Here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, virtually every town has its own school system. Some have regionalized portions, but retain direct input nonetheless. The state retains a mostly advisory role, setting performance benchmarks and broad-brush curriculum standards, as does the federal government, but towns are largely able to control the details. Our counties are essentially meaningless, more a geographic shorthand than a political unit.
My own high school education was quite good: the school is highly regarded, and despite having several strong private and parochial schools in the area it is both fairly uncommon for students to elect to attend them and widely known that my public high school is a popular choice for students from neighboring towns to attend via school choice programs.
A few miles south, however, Springfield's schools have been seized by state administrators due to consistent and dramatic under-performance. And all over the state, standardized testing has required massive cuts to secondary subjects (including the sciences, foreign languages, and arts) both to help cover the costs of administration and to tightly restructure math, English and US history curriculum to a testing framework which can only be generously described as "not terribly helpful".
Our schools are dying for the belief that, contrary to basic common sense, it's more important to have a numeric index of student performance than to actually teach them anything.
Gravity is negated you say? I somehow doubt that submariners would enjoy the prospect of placing their ships perpendicular to the surface... the submarine would likely be just fine, everything and everyone inside less so.
Do you have any idea how many Americans sincerely believe that Earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago? They are perfectly within their rights to assume that the 'average" viewer is, perhaps, a bit on the dim side.
I'd say "follows the scientific method" is assumed in "does scientific research"... since, by definition, not doing the former precludes doing the latter.
Every time I power on or bring my Ubuntu-running laptop out of hibernation, I have to unmute it in software.
There is no good reason for this, and at no time have I ever told it that I want this behavior. Aside from the fact that sound won't play, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that this is what has happened: no mute icon, no error message, nothing. It wasn't that way on installation, but a few weeks ago it just decided that would be a fun idea. I was worried for a minute that the speakers had shorted out.
I'm sure there's a fix out there for this, I'm sure it's not even that big a challenge... but that's not the point. The point is that there is absolutely no justification for this to happen in the first place. It's completely stupid, and it's *precisely* the kind of minor, trivial, nuisance problem that will drive away less astute users. Incompatibility with some obscure video codec that nobody uses outside of the Czech Republic won't hurt user adoption rates nearly so much as failure to build a basic GUI with standard buttons for the video player will, and failure to configure said player such that somebody who doesn't give a shit for absolutely optimal performance and just wants to watch a freaking video can just open it and go will absolutely kill it. Guess which sort of problem is a bigger plague for Linux and FOSS in general?
I suspect that few people will be willing to put in the work to keep a 2011 Kia running in 20 years. The Model T's that are currently on the road are, virtually without exception, only in such condition by the grace of hobbyists willing to endlessly pour work and money into them.
With enough man-hours you can keep pretty much anything running forever.
To make a computer analogy for your car analogy: just because more Apple IIs are still in use than eMachines from 10 years ago doesn't mean that the Apple II is better... simply that people have entirely different reasons for wishing to use them. One can be nostalgic about an Apple II or Model T, and appreciate them for their historic and cultural significance... not so much for a generic modern computer or econobox automobile.
Give me an adblocker that stifles ads with sound, pop-ups, pop-unders, animation (although I will accept it on mouse-over), changing size, and other abusive fucktardery, but allows silent, static, on-page ads to appear unimpeded; furthermore, have it automatically generate a message to the webmaster informing them that their abusive and needlessly irritating ad has been blocked, and that so long as they continue to run ads which unreasonably interfere with my ability to use their site, I will continue to deny them ad-revenues.
I'll use it, and I'll be glad for the option of rewarding good behavior (through allowing reasonable ads to generate revenue) and punishing bad behavior (by causing obnoxious ads to waste bandwidth and potentially DDoS mail servers).
I don't have any problem with a site running banner ads as a revenue stream, and I am perfectly happy to just let them display on the page... but intentionally doing extra shit just to annoy me is crossing the line.
If I'm going to start busting on tax evaders, I'll dig up dirt on people who already make more than they could spend anyway, the ones with no good excuses or reasons.
My friends and former coworkers taking shifts waiting tables to make ends meet... nope, they're good.
Some people just don't like OSX. No clear, objective, major reason why... they simply don't.
I am just such a person. I find it non-intuitive, slow feeling, and most the the 'features" intended to make life "easier" just sort of get in my way. I don't hate it, per se (some of the features, like on-the-fly font installation, I actually quite like) it just isn't something I choose to work on, and definitely not something I would pay a premium for.
I'd chalk it up to "Windows familiarity" entirely, but I don't have the same issues with Linux. Maybe it's an allergy to hipness.
Maybe I'm in a minority here, but outside of work (where we all have to use IE due to security settings... although we also use OpenOffice on many low priority boxes, go figure) I know more people who use Safari on a regular basis than IE. Like, lots more.
And abstinence is the only 100% effective form of birth control. But you and I both know that's not why it's so popular on Slashdot.
Turns out that some people engage in somewhat risky behavior because they find the rewards to be worthwhile. The smart ones learn to minimize the risk, the dumb ones keep Geek Squad in business. It's like the Circle of Life, or some shit.
Kilograms, pounds, calories, newtons, liters, degrees Celsius/Fahrenheit/Kelvin, and meters/second (in the event a pie is thrown) are all perfectly valid measurements one could apply to a pie, depending on precisely what information one wants to know about it. Heck, that list isn't even complete.
Sure, some of them have duplicated functionality, and we could probably do away with some of them (like the ones that aren't SI measures...), but for the most part they are all relevant means of measuring against some benchmark.
Life on earth developed because of, not in spite of, the environmental conditions around us. One of those environmental conditions is a level of background radiation.
Whenever we locate an energy source, we almost inevitably find some sort of life-form that utilizes it... why on earth should relatively low, naturally occurring levels of ionizing radiation be any different?
30 million is actually fairly low budget by Hollywood standards. A director of Jackson's stature can often receive almost that much in up front pay for a film.
For reference, The Rocky Horror Picture had a $1.2m in 1975, which adjusted for inflation comes out to between $28m and $47m in 2009 (the year District 9 came out) depending on whether you use purchasing power or straight valuation, respectively. I think a solid case can be made for calling RHPS "low-budget".
"many of them amount to the commenter simply preferring one fantastical element to another"
I too weary of people arguing over what types or degrees of fiction qualify a text as "science fiction" rather than "fantasy" or "science". I see no objective reason for the assumption that including one scientific concept, say, FTL travel, is more acceptable than another, say, telepathy. Neither do I see why people obsess over just how much speculative explanation is given for these things as part of the explanation. It's all bullshit.
"I do think that a lot of Alastair Reynolds' short stories would make for great feature length films"
In my experience, short stories generally do.
Novels actually tend to be too long, even relatively short YA fare like "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" require substantial cutting just to keep from going over length. I suspect that one of the reasons "Neuromancer" still hasn't been made is that writing a short enough script for it is going to savage the book to where actual fans would riot in the streets.
In fairness, if you're just cheating on your taxes, then you probably ARE more ethical than the rest of them... if only because that's pretty much the starting point.
Slashdot Mirror
Here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, virtually every town has its own school system. Some have regionalized portions, but retain direct input nonetheless. The state retains a mostly advisory role, setting performance benchmarks and broad-brush curriculum standards, as does the federal government, but towns are largely able to control the details. Our counties are essentially meaningless, more a geographic shorthand than a political unit.
My own high school education was quite good: the school is highly regarded, and despite having several strong private and parochial schools in the area it is both fairly uncommon for students to elect to attend them and widely known that my public high school is a popular choice for students from neighboring towns to attend via school choice programs.
A few miles south, however, Springfield's schools have been seized by state administrators due to consistent and dramatic under-performance. And all over the state, standardized testing has required massive cuts to secondary subjects (including the sciences, foreign languages, and arts) both to help cover the costs of administration and to tightly restructure math, English and US history curriculum to a testing framework which can only be generously described as "not terribly helpful".
Our schools are dying for the belief that, contrary to basic common sense, it's more important to have a numeric index of student performance than to actually teach them anything.
Gravity is negated you say? I somehow doubt that submariners would enjoy the prospect of placing their ships perpendicular to the surface... the submarine would likely be just fine, everything and everyone inside less so.
I don't think your hypothesis needs an "or".
Do you have any idea how many Americans sincerely believe that Earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago? They are perfectly within their rights to assume that the 'average" viewer is, perhaps, a bit on the dim side.
Perhaps GP considers engineering an applied science. That would make all engineers applied scientists, but not all applied scientists engineers.
You sum up where this leaves engineers who do not appreciably use applied science in their work quite nicely: engineers by title.
I'd say "follows the scientific method" is assumed in "does scientific research"... since, by definition, not doing the former precludes doing the latter.
Every time I power on or bring my Ubuntu-running laptop out of hibernation, I have to unmute it in software.
There is no good reason for this, and at no time have I ever told it that I want this behavior. Aside from the fact that sound won't play, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that this is what has happened: no mute icon, no error message, nothing. It wasn't that way on installation, but a few weeks ago it just decided that would be a fun idea. I was worried for a minute that the speakers had shorted out.
I'm sure there's a fix out there for this, I'm sure it's not even that big a challenge... but that's not the point. The point is that there is absolutely no justification for this to happen in the first place. It's completely stupid, and it's *precisely* the kind of minor, trivial, nuisance problem that will drive away less astute users. Incompatibility with some obscure video codec that nobody uses outside of the Czech Republic won't hurt user adoption rates nearly so much as failure to build a basic GUI with standard buttons for the video player will, and failure to configure said player such that somebody who doesn't give a shit for absolutely optimal performance and just wants to watch a freaking video can just open it and go will absolutely kill it. Guess which sort of problem is a bigger plague for Linux and FOSS in general?
I suspect that few people will be willing to put in the work to keep a 2011 Kia running in 20 years. The Model T's that are currently on the road are, virtually without exception, only in such condition by the grace of hobbyists willing to endlessly pour work and money into them.
With enough man-hours you can keep pretty much anything running forever.
To make a computer analogy for your car analogy: just because more Apple IIs are still in use than eMachines from 10 years ago doesn't mean that the Apple II is better... simply that people have entirely different reasons for wishing to use them. One can be nostalgic about an Apple II or Model T, and appreciate them for their historic and cultural significance... not so much for a generic modern computer or econobox automobile.
Point Osbourne.
But can it run Linux?
He might be WINNING, but those chicks are definitely NOT for free.
Should have played the guitar on the MTV, that's the way you do it.
I've got a better idea:
Give me an adblocker that stifles ads with sound, pop-ups, pop-unders, animation (although I will accept it on mouse-over), changing size, and other abusive fucktardery, but allows silent, static, on-page ads to appear unimpeded; furthermore, have it automatically generate a message to the webmaster informing them that their abusive and needlessly irritating ad has been blocked, and that so long as they continue to run ads which unreasonably interfere with my ability to use their site, I will continue to deny them ad-revenues.
I'll use it, and I'll be glad for the option of rewarding good behavior (through allowing reasonable ads to generate revenue) and punishing bad behavior (by causing obnoxious ads to waste bandwidth and potentially DDoS mail servers).
I don't have any problem with a site running banner ads as a revenue stream, and I am perfectly happy to just let them display on the page... but intentionally doing extra shit just to annoy me is crossing the line.
If I'm going to start busting on tax evaders, I'll dig up dirt on people who already make more than they could spend anyway, the ones with no good excuses or reasons.
My friends and former coworkers taking shifts waiting tables to make ends meet... nope, they're good.
You seem to be under the impression that cash tips are generally logged properly such that taxes can be properly paid.
That's adorable.
Speaking of which... good news! The Easter Bunny is coming in just a few more days! Get ready for candy!
Some people just don't like OSX. No clear, objective, major reason why... they simply don't.
I am just such a person. I find it non-intuitive, slow feeling, and most the the 'features" intended to make life "easier" just sort of get in my way. I don't hate it, per se (some of the features, like on-the-fly font installation, I actually quite like) it just isn't something I choose to work on, and definitely not something I would pay a premium for.
I'd chalk it up to "Windows familiarity" entirely, but I don't have the same issues with Linux. Maybe it's an allergy to hipness.
Maybe I'm in a minority here, but outside of work (where we all have to use IE due to security settings... although we also use OpenOffice on many low priority boxes, go figure) I know more people who use Safari on a regular basis than IE. Like, lots more.
And abstinence is the only 100% effective form of birth control. But you and I both know that's not why it's so popular on Slashdot.
Turns out that some people engage in somewhat risky behavior because they find the rewards to be worthwhile. The smart ones learn to minimize the risk, the dumb ones keep Geek Squad in business. It's like the Circle of Life, or some shit.
Kilograms, pounds, calories, newtons, liters, degrees Celsius/Fahrenheit/Kelvin, and meters/second (in the event a pie is thrown) are all perfectly valid measurements one could apply to a pie, depending on precisely what information one wants to know about it. Heck, that list isn't even complete.
Sure, some of them have duplicated functionality, and we could probably do away with some of them (like the ones that aren't SI measures...), but for the most part they are all relevant means of measuring against some benchmark.
Randal is smarter than most news rooms... as in everyone there combined.
It would stand to reason that the quality of his research and presentation is significantly better than theirs.
Life on earth developed because of, not in spite of, the environmental conditions around us. One of those environmental conditions is a level of background radiation.
Whenever we locate an energy source, we almost inevitably find some sort of life-form that utilizes it... why on earth should relatively low, naturally occurring levels of ionizing radiation be any different?
I assume that you include the app's authors and publisher in this, yes? They take it quite seriously.
30 million is actually fairly low budget by Hollywood standards. A director of Jackson's stature can often receive almost that much in up front pay for a film.
For reference, The Rocky Horror Picture had a $1.2m in 1975, which adjusted for inflation comes out to between $28m and $47m in 2009 (the year District 9 came out) depending on whether you use purchasing power or straight valuation, respectively. I think a solid case can be made for calling RHPS "low-budget".
At least those are the numbers I got from http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
"many of them amount to the commenter simply preferring one fantastical element to another"
I too weary of people arguing over what types or degrees of fiction qualify a text as "science fiction" rather than "fantasy" or "science". I see no objective reason for the assumption that including one scientific concept, say, FTL travel, is more acceptable than another, say, telepathy. Neither do I see why people obsess over just how much speculative explanation is given for these things as part of the explanation. It's all bullshit.
It was also dreck.
"I do think that a lot of Alastair Reynolds' short stories would make for great feature length films"
In my experience, short stories generally do.
Novels actually tend to be too long, even relatively short YA fare like "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" require substantial cutting just to keep from going over length. I suspect that one of the reasons "Neuromancer" still hasn't been made is that writing a short enough script for it is going to savage the book to where actual fans would riot in the streets.
In fairness, if you're just cheating on your taxes, then you probably ARE more ethical than the rest of them... if only because that's pretty much the starting point.
"the people at Forbes obviously have a sufficiently fucked up ethical barometer, or a sufficiently short memory"
That is absolutely not an "or" proposition. The editor-in-chief is a heavily involved in both FreedomWorks and the Heritage Foundation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Forbes