I don't want to set Mars on fire, I just want to start a flame in its soil. In my heart I have but one desire And that's perchlorate, no other will boil.
I've lost all ambition for Earthly acclaim I just want to find some oxygen And with the emissions with applied flame, I'll have found the little Martian men, believe me!
I don't want to set Mars on fire, I just want to start a flame in its soil!
What, and blatantly overcharging a captive audience for something that should be nearly free (Internet) isn't? It costs a pittance to set up a wifi point and less than $50 per month for a cheap DSL connection. Hell, my neighborhood coffee shops provide that to paying customers, and thanks to security checks every single person waiting in front of the gates is a paying customer. Where exactly are those "airport fees" going anyway?
Any time you want to install software DO:
right-click
select RUN AS administrator
install the software
Not really much harder than typing 'sudo' before installing things
This doesn't work on msi packages (which I discovered when trying to update TortoiseSVN one day). For those you have to do something special, along the lines of:
open command prompt
navigate to wherever you downloaded the msi file to
runas with some arbitrary set of parameters (which will depend on how things are set up on your system)
install the software
pray that the permissions were set up properly
Also, any program which updates itself will have problems until you "runas/env/noprofile/user:blah firefox.exe" (Firefox shits bricks telling you it can't update unless you figure out this trick or grant full write to all users). Not very simple.
It's great until you bump it by accident while typing or gaming. If done while typing you'll not only lose the focus of your typing window, but probably set your computer thrashing for the next 15 seconds while it opens up a program or two you didn't want to. As for gaming, most games these days disable that (dis)functionality while the game is running, but for quite awhile the windows key combined with many games' inability to return from loss of screen control meant that games would either crash or refuse to display anything if you merely bumped that infernal key (easy to do if you're trying to hit Ctrl).
Quite a few people used hacks to disable the windows key for that reason.
If civil fines for individuals were scaled to the corporate fines, a speeding ticket would cost $2 or so and wouldn't affect your insurance rate. No need to waste time paying in cash at the courthouse, just mail a check.
Interestingly enough, that's exactly what local governments are already doing via speed cameras. Lower the fines enough, remove the insurance penalties, and it turns into a road tax. In that case, it's a cash grab. And then they claim it's intended to slow people down?
Similarly in the case of the FTC, I do agree with you that they should grab a little bit harder if they want to make it an actual deterrent. As it stands, it's too low a penalty to even make money, let alone deter these companies.
And that tells me you have never used Word for anything more than simple notes. You probably haven't used PowerPoint at all. I use both, extensively. Please don't tell me not to use Word to produce complex, multi-chapter documents.
Are you one of those people who tries to make a spreadsheet behave like a database? Or perhaps you read from your Powerpoint slides? A leatherman tool has a Phillips head on it, but it's not an ideal screwdriver. Likewise it's possible to use a word processor to make "complex, multi-chapter documents", but it's better to choose the correct tools for the job and apply them properly.
If the documents are primarily intended to be printed on standard paper by professional printers and needs to look pretty, create the content with minimal formatting in another tool (in multiple files when necessary), and then import it into a proper layout program. LaTEX, PageMaker, InDesign, or another program capable of making PostScript compatible documents would be the correct tool here. You can convert easily to PDF, if it needs to be screen viewable. And if you've set it up properly, anyone can edit the content without accidentally mucking up your carefully selected fonts and kerning.
If the docs are intended to be read by humans on a screen, again start with CONTENT in a file with minimal formatting, and then use the correct tool to format it in your choice of HTML, PDF, or some other common open format. If you want HTML to look pixel-perfect on a screen, you're attacking the problem the wrong way. One guy who sets his machine to "Large Fonts" will either break your pixel-perfect formatting or (if you've overridden his preferences) get angry because he can't read the fine print.
If it needs to be commonly editable and point-perfect printing isn't important, then a word processor might be the proper tool. But again, the content should be separate from the formatting. Templates exist for a reason! If the formatting gets mucked up in the transition then you can edit a single file to make all your documents of that type work properly. But if your poorly trained office staff simply opened up last year's document and pasted in this year's figures, they weren't using the toolset properly. You're going to have to transition off your current version of Word eventually. Might as well make it easier for yourself.
Use the right tools for the right job, and use them properly.
Then don't look. Is there some sort of invisible hand controlling what sites you browse to? I don't think this is the kind of thing you're likely to see unless you go looking for it. You're free to browse away from it. And you're always free to tell the original poster that it's in bad taste, if you think so. If they don't think much of you and your opinion, they should be free to ignore your request to remove the image.
It's not the responsibility of others not to offend you; that's a surefire road to censorship, and not a can of worms you want to open. In a free multicultural society, the onus falls on you not to throw a fit if you're offended.
I don't mind people using "piracy" as a sort of shorthand for "copyright infringement". I just object when people try to reason that because the word is also used to refer to armed robbery on the high seas, it is therefore morally and legally equivalent to armed and violent robbery and should be treated in a similar manner.
I agree. People who misuse the terminology in such a way should be keelhauled.
I often go into the store and start eating the food off the shelves. When they tell me to stop, I just tell them that according to Samuel Gompers, there's no inherent difference to the food in the store and the food on my shelf, so how can they expect me to know the difference? Then I eat the security guards, under the misapprehension that they are also food. I think it works out best for everyone, in the end.
Unfortunately it looks like this will only work if your inner ear is undamaged and functioning properly. I had major hearing loss in one ear from an injury a few years ago, and one of the tests they did was acoustically coupling a small vibrating pad to the base of my skull to determine whether the injury was in the middle or inner ear. If your cochlea are already damaged to the point that you need a cochlear implant (direct neural stimulation) then you'd be able to _feel_ your skull vibrating but you will hear nothing -- a very odd sensation indeed.
Of course I shudder at the thought of what microwave radiation would do to the electrodes in your cochlear implant. It might literally induce a current through your brain. At the low end it would destroy the tissues connected to the electrodes. At the high end it might induce a seizure or kill you. I hope to hell it's well shielded.
Recruiting, eh? I can imagine the phone calls going something like this:
"Hi, Mr. Phillips, I'm from the FTC, and we've heard that you've recently been the victim of identity theft." "Yes, yes that's true!" "To verify that the study is accurate, could I have your date of birth please?" "Sure, it's September 17th, 1964." "I have the first digit of your SSN as '6', is that correct?" "Yes." "Could you read off the rest of it for me?"
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So, like routing packets on the internet.
With the notable exception that you can drop packets on the Internet, and the sender will simply retransmit. In fact, with TCP/IP you are expected to do so. I'd be willing to bet that a large percentage of IP packets are dropped. But with human beings your "packets" are unique tokens which are not retransmittable and cannot be dropped. If the rail lines past Bumfuck, IA are blocked by freight cars or other nonsense, I either have to backtrack creating more traffic, or wait there until it clears up. I can't discard the people or cargo, and they will take up buffer space. So it's not quite the same, the railroads have their own set of issues.
For it to be powerful, it has to be able to incorporate new unpredictable information. In doing so, it must, as a result, also be able to incorporate "wrong" information and thus become unpredictable. Of all things, a computer needs to be predictable.
Predictable and correct are not the same thing. Predictable would mean deterministic, and there are problems where deterministic systems don't work well at all. Take language processing as an example: modern computer NLP models are deterministic but they're awful. Even given reams of examples and input, more than a human being will ever see, they often can't even form a coherent sentence. Quite frankly, modern NLP systems suck. On the other hand, human translation of human languages is not deterministic-- that is to say, all human beings will not translate a given sentence exactly the same way. But it is usually correct (both accurate and grammatically correct) when the subject knows both languages.
At present, we can't translate human language algorithmically. Some would say that's because the algorithms aren't complex enough or we're not using the right algorithms, but I think it has a lot to do with our insistence on determinism. An algorithm is a function that given a specific input always returns the same output. We can try to munge things by adding time or previous feedback as an input, but maybe that's not the correct approach. Maybe we need to abandon our idea that a computer must be predictable.
I'm not the original AC but I've done that job for the last three years. I'll answer as best as I can.
Is there no way you can teach the normal slow lesson plan, but engage the other students with practice talk in the mean time?
It seems to me that it would get ALL the students familiar with how English sounds, would give practice to those who are actively interested, and would encourage the rest of them to want to learn enough to participate.
That's basically what I've been trying to do, but it doesn't really work. The normal slow lesson plan takes up all the class time, and they simply don't have the background to have any interesting conversations in the meantime (nor do they have time with all the club activities they do.) The smart kids get bored and give up, then start doing poorly. The lower level kids get frustrated and give up. The mediocre students do alright for awhile until they see their peers giving up, assume they can't do it either, and then give up. The groupthink here is STRONG. It would be a start if we could separate out students by level in their second and third year but it's antithetical to the Way Things Are.
Yet another problem is teaching grammar points in Japanese rather than simply practicing until it's second nature. I've gone over this before. Teaching grammar and vocabulary lists simply doesn't work.
Another problem is that a large number of the "English teachers" here can't speak English. I'd consider that makes them unqualified to teach, since they aren't masters of their subject, but they're here and they're entrenched, and they can't be fired or even disciplined for remaining incompetent. The obvious (and wrong) conclusion the students make is that smart, successful Japanese people can't learn English, or that only foreigners speak English.
The nail in the coffin is the simple fact that many of these kids don't interact with English speakers on any regular basis, apart from the token assistant language teacher. The motivation to really learn to speak just isn't there. There's a motivation to do well on tests, but they simply can't make the logical connection between being able to use the language and doing well on tests.
I swear most days it makes me just want to throw all the textbooks into the ocean, fire all the incompetents and start over. I love my kids but I hate the system.
Yeah, forget them ever learning to actually speak or use English. Most simply give up after the first year of middle school when they realize how pointless and inane it is. I've been fighting textbooks and test based teaching for the last three years. It's easy to get bitter.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to set Mars on fire,
I just want to start a flame in its soil.
In my heart I have but one desire
And that's perchlorate, no other will boil.
I've lost all ambition for Earthly acclaim
I just want to find some oxygen
And with the emissions with applied flame,
I'll have found the little Martian men, believe me!
I don't want to set Mars on fire,
I just want to start a flame in its soil!
What, and blatantly overcharging a captive audience for something that should be nearly free (Internet) isn't? It costs a pittance to set up a wifi point and less than $50 per month for a cheap DSL connection. Hell, my neighborhood coffee shops provide that to paying customers, and thanks to security checks every single person waiting in front of the gates is a paying customer. Where exactly are those "airport fees" going anyway?
This doesn't work on msi packages (which I discovered when trying to update TortoiseSVN one day). For those you have to do something special, along the lines of:
open command prompt
navigate to wherever you downloaded the msi file to
runas with some arbitrary set of parameters (which will depend on how things are set up on your system)
install the software
pray that the permissions were set up properly
Also, any program which updates itself will have problems until you "runas /env /noprofile /user:blah firefox.exe" (Firefox shits bricks telling you it can't update unless you figure out this trick or grant full write to all users). Not very simple.
Somebody please mod parent +1 Informative. This post is right on the mark.
Indeed, if the US had enough dark fiber we wouldn't need this plan at all.
I don't think that's quite what they mean by "great for bash".
It's great until you bump it by accident while typing or gaming. If done while typing you'll not only lose the focus of your typing window, but probably set your computer thrashing for the next 15 seconds while it opens up a program or two you didn't want to. As for gaming, most games these days disable that (dis)functionality while the game is running, but for quite awhile the windows key combined with many games' inability to return from loss of screen control meant that games would either crash or refuse to display anything if you merely bumped that infernal key (easy to do if you're trying to hit Ctrl).
Quite a few people used hacks to disable the windows key for that reason.
Interestingly enough, that's exactly what local governments are already doing via speed cameras. Lower the fines enough, remove the insurance penalties, and it turns into a road tax. In that case, it's a cash grab. And then they claim it's intended to slow people down?
Similarly in the case of the FTC, I do agree with you that they should grab a little bit harder if they want to make it an actual deterrent. As it stands, it's too low a penalty to even make money, let alone deter these companies.
Are you one of those people who tries to make a spreadsheet behave like a database? Or perhaps you read from your Powerpoint slides? A leatherman tool has a Phillips head on it, but it's not an ideal screwdriver. Likewise it's possible to use a word processor to make "complex, multi-chapter documents", but it's better to choose the correct tools for the job and apply them properly.
If the documents are primarily intended to be printed on standard paper by professional printers and needs to look pretty, create the content with minimal formatting in another tool (in multiple files when necessary), and then import it into a proper layout program. LaTEX, PageMaker, InDesign, or another program capable of making PostScript compatible documents would be the correct tool here. You can convert easily to PDF, if it needs to be screen viewable. And if you've set it up properly, anyone can edit the content without accidentally mucking up your carefully selected fonts and kerning.
If the docs are intended to be read by humans on a screen, again start with CONTENT in a file with minimal formatting, and then use the correct tool to format it in your choice of HTML, PDF, or some other common open format. If you want HTML to look pixel-perfect on a screen, you're attacking the problem the wrong way. One guy who sets his machine to "Large Fonts" will either break your pixel-perfect formatting or (if you've overridden his preferences) get angry because he can't read the fine print.
If it needs to be commonly editable and point-perfect printing isn't important, then a word processor might be the proper tool. But again, the content should be separate from the formatting. Templates exist for a reason! If the formatting gets mucked up in the transition then you can edit a single file to make all your documents of that type work properly. But if your poorly trained office staff simply opened up last year's document and pasted in this year's figures, they weren't using the toolset properly. You're going to have to transition off your current version of Word eventually. Might as well make it easier for yourself.
Use the right tools for the right job, and use them properly.
Then don't look. Is there some sort of invisible hand controlling what sites you browse to? I don't think this is the kind of thing you're likely to see unless you go looking for it. You're free to browse away from it. And you're always free to tell the original poster that it's in bad taste, if you think so. If they don't think much of you and your opinion, they should be free to ignore your request to remove the image.
It's not the responsibility of others not to offend you; that's a surefire road to censorship, and not a can of worms you want to open. In a free multicultural society, the onus falls on you not to throw a fit if you're offended.
Catch on? No. But it might catch fire!
*BAM* Objection!
I agree. People who misuse the terminology in such a way should be keelhauled.
You do realize the USPS hasn't been government-run for quite some time now, right?
Home Depot? The store that sells wood is spying on my Internet access?
Yeah, they really know how to put the thumbscrews on.
Am I gonna get a well-deserved "whoosh" for this reply?
Don't worry, there's not sufficient atmosphere in space to make a 'whoosh". And even if there were, there's no medium to carry it.
Or...
If a joke flies through space, and there's nobody there to hear it, it still doesn't make a sound.
I think you've been playing too much Nethack.
Unfortunately it looks like this will only work if your inner ear is undamaged and functioning properly. I had major hearing loss in one ear from an injury a few years ago, and one of the tests they did was acoustically coupling a small vibrating pad to the base of my skull to determine whether the injury was in the middle or inner ear. If your cochlea are already damaged to the point that you need a cochlear implant (direct neural stimulation) then you'd be able to _feel_ your skull vibrating but you will hear nothing -- a very odd sensation indeed.
Of course I shudder at the thought of what microwave radiation would do to the electrodes in your cochlear implant. It might literally induce a current through your brain. At the low end it would destroy the tissues connected to the electrodes. At the high end it might induce a seizure or kill you. I hope to hell it's well shielded.
Recruiting, eh? I can imagine the phone calls going something like this:
"Hi, Mr. Phillips, I'm from the FTC, and we've heard that you've recently been the victim of identity theft."
"Yes, yes that's true!"
"To verify that the study is accurate, could I have your date of birth please?"
"Sure, it's September 17th, 1964."
"I have the first digit of your SSN as '6', is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Could you read off the rest of it for me?"
I don't know, but their website runs ASP
So, like routing packets on the internet.
With the notable exception that you can drop packets on the Internet, and the sender will simply retransmit. In fact, with TCP/IP you are expected to do so. I'd be willing to bet that a large percentage of IP packets are dropped. But with human beings your "packets" are unique tokens which are not retransmittable and cannot be dropped. If the rail lines past Bumfuck, IA are blocked by freight cars or other nonsense, I either have to backtrack creating more traffic, or wait there until it clears up. I can't discard the people or cargo, and they will take up buffer space. So it's not quite the same, the railroads have their own set of issues.
Here's your chance to finally get a life! Gentlemen, place your bids!
I rented a Life one time. It was OK, if a bit on the small side. I'd say it's worth maybe $7000.
Predictable and correct are not the same thing. Predictable would mean deterministic, and there are problems where deterministic systems don't work well at all. Take language processing as an example: modern computer NLP models are deterministic but they're awful. Even given reams of examples and input, more than a human being will ever see, they often can't even form a coherent sentence. Quite frankly, modern NLP systems suck. On the other hand, human translation of human languages is not deterministic-- that is to say, all human beings will not translate a given sentence exactly the same way. But it is usually correct (both accurate and grammatically correct) when the subject knows both languages.
At present, we can't translate human language algorithmically. Some would say that's because the algorithms aren't complex enough or we're not using the right algorithms, but I think it has a lot to do with our insistence on determinism. An algorithm is a function that given a specific input always returns the same output. We can try to munge things by adding time or previous feedback as an input, but maybe that's not the correct approach. Maybe we need to abandon our idea that a computer must be predictable.
I'm not the original AC but I've done that job for the last three years. I'll answer as best as I can.
That's basically what I've been trying to do, but it doesn't really work. The normal slow lesson plan takes up all the class time, and they simply don't have the background to have any interesting conversations in the meantime (nor do they have time with all the club activities they do.) The smart kids get bored and give up, then start doing poorly. The lower level kids get frustrated and give up. The mediocre students do alright for awhile until they see their peers giving up, assume they can't do it either, and then give up. The groupthink here is STRONG. It would be a start if we could separate out students by level in their second and third year but it's antithetical to the Way Things Are.
Yet another problem is teaching grammar points in Japanese rather than simply practicing until it's second nature. I've gone over this before. Teaching grammar and vocabulary lists simply doesn't work.
Another problem is that a large number of the "English teachers" here can't speak English. I'd consider that makes them unqualified to teach, since they aren't masters of their subject, but they're here and they're entrenched, and they can't be fired or even disciplined for remaining incompetent. The obvious (and wrong) conclusion the students make is that smart, successful Japanese people can't learn English, or that only foreigners speak English.
The nail in the coffin is the simple fact that many of these kids don't interact with English speakers on any regular basis, apart from the token assistant language teacher. The motivation to really learn to speak just isn't there. There's a motivation to do well on tests, but they simply can't make the logical connection between being able to use the language and doing well on tests.
I swear most days it makes me just want to throw all the textbooks into the ocean, fire all the incompetents and start over. I love my kids but I hate the system.
Yeah, forget them ever learning to actually speak or use English. Most simply give up after the first year of middle school when they realize how pointless and inane it is. I've been fighting textbooks and test based teaching for the last three years. It's easy to get bitter.