But take a look at the energy produced:fuel consumption ratios for diesel electric trains compared to ocean liners and Priuses(?) then compare engine sizes (obviously the Prius isn't diesel, so it mucks up the math a bit... if you are aware of any diesel electric automobiles feel free to use those numbers instead).
If you think of it in terms of friction and inertia it actually makes quite a bit of sense.
You are correct to say that the cost of the Brooklyn Bridge was the labor and materials put into building it (all which I'm sure have a known dollar amount, in case anyone cares), but that is not the same as its value or worth. One would have to account for how much it would cost to rebuild the bridge now, how much revenue it actually generates per year (ie. in terms of fuel savings and increase in access, how much business is created by the Brooklyn Bridge multiplied by how valuable that business is), how long it would take to rebuild the bridge, and the bridge's sentimental value as an historic landmark.
You're also right that there is no "hidden value"... it's pretty much out in the open.
"With all the loss in conversion and transportation of electricity, you'd think being generated locally would save a lot of electricity (since there's little to no loss in pumping that natural gas to the home)."
The problem is that, generally speaking, a few large generators are more efficient than a whole bunch of small ones. To the extent that transmission loss is greater then the loss from using small (relatively inefficient) generators rather than big (relatively efficient) your statement is true... but my guess is that currently we lose a lot more in transmission than we gain from using larger generators.
Of course not, but the point is that if they're going to break other people's things, their things get broken too. It would be a valuable life lesson.
"While we're dishing out self-righteous arbitrary punishments, I think your head should be lobbed off for making such a retarded post."
Wow, that was... shockingly lame. I was especially fond of the "lobbed off", I'm not sure how one would throw my head off of my shoulders, but it sounds intriguing. Made it funnier when you tried to call me a retard.
I'd take down his internet for a day and force him to do community service as an IT help desk worker. Once he has to be on the other end of a zillion phone calls with idiot users, he too will understand the pain he's caused some poor tech.
I'd also smash up the high school kids car (assuming he paid for it himself, and especially if it's a nice one) with a baseball bat. He can go back to riding the bus for a while, and maybe he'll figure out that breaking other people's property just isn't that amusing.
Sometimes, I think people just need to be reminded of the full ramifications implied by the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you... and bear in mind that they probably will and definitely should follow through.
Like how I believe the pro-capitol punishment Bush administration should be tried for treason (a capitol crime), just to see what their opinions are once it's THEIR necks on the line (literally).
And your problem with ridiculous melodrama about something entirely inconsequential is?
Seriously though, so fucking what? They pulled Firewire from a single laptop... stop the press everybody, this shit's important! Firewire certainly is better than USB for large high speed file transfers, and especially for real time multimedia transfers; but if you're regularly using your laptop for things like massive file transfers and multi-media editing, you're doing it wrong.
And a "-1, bashing twitter for no good reason" moderation. I'm all for nuking his karma further into oblivion, but it simply adds nothing for ACs to troll him... especially when he doesn't actually say anything particularly stupid or abusive (like the post above).
"Not really. You can't look at a diploma or degree and just know, because there is no standardization. You have to use an evaluation process that is time-consuming and error-prone, and thus expensive. Such evaluation takes time away from evaluating things like personality, takes time away from evaluating other people, and so on. It's waste."
If the standardization testing and curriculum requirements weren't, among other things, extremely expensive, time consuming and error-prone, you might have a point... but they are all three. Like I said, would you rather have overall better educated people, or have an easier time finding the people who have proven they're good at something useless (ie. taking standardized tests)?
"No way. Outside of the specialist nerd degrees, the requirement is often that a person have **any** college degree. Typical degrees for such people include art history, communication, black studies, dance, international relations, criminal justice, philosophy, English, business, journalism, French, marketing, early childhood development, women's studies, music performance, athletic performance, physical education, sociology, political science, psychology..."
And you think standardized testing will solve that? Aside from the fact that there ARE jobs out there which require the various specialized skills of many of those degrees (and that many of them require specialized skills that most of the/. crowd, perhaps including you, view as either useless or non-existent... there is definitely a bias here towards "if it can't be modeled mathematically, it's useless" which is neither helpful nor true), even jobs which do not may actually want the diversity of experience and knowledge that they indicate.
"Most often, these people aren't actually using the degree. Employers hope that the degree requirement will screen out people who can't read and write. Such a situation is simply horrible; reading and writing skills should be ensured by the completion of elementary school. If that's all the skill you need -- and it is for many people -- then you're wasting over a decade in school."
Then the problem is that employers have chosen a stupid way to check for basic literacy. Standardized testing is pretty much the most costly fix for that problem, as well as being the most time-consuming and most harmful to the education process. Besides, most are graded (or at least recorded) pass/fail, and "pass" is just a fancy way of saying "meets the bare minimum requirements". If they really want people to prove their literacy, then they are much better served by incorporating some kind of literacy test into the interview process: hand the applicants a short article, a pen and a piece of paper, and require them to write some sort of response to it on the spot; it could even be multi-tasked by having them read and write something that is needed at another point in the process regardless of literacy. Or they could, you know, read the cover letter to their resume (the writing of which could probably be taught in place of the time spent on standardized tests).
"Prior to the tests, we couldn't measure success well at all. We had the SAT (a test) for people going off to college. Class rank was relative, as was GPA, so one couldn't tell the difference between successful education and grade inflation. Any school district or individual teacher could claim to be doing well, and nobody could dispute the claim."
Reality contradicts you. We've always been able to find the smart and well educated people, even without essentially meaningless numbers. Even still, if the success of education is measured only by performance on narrowly tailored and defined standardized tests, then that success means less and less the further from "taking tests" our objectives for educated people become... and as it turns out, there is essentially no useful work to be done in the field of "taking standardized tests". If we can have measurability and conformity only in exchange for usefulness and diversity, then I submit that the latter are far more useful to us, as a society, than the former.
"Because of these problems, a high school diploma has become nearly meaningless in the job market. The 4-year college degree is now a requirement for numerous fields that really shouldn't need it. That's an extra 4 years of human life being spent on remedial education, times however many people."
Like what? if you don't think people should need college degrees to do certain things which they currently do, then argue against them... but frankly I can't think of all that many examples to support your point. None, in fact. the truth of the matter is that most fields have become far more specialized and now require a greater amount of esoteric knowledge than they used to. Requiring a college degree is a symptom of this, not a cause.
"If you look back at 5th grade and 8th grade final exams from 100 to 200 years ago, you can see how dramatic the slide has been. In the absense of nationwide standard tests (which we still don't really have) there is nothing to stop education from getting worse. There was a time when an 8th grade education meant you could deal with latin, rhetoric, logic, word problems, and so on. Typical college graduates today are unable to meet a similar standard."
Unless, of course, you take into account what knowledge is imparted now, and other fundamental differences in what education accomplishes. How many people learned even basic computing skills 100 years ago at any age? And now? How many people actually completed the 5th grade 200 years ago? There hasn't been a slide, there's been a shift... frankly I'd be much more concerned if nothing had changed in the past 2 centuries. I'd also like to point out that 100 years ago we didn't have standardized tests, but we did have smaller class sizes, greater community involvement with schools and teachers made far more money by comparison to other jobs than the do today. This might be a better argument against you than for.
The big deal is that she is required by law, the very same law she has sworn to uphold as governor, to follow certain rules and regulations about how she conducts her business. Had she used her work e-mail, as it were, compliance would have been enforced server side and this would not be an issue, but she chose not to and then violated the rules. If she'd used Yahoo! and followed the rules there wouldn't be a problem (well, outside of Yahoo! mail being crap...), but she didn't follow them and now it IS a problem. She may choose whatever e-mail provider she wants, she MAY NOT choose to break the law.
And before somebody comes along with "well it's just her personal e-mail address, she probably didn't even think to" as a defense of doing this... the account names pretty obviously indicate she created them AFTER becoming governor, so it's not like these are legacy addresses. It's also not as if somebody held a gun to her head and made her run for and accept the office of governor of Alaska, if she didn't want to comply with these laws, all she needed to do was not take on a job which required her to follow them.
Sure it does. Of course, before the advent of annual high-cost multiple choice tests for every child we were still able to measure success. Your argument is moot.
"We need cold hard numbers"
For what? Really, why do we need cold hard numbers about how our students are performing? I've heard this "need" referred to before, and I always come back to this one nagging problem: I simply cannot comprehend why we need this, especially if the cost of obtaining these cold hard numbers is watching them go down across the board. Unless you can explain why we'd rather have cold hard numbers than success at educating our children, your argument is moot.
"some rubbish about how the students are all self-esteemy"
If students feel they are able to achieve and build self esteem, they learn and achieve more and are happier. What part of that is 'rubbish". More importantly, I stated that standardized testing is a disgusting waste of time and money that serves only to make our education system weaker... what the fuck has that got to do with "self-esteemy rubbish"? Your argument is moot.
"No numbers? The learning didn't happen."
Are you fucking serious? Are you really saying that if we don't quantify "learning" it doesn't happen? Imagine all those poor sods who were educated before the advent of force fed standardized testing. Whatever they may have learned, it's useless to society because they can't prove it with arcane numbers... how sad. I'd say this is moot, but it's not... it's just complete bullshit.
This anti-union rant brought to you by some douche with an MBA and an opinion of educators apparently scraped from angry 14 year-olds.
People learn in dramatically different ways, and it takes people who know this and are skilled at adjusting how information is given to be learned in order to have the most people learn the best. Doing this actually requires a lot of cross-disciplinary skills and a substantial investment of time in each individual student. Knowing the material is only half of it, because a teacher with all the knowledge in the world is useless if they cannot convey it effectively.
As for your idea of having one really good teacher projected across time and space to teach thousands of students at once, believe it or not that's already been thought of... a very long time ago. As it turns out, textbooks are a popular, even ubiquitous, way of teaching new students, and they are then supported by a large local network of assistants who are able to assist students with understanding and interpreting them. The assistants have also managed to unionize, which apparently drives you nuts, but seems to serve the majority of teachers AND the majority of schools AND the majority of students just fine. You almost had a great idea that nobody else has ever had before, though. No, seriously, that was really close, I mean it.
Here's an idea: revoke No Child Left Behind and reassign the millions of dollars being paid to standardized test writers to hiring more teachers in all subjects. The cost stays exactly the same, but even a relatively poor teacher is going to teach the kids more than even the best standardized test because, get this, TESTS ARE NOT INTENDED TO TEACH. But that would harm those wonderful capitalists at Useless Tests, Inc. to the benefit of those commie unionist teachers, so I'm sure you'll oppose it whether or not all the evidence in the world supports it as the only way that works.
Dude, multi-class, it works. Or you could go for one of the multi-purpose class like monk or paladin that already does that... or even go ranger and have all three branches covered!
That said, I do agree that the rogue/fighter light infantry build is so unbelievably broken as to make nearly all other possibilities a waste of time, and that this somewhat deadens the ability to make any character one wants.
"That was good; a fine mix of facts [which are objective] and your subjective opinion about those facts [which of course are purely subjective]. I would have liked to see your criticism directed at particular games where applicable."
I tried most of them about 6 months ago when I upgraded my desktop. Prior to that I had tried a few, but it was clear they simply couldn't run properly. I'm a little fuzzy on details, which is why I'm sticking to overall statements.
"Nexuiz and OpenArena are both around the 25 map mark last I checked. While it doesn't measure up to quake 1 (38 maps), I think "not long enough to count" is stretching it a bit."
How long is each map? I've played games with only a dozen maps that took a very long time because the maps are either huge or just take a long time to finish. I've also played games with gobs of load screens, but they all take about a minute to play through. I'd honestly somewhat rather the first (since load screens are annoying).
"I don't remember that game very well; isn't it something along the lines of "you're the sole survivor on $PLANET; get to $POINT so that you can [blow stuff up | repair your ship], and kill all that moves on the way"? Sauerbraten has a few words to the same effect that serve to motivate the killing."
That was basically it, although it sounds better when not reduced to PERL;). It's amazing what a couple paragraphs of back story and "missions" that essentially amount to "go in the only direction you can and kill everything" can do to at least give the impression of plot. I do seem to remember Sauerbraten having something to that effect.
"I've run into a few games like that, but mostly they're arcade games where you only need four arrows and a fire button... You've run into FPSes like that? I'm shocked. A bug should be filed and it should be fixed; one can work around it with xmodmap and wrapper scripts, but that sucks. Which games are you talking about here?" To be fair, I ran into one. I quickly uninstalled it, but I have no idea which one it was at this point... I only even ran the app for about 5 minutes (just long enough to figure out what controls I wanted and realize I couldn't have them).
"I've found that the path from main menu to either setting up and playing the game or configuring stuff to be [for the most part] reasonably short (two to three layers of nesting) and navigable with the mouse and number entry; no keybindings needed."
I meant in-game (or HUD, so-called because they are essentially an extension of your ammo/health/whatever else you need gauges) menus. I'm not so brutal as to ditch a game solely because of the main menu (well, unless it's REALLY bad, but I don't think I've seen one that bad yet). If I need to be able to build turrets, upgrade my armor and weapons, and communicate with my team via menus, then it's pretty critical those menus be both intuitive and fast: before I can build the muscle memories and know the game well enough to know which ones I need, it is critical that I can go through the menus easily and intuitively so I waste as little time as possible; once I do build the knowledge and muscle memories, it is equally critical that I can use them without wasting any time at all. This is probably the point on which I'm least forgiving. A simple way to get around this is to not have them at all (or so minimally that problems just can't arise), but that means reducing the amount of stuff you can do, which isn't such a great trade-off.
"Do you know of any worse examples? Please share them, then; I'd like to see the horrors... Is tremulous one of them? What are the others?"
I do remember fighting inordinately with the Tremulous menus. They were definitely not a strong point in that one, though I had much greater issues with the weapon balance (or lack thereof).
"The Nexuiz weapons are not all vanilla (IMO): the low-damage infinite-ammo gun also serves as a jump tool and can be used to push others around. The rocket launcher can be used defensiv
Stock manipulation and fraud of that type is actually criminal. The SEC and FTC do not take kindly to people who attempt (and more importantly fail) to game the system like that, and let's just say that the guys from the SEC make the IRS look like harmless kittens.
"Anyways, trying to steer away from a pit of subjectivity: you say that the free FPSes are not on par with what you see in the non-free/commercial world (e.g. hl plus mods). What's missing? Please try and be scientific-ish, i.e. objective and measurable; don't just say "but $NAME is more fun and immersive", describe *why* that is so."
Well, with the understanding that you asking me to do something patently impossible (ie. don't be subjective with regards to a purely subjective topic), here's my best shot:
I have yet to find a FOSS FPS with a single player mode that was long enough to really count OR have a solid, original storyline with any amount of depth or insight (I realize that comparing nearly anything to the Half-Life series in this regard is simply unfair, but I would settle for something comparable to Wolfenstein or Unreal... heck, even Quake 2 had enough of a story to hold the gore together) and while that isn't entirely a deal breaker (especially if multiplayer is compelling), it certainly doesn't help.
I have also found that most suffer from controls which are either incredibly arcane or maddeningly simplistic. I have run into games that expect you to learn the ins and outs of a half dozen HUD menus, all of which require separate bind keys, to do various game-critical tasks without providing any option for a consolidated menu that may be a little slower but at least requires only one bind. I've also run into games that won't let you set custom keyboard controls. Many non-free FPS games I've played manage to accomplish both ease and power to a greater or lesser degree, and I would certainly prefer an imperfect balance than either extreme.
The graphics I've observed in FOSS FPS games tend to look amateurish and cartoony. I don't care if the rendering is technologically superior, or doesn't require using hacks to replicate complex effects, I care if the game looks good. Keep in mind that I do feel the same way about most commerecial games as well... I find Halo completely unplayable because everything looks like it's made out of plastic (not so bad for armor or computers... very bad for grass and trees and skies), as well as that I do not expect (or want) photo-realistic bleeding edge graphics either... my favorite multiplayer FPS is Day Of Defeat, which is convincing not because of the graphics engine's high capabilities but because the textures and models are well made and properly applied.
I find that none have compelling, well balanced weapons. I won't even try to be scientific here, because I have no idea where to start, but good weapons are crucial an FPS and most FOSS offerings just don't deliver on this. It certainly doesn't help that so many of the FOSS games are essentially carbon copies of other games to begin with. The rail gun has been done to death, and everybody has a generic machine gun... I'd like to at least something a little different, and if you can make the staple items truly stand out that is best.
That is not actually resolved. There are currently several justices (Scalia, Thomas and Roberts being the big ones) who undoubtedly believe that to be so and have written extensively to that effect, but so far that has not been upheld as "the way it is". There are justices (Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens being the most consistent and predictable) who feel that a vehicle is entitled to the same search protections as a home ("effects" are also covered), regardless of what property it is on... with the caveat that if something is visible in a vehicle from public property without entering or unreasonably examining the vehicle it is (as with one's home) fair game.
In any case, I will be surprised if this even makes it to the Supreme Court. I expect that the evidence will be excluded (and the charges inevitably dropped) long before then. I will be completely shocked if the search is upheld.
Slashdot Mirror
'Dats right, best watch yoself befoh I blast those weak-ass technical diagrams sucka!
On this issue? Nope.
But take a look at the energy produced:fuel consumption ratios for diesel electric trains compared to ocean liners and Priuses(?) then compare engine sizes (obviously the Prius isn't diesel, so it mucks up the math a bit... if you are aware of any diesel electric automobiles feel free to use those numbers instead).
If you think of it in terms of friction and inertia it actually makes quite a bit of sense.
cost!=value.
You are correct to say that the cost of the Brooklyn Bridge was the labor and materials put into building it (all which I'm sure have a known dollar amount, in case anyone cares), but that is not the same as its value or worth. One would have to account for how much it would cost to rebuild the bridge now, how much revenue it actually generates per year (ie. in terms of fuel savings and increase in access, how much business is created by the Brooklyn Bridge multiplied by how valuable that business is), how long it would take to rebuild the bridge, and the bridge's sentimental value as an historic landmark.
You're also right that there is no "hidden value"... it's pretty much out in the open.
"With all the loss in conversion and transportation of electricity, you'd think being generated locally would save a lot of electricity (since there's little to no loss in pumping that natural gas to the home)."
The problem is that, generally speaking, a few large generators are more efficient than a whole bunch of small ones. To the extent that transmission loss is greater then the loss from using small (relatively inefficient) generators rather than big (relatively efficient) your statement is true... but my guess is that currently we lose a lot more in transmission than we gain from using larger generators.
Wait, 4th ed?!? I'm still pissed about that stupid 3rd ed d20 shit they shoved down our throats!
Of course, it did make all of my 2nd ed AD&D books cheaper.
Mmmm... iBrator.
Have I smashed any mailboxes or run irritating DDoS scripts?
if(destructiveBehavior.nuisance==true){ punsihment.severity=fitting; }else{ punishment.severity=NULL; }
How hard is that to understand?
Of course not, but the point is that if they're going to break other people's things, their things get broken too. It would be a valuable life lesson.
"While we're dishing out self-righteous arbitrary punishments, I think your head should be lobbed off for making such a retarded post."
Wow, that was... shockingly lame. I was especially fond of the "lobbed off", I'm not sure how one would throw my head off of my shoulders, but it sounds intriguing. Made it funnier when you tried to call me a retard.
Thanks for that, now go back to watching Waking Life and quit with the trippy. ;)
I'd take down his internet for a day and force him to do community service as an IT help desk worker. Once he has to be on the other end of a zillion phone calls with idiot users, he too will understand the pain he's caused some poor tech.
I'd also smash up the high school kids car (assuming he paid for it himself, and especially if it's a nice one) with a baseball bat. He can go back to riding the bus for a while, and maybe he'll figure out that breaking other people's property just isn't that amusing.
Sometimes, I think people just need to be reminded of the full ramifications implied by the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you... and bear in mind that they probably will and definitely should follow through.
Like how I believe the pro-capitol punishment Bush administration should be tried for treason (a capitol crime), just to see what their opinions are once it's THEIR necks on the line (literally).
And your problem with ridiculous melodrama about something entirely inconsequential is?
Seriously though, so fucking what? They pulled Firewire from a single laptop... stop the press everybody, this shit's important! Firewire certainly is better than USB for large high speed file transfers, and especially for real time multimedia transfers; but if you're regularly using your laptop for things like massive file transfers and multi-media editing, you're doing it wrong.
And a "-1, bashing twitter for no good reason" moderation. I'm all for nuking his karma further into oblivion, but it simply adds nothing for ACs to troll him... especially when he doesn't actually say anything particularly stupid or abusive (like the post above).
"Not really. You can't look at a diploma or degree and just know, because there is no standardization. You have to use an evaluation process that is time-consuming and error-prone, and thus expensive. Such evaluation takes time away from evaluating things like personality, takes time away from evaluating other people, and so on. It's waste."
If the standardization testing and curriculum requirements weren't, among other things, extremely expensive, time consuming and error-prone, you might have a point... but they are all three. Like I said, would you rather have overall better educated people, or have an easier time finding the people who have proven they're good at something useless (ie. taking standardized tests)?
"No way. Outside of the specialist nerd degrees, the requirement is often that a person have **any** college degree. Typical degrees for such people include art history, communication, black studies, dance, international relations, criminal justice, philosophy, English, business, journalism, French, marketing, early childhood development, women's studies, music performance, athletic performance, physical education, sociology, political science, psychology..."
And you think standardized testing will solve that? Aside from the fact that there ARE jobs out there which require the various specialized skills of many of those degrees (and that many of them require specialized skills that most of the /. crowd, perhaps including you, view as either useless or non-existent... there is definitely a bias here towards "if it can't be modeled mathematically, it's useless" which is neither helpful nor true), even jobs which do not may actually want the diversity of experience and knowledge that they indicate.
"Most often, these people aren't actually using the degree. Employers hope that the degree requirement will screen out people who can't read and write. Such a situation is simply horrible; reading and writing skills should be ensured by the completion of elementary school. If that's all the skill you need -- and it is for many people -- then you're wasting over a decade in school."
Then the problem is that employers have chosen a stupid way to check for basic literacy. Standardized testing is pretty much the most costly fix for that problem, as well as being the most time-consuming and most harmful to the education process. Besides, most are graded (or at least recorded) pass/fail, and "pass" is just a fancy way of saying "meets the bare minimum requirements". If they really want people to prove their literacy, then they are much better served by incorporating some kind of literacy test into the interview process: hand the applicants a short article, a pen and a piece of paper, and require them to write some sort of response to it on the spot; it could even be multi-tasked by having them read and write something that is needed at another point in the process regardless of literacy. Or they could, you know, read the cover letter to their resume (the writing of which could probably be taught in place of the time spent on standardized tests).
Alabama.
"Prior to the tests, we couldn't measure success
well at all. We had the SAT (a test) for people
going off to college. Class rank was relative,
as was GPA, so one couldn't tell the difference
between successful education and grade inflation.
Any school district or individual teacher could
claim to be doing well, and nobody could dispute
the claim."
Reality contradicts you. We've always been able to find the smart and well educated people, even without essentially meaningless numbers. Even still, if the success of education is measured only by performance on narrowly tailored and defined standardized tests, then that success means less and less the further from "taking tests" our objectives for educated people become... and as it turns out, there is essentially no useful work to be done in the field of "taking standardized tests". If we can have measurability and conformity only in exchange for usefulness and diversity, then I submit that the latter are far more useful to us, as a society, than the former.
"Because of these problems, a high school diploma
has become nearly meaningless in the job market.
The 4-year college degree is now a requirement
for numerous fields that really shouldn't need it.
That's an extra 4 years of human life being spent
on remedial education, times however many people."
Like what? if you don't think people should need college degrees to do certain things which they currently do, then argue against them... but frankly I can't think of all that many examples to support your point. None, in fact. the truth of the matter is that most fields have become far more specialized and now require a greater amount of esoteric knowledge than they used to. Requiring a college degree is a symptom of this, not a cause.
"If you look back at 5th grade and 8th grade
final exams from 100 to 200 years ago, you can
see how dramatic the slide has been. In the
absense of nationwide standard tests (which we
still don't really have) there is nothing to
stop education from getting worse. There was a
time when an 8th grade education meant you could
deal with latin, rhetoric, logic, word problems,
and so on. Typical college graduates today are
unable to meet a similar standard."
Unless, of course, you take into account what knowledge is imparted now, and other fundamental differences in what education accomplishes. How many people learned even basic computing skills 100 years ago at any age? And now? How many people actually completed the 5th grade 200 years ago? There hasn't been a slide, there's been a shift... frankly I'd be much more concerned if nothing had changed in the past 2 centuries. I'd also like to point out that 100 years ago we didn't have standardized tests, but we did have smaller class sizes, greater community involvement with schools and teachers made far more money by comparison to other jobs than the do today. This might be a better argument against you than for.
The big deal is that she is required by law, the very same law she has sworn to uphold as governor, to follow certain rules and regulations about how she conducts her business. Had she used her work e-mail, as it were, compliance would have been enforced server side and this would not be an issue, but she chose not to and then violated the rules. If she'd used Yahoo! and followed the rules there wouldn't be a problem (well, outside of Yahoo! mail being crap...), but she didn't follow them and now it IS a problem. She may choose whatever e-mail provider she wants, she MAY NOT choose to break the law.
And before somebody comes along with "well it's just her personal e-mail address, she probably didn't even think to" as a defense of doing this... the account names pretty obviously indicate she created them AFTER becoming governor, so it's not like these are legacy addresses. It's also not as if somebody held a gun to her head and made her run for and accept the office of governor of Alaska, if she didn't want to comply with these laws, all she needed to do was not take on a job which required her to follow them.
"Quality control requires measurement. Sorry."
Sure it does. Of course, before the advent of annual high-cost multiple choice tests for every child we were still able to measure success. Your argument is moot.
"We need cold hard numbers"
For what? Really, why do we need cold hard numbers about how our students are performing? I've heard this "need" referred to before, and I always come back to this one nagging problem: I simply cannot comprehend why we need this, especially if the cost of obtaining these cold hard numbers is watching them go down across the board. Unless you can explain why we'd rather have cold hard numbers than success at educating our children, your argument is moot.
"some rubbish about how the students are all self-esteemy"
If students feel they are able to achieve and build self esteem, they learn and achieve more and are happier. What part of that is 'rubbish". More importantly, I stated that standardized testing is a disgusting waste of time and money that serves only to make our education system weaker... what the fuck has that got to do with "self-esteemy rubbish"? Your argument is moot.
"No numbers? The learning didn't happen."
Are you fucking serious? Are you really saying that if we don't quantify "learning" it doesn't happen? Imagine all those poor sods who were educated before the advent of force fed standardized testing. Whatever they may have learned, it's useless to society because they can't prove it with arcane numbers... how sad. I'd say this is moot, but it's not... it's just complete bullshit.
This anti-union rant brought to you by some douche with an MBA and an opinion of educators apparently scraped from angry 14 year-olds.
People learn in dramatically different ways, and it takes people who know this and are skilled at adjusting how information is given to be learned in order to have the most people learn the best. Doing this actually requires a lot of cross-disciplinary skills and a substantial investment of time in each individual student. Knowing the material is only half of it, because a teacher with all the knowledge in the world is useless if they cannot convey it effectively.
As for your idea of having one really good teacher projected across time and space to teach thousands of students at once, believe it or not that's already been thought of... a very long time ago. As it turns out, textbooks are a popular, even ubiquitous, way of teaching new students, and they are then supported by a large local network of assistants who are able to assist students with understanding and interpreting them. The assistants have also managed to unionize, which apparently drives you nuts, but seems to serve the majority of teachers AND the majority of schools AND the majority of students just fine. You almost had a great idea that nobody else has ever had before, though. No, seriously, that was really close, I mean it.
Here's an idea: revoke No Child Left Behind and reassign the millions of dollars being paid to standardized test writers to hiring more teachers in all subjects. The cost stays exactly the same, but even a relatively poor teacher is going to teach the kids more than even the best standardized test because, get this, TESTS ARE NOT INTENDED TO TEACH. But that would harm those wonderful capitalists at Useless Tests, Inc. to the benefit of those commie unionist teachers, so I'm sure you'll oppose it whether or not all the evidence in the world supports it as the only way that works.
Dude, multi-class, it works. Or you could go for one of the multi-purpose class like monk or paladin that already does that... or even go ranger and have all three branches covered!
That said, I do agree that the rogue/fighter light infantry build is so unbelievably broken as to make nearly all other possibilities a waste of time, and that this somewhat deadens the ability to make any character one wants.
Nope, that would be a "success".
Different strokes for different folks, what more can I say?
Yes, I've never seen any politician except for Bush bashed on Slashdot. It's simply inconceivable.
Oh, wait...
"That was good; a fine mix of facts [which are objective] and your subjective opinion about those facts [which of course are purely subjective]. I would have liked to see your criticism directed at particular games where applicable."
I tried most of them about 6 months ago when I upgraded my desktop. Prior to that I had tried a few, but it was clear they simply couldn't run properly. I'm a little fuzzy on details, which is why I'm sticking to overall statements.
"Nexuiz and OpenArena are both around the 25 map mark last I checked. While it doesn't measure up to quake 1 (38 maps), I think "not long enough to count" is stretching it a bit."
How long is each map? I've played games with only a dozen maps that took a very long time because the maps are either huge or just take a long time to finish. I've also played games with gobs of load screens, but they all take about a minute to play through. I'd honestly somewhat rather the first (since load screens are annoying).
"I don't remember that game very well; isn't it something along the lines of "you're the sole survivor on $PLANET; get to $POINT so that you can [blow stuff up | repair your ship], and kill all that moves on the way"? Sauerbraten has a few words to the same effect that serve to motivate the killing."
That was basically it, although it sounds better when not reduced to PERL ;). It's amazing what a couple paragraphs of back story and "missions" that essentially amount to "go in the only direction you can and kill everything" can do to at least give the impression of plot. I do seem to remember Sauerbraten having something to that effect.
"I've run into a few games like that, but mostly they're arcade games where you only need four arrows and a fire button... You've run into FPSes like that? I'm shocked. A bug should be filed and it should be fixed; one can work around it with xmodmap and wrapper scripts, but that sucks. Which games are you talking about here?" To be fair, I ran into one. I quickly uninstalled it, but I have no idea which one it was at this point... I only even ran the app for about 5 minutes (just long enough to figure out what controls I wanted and realize I couldn't have them).
"I've found that the path from main menu to either setting up and playing the game or configuring stuff to be [for the most part] reasonably short (two to three layers of nesting) and navigable with the mouse and number entry; no keybindings needed."
I meant in-game (or HUD, so-called because they are essentially an extension of your ammo/health/whatever else you need gauges) menus. I'm not so brutal as to ditch a game solely because of the main menu (well, unless it's REALLY bad, but I don't think I've seen one that bad yet). If I need to be able to build turrets, upgrade my armor and weapons, and communicate with my team via menus, then it's pretty critical those menus be both intuitive and fast: before I can build the muscle memories and know the game well enough to know which ones I need, it is critical that I can go through the menus easily and intuitively so I waste as little time as possible; once I do build the knowledge and muscle memories, it is equally critical that I can use them without wasting any time at all. This is probably the point on which I'm least forgiving. A simple way to get around this is to not have them at all (or so minimally that problems just can't arise), but that means reducing the amount of stuff you can do, which isn't such a great trade-off.
"Do you know of any worse examples? Please share them, then; I'd like to see the horrors... Is tremulous one of them? What are the others?"
I do remember fighting inordinately with the Tremulous menus. They were definitely not a strong point in that one, though I had much greater issues with the weapon balance (or lack thereof).
"The Nexuiz weapons are not all vanilla (IMO): the low-damage infinite-ammo gun also serves as a jump tool and can be used to push others around. The rocket launcher can be used defensiv
Stock manipulation and fraud of that type is actually criminal. The SEC and FTC do not take kindly to people who attempt (and more importantly fail) to game the system like that, and let's just say that the guys from the SEC make the IRS look like harmless kittens.
"Anyways, trying to steer away from a pit of subjectivity: you say that the free FPSes are not on par with what you see in the non-free/commercial world (e.g. hl plus mods). What's missing? Please try and be scientific-ish, i.e. objective and measurable; don't just say "but $NAME is more fun and immersive", describe *why* that is so."
Well, with the understanding that you asking me to do something patently impossible (ie. don't be subjective with regards to a purely subjective topic), here's my best shot:
I have yet to find a FOSS FPS with a single player mode that was long enough to really count OR have a solid, original storyline with any amount of depth or insight (I realize that comparing nearly anything to the Half-Life series in this regard is simply unfair, but I would settle for something comparable to Wolfenstein or Unreal... heck, even Quake 2 had enough of a story to hold the gore together) and while that isn't entirely a deal breaker (especially if multiplayer is compelling), it certainly doesn't help.
I have also found that most suffer from controls which are either incredibly arcane or maddeningly simplistic. I have run into games that expect you to learn the ins and outs of a half dozen HUD menus, all of which require separate bind keys, to do various game-critical tasks without providing any option for a consolidated menu that may be a little slower but at least requires only one bind. I've also run into games that won't let you set custom keyboard controls. Many non-free FPS games I've played manage to accomplish both ease and power to a greater or lesser degree, and I would certainly prefer an imperfect balance than either extreme.
The graphics I've observed in FOSS FPS games tend to look amateurish and cartoony. I don't care if the rendering is technologically superior, or doesn't require using hacks to replicate complex effects, I care if the game looks good. Keep in mind that I do feel the same way about most commerecial games as well... I find Halo completely unplayable because everything looks like it's made out of plastic (not so bad for armor or computers... very bad for grass and trees and skies), as well as that I do not expect (or want) photo-realistic bleeding edge graphics either... my favorite multiplayer FPS is Day Of Defeat, which is convincing not because of the graphics engine's high capabilities but because the textures and models are well made and properly applied.
I find that none have compelling, well balanced weapons. I won't even try to be scientific here, because I have no idea where to start, but good weapons are crucial an FPS and most FOSS offerings just don't deliver on this. It certainly doesn't help that so many of the FOSS games are essentially carbon copies of other games to begin with. The rail gun has been done to death, and everybody has a generic machine gun... I'd like to at least something a little different, and if you can make the staple items truly stand out that is best.
How was that for a start?
That is not actually resolved. There are currently several justices (Scalia, Thomas and Roberts being the big ones) who undoubtedly believe that to be so and have written extensively to that effect, but so far that has not been upheld as "the way it is". There are justices (Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens being the most consistent and predictable) who feel that a vehicle is entitled to the same search protections as a home ("effects" are also covered), regardless of what property it is on... with the caveat that if something is visible in a vehicle from public property without entering or unreasonably examining the vehicle it is (as with one's home) fair game.
In any case, I will be surprised if this even makes it to the Supreme Court. I expect that the evidence will be excluded (and the charges inevitably dropped) long before then. I will be completely shocked if the search is upheld.