just buy one a year, you cheap schmucks. Buy anything you play for more than 10 hours.
The more money we sink into the PC games market, the healthier it will be. The more quality titles we support, the more we'll see of the same level of quality.
It's a commonly-held belief among the religious that children would behave if only they got religion. And for what it's worth, if every one were truly practicing Christians, we wouldn't need much in the way of law enforcement. But when even the preachers in the pulpits can't keep their own vices in check, I think the notion that pushing religion on students will fix discipline problems is totally misguided.
As for creationism in the classroom, I want two things:
1) A solid scientific critique of evolution. I have absolutely no problem with them calling it into question, but they MUST do so scientifically. If evolution is so wrong, it shouldn't be hard to provide evidence.
2) Some sort of argument for creationism beyond "God did it" and the creation story of any given religious text.
So that my five-year-old who already has issues with death (he lost a dog, a great grandmother, and a great uncle all in the past year) can spend the next six months freaking out about whether or not the food he's eating will kill him.
I think "it's bad for you" is a sufficient answer for young children.
Because it has things in it that will make you fat.
I wanna be anorexic when I grow up!
-----
My boys get their choice of restaurant foods once a week. It's usually McNuggets and apple slices from McDonald's or a grilled cheese sandwich and banana from Sonic. Our choices are limited here, so that's really all they know that they like. They've been told that having too much food from places like that is bad, but that's all they've been told. I for one am not going to create body image problems in my 3- and 5-year old sons by telling them that they'll get fat if they eat too much. I simply control what they eat so that they develop healthy appetites.
Children do need to learn to accept that their parents understand things that are above them. I do my best to answer all the questions my kids have. They are already both considered gifted and are well above their age levels on education, but some things are beyond their comprehension and I'm not going to tell them something that might result in them completely misunderstanding my answers.
"Even if you look at the high end of a height/weight chart, someone who's 6'8", the high normal weight should be 216."
This is utter nonsense. I have a cousin who stands at 6'8" and isn't especially athletic. He is quite fit: he watches his diet, works out three days a week, and barely has any visible fat on him. His weight? 235 pounds. Likewise, I'm 6'1" and if I weighed what those idiotic charts say I should weigh, I'd be skin and bones. At my lowest adult weight, I was 205 lbs and had a 30 inch waist below a 44 inch chest.
Much of my family is truly big-boned. We struggle with our weight (I've got a fair bit to lose now, a combination of a bad knee interfering in workouts and my just being lazy), but even at our skinniest the charts call us overweight because *gasp* not everyone has the same build. Now that I've recovered my knee and am able to focus on getting back in shape, my target weight is 210-215 pounds. Anything below that and I'll have to give up some of the muscle I'm planning to build up soon.
I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that I quite enjoyed Rampage. Boll's bad cinematography actually makes the movie work in a way I didn't expect.
Slashdot Mirror
"Can place ' above e in resume" seems like a useful bullet point.
Did you learn that in college?
I think the whole thing speaks volumes to the disconnect between academia and reality. While an education in the high points of historical philosophy might be of limited use, much of that is pure nonsense intended to filter out undesirable applicants who, while quite capable of learning and performing, lack the "breeding" to be accepted. It was a great way to ensure that only like-minded people got degrees and continued the cycle.
Colleges have gotten a lot better in the past century, but they still spend a lot of time making sure you think how they want you to think, or at least can pretend to.
Disclaimer: I'm a college opt-out who was accepted to Harvard but didn't go (I applied just because I could). I decided there was a better way into the real world that the bullshit you have to endure at university. Take that how you want.
In online FPS, what you might call rubber banding is the effect felt when you're scrambling around a corner only to be shot by someone with a 150 ping and the server drags you back due to their latency. It's a phenomenon I first saw in Counter-Strike after a major netcode update and I quickly dubbed it "bungie bullets". I encountered situations where I saw myself run into cover half a dozen times, only to be dragged back out into the line of fire and be shot by the same lagging player again.
Now I don't want the poor guy with a 150 ping to never get a hit just because his ISP sucks. It's probably not his fault. But I've seen a number of games "correct" my position on the map so that the guy who is more than 1/10th of a second behind me can get his hit. It doesn't happen in all games so I know it's not the only way to resolve ping differences.
I don't think you should be able to own a gene, but YOUR particular combination of genes is so unlikely to happen again that it can be considered unique. Each person should own their own genetic combination, and any use of that combination or a derivative of it for profit should entitle that person to a share of the profits.
There's solid reasoning behind protecting a patent on GM lab animals. I'm no geneticist, but I would assume that there is a significant investment involved in splicing human genes into a rat in such a way that they will reliably develop early onset AD. If they aren't able to profit from that investment, you remove one very useful motive in developing such things.
That said, there's got to be a point at which we say "okay, so you made another GM rat with human genes. The process for this is well-established and all you did was repeat something that's been done dozens of times before."
A fair compromise might be to adjust time limits on patents according to their topic. Genetic patents using existing genes should not be protected as long as a truly engineered/synthetic gene (I've not heard of any actually existing, but it's only a matter of time).
After reading TFA, it sounds to me like the issue isn't with the use of the gene, but with the use of genetically modified rats, which should be protected under the same laws as GM crops. The article indicates the patent is actually on the "mouse models" and not the gene itself.
Not defending the suit, just playing trolls' advocate for a moment.
Media markets are rather predictable.
Movies:
For a few weeks, you can watch it for ~$8-15 per person in an expensive theater
Some movies will then move to cheaper theaters for a few weeks.
Not long after that, the movie will be released for home distribution at a fixed price.
Once sales to people willing to pay the "I got it first" premium, prices will begin to drop.
It eventually ends up on the Wal-Mart $5 DVD rack, unless there is enough demand to keep the prices up.
If you are genuinely willing to pay but don't like the current price, wait. Or buy used. But people don't do that...they pirate. Which brings me back to my assertion: it's not because they aren't willing to pay the current asking price, it's because they think they don't have to. It's because they can.
And be careful on what you say. Unless you've personally read "all of the accredited research" you should avoid blanket statements.
The driving force behind piracy has always been, and will always be, "because we can". People have made unlicensed copies of things since the technology existed not because the original was too expensive, but because piracy was cheaper. Too many middle-class Americans do it for me to believe it has that much to do with cost.
Even if a factor behind piracy is the high price of content, it's self-defeating. Companies have lost the incentive to lower the price of content when sales slow down. People not willing to pay $20 for a DVD can wait for it to come down to $5. But they don't, they pirate, and now the company doesn't stand to sell as many units at $5 than they might have, so they're less likely to reduce the price. One might argue that piracy hurts the tendency to lower prices by removing demand for low-priced content.
I really shouldn't feed the trolls...
She's a science teacher. Beside that, SIXTH GRADE. If they can't spell and follow grammar rules by sixth grade, no one teacher is going to correct the problem.
My wife teaches sixth grade science, and she has seen a remarkable decline in the spelling abilities of her students in the eight years she has been teaching. Older teachers say the same thing: as texting became prolific, spelling errors increased dramatically. Studies be damned, when you look at what kids are actually doing in school, they seem to think that what they write in SMS messages is acceptable English for school assignments.
But you have no control over whether that is encrypted or not, as it's their picture.
Yes, because our society seems to be placing LESS value on embarrassing celebrities or looking perfect.
A simple screen shot means that the picture itself can go viral, even if the person's name is lost in the process. The internet has been kind enough to let most of these people remain anonymous so far. We don't care about the names of drunken college girls, we just like to laugh at and/or ogle them.
If you have the presence of mind to know that you don't want a future employer seeing the picture, you have the presence of mind not to post it, right? So long as things like this are optional (and they damn well better remain so) they will remain unused by the very people who they would benefit: the stupid.
Are you really implying that copyright law shouldn't be enforced because there are worse things going on in the world?
There are serial killers out there, but I sincerely hope the police make some sort of effort at catching the guys who stole $4,000 worth of tools from my father-in-law last week.
Whatever your opinion on copyright law, you've got to admit that copying another person's work and SELLING IT without them getting a cut is a dick move and shouldn't be tolerated.
As an American all I just read was someone willfully ignorant of American politics sharing his uninformed opinion. Which is the norm on the internet.
I really don't understand why so many Europeans think it's so black-and-white over here.
Where do you live that housing prices have skyrocketed? We had the bubble generated by speculators and the fools who bought all their flipped houses, but that popped years ago.
My parents and in-laws are buying up foreclosed properties at a fraction of their original values. We're fixing them up to rent out immediately (rent houses are in demand) and sell one at a time once the market improves. The market is GREAT for people looking to pick up some money-making properties. Between the two families we're expecting to see an additional $250,000 profit in the next five years. If the housing market keeps on this way for a little while longer, that number will likely double. This project is going to pay for my kids' college, and that's not for another 12 years.
My only complaint is that there seems to be very little consequence for poor play in modern games. Halo with its shield for example. Batman: ARkham Asylum is the same way: you finish a fight sequence, your health goes back up...it's quite hard to die in MOST parts of the game. I think for the most part the author misses games where consequences lasted more than 30 seconds, where losses stayed with you and you didn't get a free reset every save point.
Of course there are plenty of games where that isn't the case, but it's easy to find a lot of examples of games that serve the lowest common denominator.
As an adult who went 28 years before getting ADHD medication, I rather liked the whole "no appetite" thing :)
I think it's important for ADHD kids to learn to deal with their differences (note: imho ADHD is not a disorder, or a problem, or a deficiency, we're just a particular set of personality traits that do not do well in modern social norms that require most people to sit still and perform repetitive tasks all day every day) without medication. After I was diagnosed at 28, friends who have ADHD kids started asking me about medication and such. I strongly suggested they avoid it as long as they can; I think it's important for the kids to be able to recognize the differences in their own behavior when using medication, and to learn to cope with their tendencies without it first.
I took Concerta for four months, then stopped. I learned how much of a difference it made in me, and learned to recognize in the morning when I was going to have a particularly ADHD day. When I start the day like that, I pick up a coffee on the way to work. That's all the stimulant I need.
By Frozen Bubble, do you mean Bubble Bobble, the original arcade game which was then ported to consoles and made the authors large wads of cash?
I never implied that simplicity meant low quality. There are some games with very "simple" gameplay that are are fun to play again and again.
My point stands: if a game is for sale and you play it for more than a few hours, you should buy it. The author(s) invested time and money into creating the content you are enjoying and deserve a reward.
If it's too expensive, stop playing and wait for it to come down in price. If you want to play it so badly you can't wait, BUY IT.
He was speaking in terms of PC games. I've not seen a lot of high-quality PC games given away (Alien Swarm is the one recent exception that I know of).
The whole point of this article is what I've said in every piracy argument I've been involved in: if no one buys quality PC games, they won't be made any more. Buy the games you play. I'll go even further than the author: don't just buy one a year, you cheap schmucks. Buy anything you play for more than 10 hours.
The more money we sink into the PC games market, the healthier it will be. The more quality titles we support, the more we'll see of the same level of quality.
It's a commonly-held belief among the religious that children would behave if only they got religion. And for what it's worth, if every one were truly practicing Christians, we wouldn't need much in the way of law enforcement. But when even the preachers in the pulpits can't keep their own vices in check, I think the notion that pushing religion on students will fix discipline problems is totally misguided.
As for creationism in the classroom, I want two things:
1) A solid scientific critique of evolution. I have absolutely no problem with them calling it into question, but they MUST do so scientifically. If evolution is so wrong, it shouldn't be hard to provide evidence.
2) Some sort of argument for creationism beyond "God did it" and the creation story of any given religious text.
For the record, I'm a Southern Baptist.
So that my five-year-old who already has issues with death (he lost a dog, a great grandmother, and a great uncle all in the past year) can spend the next six months freaking out about whether or not the food he's eating will kill him.
I think "it's bad for you" is a sufficient answer for young children.
No, you can't have McDonald's again today.
Why?
Because you had it yesterday.
Why can't I have it again?
Because it's not good for you.
Why?
Because it has things in it that will make you fat.
I wanna be anorexic when I grow up!
-----
My boys get their choice of restaurant foods once a week. It's usually McNuggets and apple slices from McDonald's or a grilled cheese sandwich and banana from Sonic. Our choices are limited here, so that's really all they know that they like. They've been told that having too much food from places like that is bad, but that's all they've been told. I for one am not going to create body image problems in my 3- and 5-year old sons by telling them that they'll get fat if they eat too much. I simply control what they eat so that they develop healthy appetites.
Children do need to learn to accept that their parents understand things that are above them. I do my best to answer all the questions my kids have. They are already both considered gifted and are well above their age levels on education, but some things are beyond their comprehension and I'm not going to tell them something that might result in them completely misunderstanding my answers.
"Even if you look at the high end of a height/weight chart, someone who's 6'8", the high normal weight should be 216."
This is utter nonsense. I have a cousin who stands at 6'8" and isn't especially athletic. He is quite fit: he watches his diet, works out three days a week, and barely has any visible fat on him. His weight? 235 pounds. Likewise, I'm 6'1" and if I weighed what those idiotic charts say I should weigh, I'd be skin and bones. At my lowest adult weight, I was 205 lbs and had a 30 inch waist below a 44 inch chest.
Much of my family is truly big-boned. We struggle with our weight (I've got a fair bit to lose now, a combination of a bad knee interfering in workouts and my just being lazy), but even at our skinniest the charts call us overweight because *gasp* not everyone has the same build. Now that I've recovered my knee and am able to focus on getting back in shape, my target weight is 210-215 pounds. Anything below that and I'll have to give up some of the muscle I'm planning to build up soon.
I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that I quite enjoyed Rampage. Boll's bad cinematography actually makes the movie work in a way I didn't expect.