What confuses me is when they decided tricking the students was a good idea.
The point of drills is not to educate on what to do when you're scared, the point is to educate on what to do in this specific situation. Take fire drills, for example: are students tricked into thinking their school is burning down? No, of course not. The point of the drill is to inculcate the directions that all students must follow in order to avoid chaos. Tricking the students achieves nothing but emotional distress--which is not helpful in any way--and disorder. Drills are there to make the procedure second nature so that disorder does not happen; they're there so that students in distress don't have to make decisions, because the drill spells out all decisions beforehand.
Parental consent is ALWAYS necessary when anything out of the ordinary happens, especially when said extraordinary thing causes emotional distress. Unfortunately, the article didn't make it clear whether this was teachers acting on their own authority during a field trip, or whether this was sanctioned by the administration without parental consent, but whichever it was, this was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Everyone else playing is using the same input device, there is no need for a keyboard / mouse.
Everyone else is satisfied with candles, we have no need for your newfangled electricity!
On a less sarcastic note, you're wrong. You like dual analog? Power to you. I've been trying to use it for months now. Still hate it, still suck terribly without my mouse. I think the best thing would be a mouse for aiming and an analog stick for movement. I'm also interested in how well the Wii controls will turn out.
Remember the first time you ever used a keyboard / mouse to play an FPS? I'll bet it didn't seem intuitive at all
Mmm, true. But then I turned off look inversion, and it was perfect.
That's the same fallacy that the FOSS zealots are prone to. They say, if you want a feature, or don't like a bug, write it or fix it yourself. Well, not everybody has the knowledge or time to do that.
Same goes for Wikipedia articles. How can you fix an overly esoteric article if you don't understand the subject in the first place (and that's why you came to Wikipedia)? Answer: you can't. Even those who can may not have the time, and those who do have time may not have the ability to write about it coherently.
So for those who write FOSS or Wikipedia articles: cool. Awesome. You contribute to the community. But, please, don't blame inadequacies on those of us who don't/can't contribute. That's weak.
Remember: what's the purpose of Wikipedia? Is it a simple repository of articles intending to include every esoteric detail known to the sub-sub-subfield? No, it's an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are not a compilation of research papers, they're a compilation of summaries. Summaries, by definition, do not include everything. The quality and completeness of knowledge are worthless if they can't be spread to others. Science does not advance because of discoveries, science advances because of the spread of those discoveries.
Wikipedia can provide the best of both worlds. It itself is a compilation of summaries, providing basic understanding, but to those who want or need more, there are links at the bottom to more detailed explanations, more thorough information. A Wikipedia with every detail possible would turn away people who want to understand something new simply because of the ridiculous principle that if one is to learn something, one must (futilely) attempt to learn everything at once. Imagine, for example, if someone went to Wikipedia to learn about the immune system, and came upon this:
Antigen (peptide) is presented by MHC class II on an APC to a CD4 TH cell with a TCR that recognizes a particular MHC classII/peptide complex. The TH cell is stimulated to undergo clonal expansion. If it encounters a B cell with the same class II/MHC peptide complex on its surface, it stimulates that B cell to clonally expand and produce soluble antibody...
[taken from my bio class notes]
Yeah, it's informative. Great. But who wants to try to understand that if all they want is a basic understanding? Having an article written this way will turn away people who would otherwise learn something. That defeats the purpose of the encyclopedia. That defeats the purpose of Wikipedia.
Leave your elitist "learn everything or you're inadequate" shit at your graduate research lab. Not everyone is willing, or has the time, to wade through what is otherwise white noise to get to the relevant info. Forcing mundane details down the throats of interested parties is doing a disservice to the spread of science.
Seriously. How many times must we go through this? I can maybe understand oblivious Windows users buying into the only-because-of-lesser-market-share bullshit, but computer world? Come on.
Let's regurgitate what I keep telling my friendly Windows trolls. In a certain year, market share of Linux/Apache was 60%, Microsoft's IIS had 20%, 60-something worms spread that year, ALL of them for Microsoft's product.
There. It's not that hard to understand. This claim of security only through obscurity is completely and patently false, and the propagation of this nonsense boils my blood.
Even forgetting the contract, the proposal is ridiculous:
However, Apple could drop Intel altogether and adopt AMD for its Macintosh PCs.
They just switched to Intel chips less than two years ago! There are still a few apps here and there that are still dependent on Rosetta. And Apple is supposed to just pick up a new microchip like a teenager picks up a new favorite song every other week? Intel's not the only one that would be pissed (and rightly so!), but we customers, as well. I don't want to deal with another switch, and neither does anyone else. Plus, I don't think Apple wants to throw its years of work away after only two very successful years.
Sure, the transition is going to take sometime
No shit. In fact, they're not quite done with the transition to Intel just yet. Apple was lucky in that it had the foresight--or fortune--to maintain a secret Intel-native OS X build for years. I highly doubt they have another one for AMD. So, however long it's taken for the Intel switch, it's going to take much longer for AMD. That won't go over well with anyone involved.
I think our time is better spent arguing whether Apple should buy out Nintendo. Or vice versa. Whichever one incites the more amusing flamewar.
But do most people know about these differences? Hell, I'll admit that even I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is that mutations in cells's DNA can cause them to replicate uncontrollably, hence cancer. There are differences in lung/blod/colon/skin cancer? Sounds plausible!... but I have no idea what they are. To me, and to most normal people, "cancer" encompasses all cancers.
I guess it's like saying a certain finding advances "science". But wait, you say, there are a lot of sciences! Yes, there are, and the finding most likely only really advances one of the sciences... and yet, we all understand what is meant when we say something advances "science".
You're either thinking of an excellent line of tech books, or you're thinking of a far-right-wing Fox pundit infamous for cutting the mic of his guests, his sometimes uncontrollable temper, his misinformative Talking Points, and his outrageous, illogical, irresponsible, and despicable "opinions", showcased by, for example, his blaming immigration policy for a drink driving incident and his general insensitivity and partisan agenda-pushing.
Want to test different angles precisely? Use some sort of robot.
Only going to build it once, and want it to be easy to build? Use Legos.
Need only rudimentary instructions (e.g. "rotate for 0.2 seconds") to rotate something on said robot? Use Mindstorms.
Nothing beats the satisfaction of soldering one's own circuit board and programming in C, but for something quick, easy to use, and powerful, Legos are the best solution.
It's painfully obvious that you've never dealt with children.
Sheltering kids has never helped them.
Good idea. Let's rally for mandatory military enrollment for all adolescents; after all, it's a big, scary, violent world out there, and the sooner they find out what the front lines are like, the better!...Right?
Obviously not. Sheltering kids from sex and violence is not an ancient, irrational tradition brought down from the puritans; believe it or not, it actually has scientific backing. Young children exposed to domestic violence statistically develop social and emotional deficiencies and disorders. Children exposed to excessive (i.e., R-rated) movie violence statistically are more aggressive and prone to rage and temper. Even adults exposed to the front lines frequently develop depression, and they tend to drift away from society because they don't fit in--they have experienced too much.
So, yeah, there is reason behind sheltering children. Perhaps America's puritan views on sexuality are too strict, but those on violence are certainly not. Popular violence has led to aggression and arrogance, which the world now attributes to the typical "ugly American".
Where do you think gamer parents should draw the line? If you have kids, what approach are you taking to introducing them to gaming? How old is 'old enough' to start fragging?"
As with everything related to parenting, there are no hard and fast rules. Good parents will get a feel for how mature their kids are, and afford them the appropriate privileges. Mediocre parents will rely on the ratings on the boxes, and bad parents (or the politically-correct "distracted" parents) will let their kids play whatever.
FWIW, Crecente seems to have some pretty reasonable rules here.
while AAC is not free per se, it is in fact [much] cheaper than mp3
...which will facilitate its more widespread adoption. Yes, I said "more" widespread.
Something almost all Slashdotters seem to be missing is that many players already support AAC. AAC is already supported in audio players by Nokia, Sandisk, and Sony. (Did you know that AAC is the native audio format for the PS3?) It's even supported by the Zune, if that ever becomes relevant (*ducks*). Even without this added incentive, there was already a bit of a silent momentum behind the adoption of AAC--due in part to its costs, but also because it's open and it takes less power to decode (very important in portables). It wouldn't have been long before Creative, Toshiba, Philips, and others adopted it; after Apple's recent DRM-shedding move, however, we could make bets as to how many weeks it will take to release AAC-compatibles.
To say that AAC is iPod/iTunes exclusive is pretty ignorant, and I'd be pretty surprised if it weren't supported by all new portable audio players in about a year.
There may or may not be laws specifically regarding false advertising, but there sure as hell exists the FTC (in the US) which regulates such things. Don't confuse "civil law" with "suggestive in nature". If the FTC deems this intentionally misleading and unfair (and I think they would), then yes, Verizon's practices are, in fact, illegal. Fine print can clarify, but it can't directly and obviously clash with other information.
Secondly, most ISPs sell `unlimited` net access, and I think they all have a `fair use policy` which will get you cut off if you download too much.
However, those bounds should be reasonable. If you, as an end user, are downloading a TB or more a day, it's pretty clear that you're doing much more than what is legal. Even if theoretically it's possible that you are paying for legitimate movie downloads, there comes a point where it's not possible for you to be going through all the material you download without watching 2 or 3 movies at once. Of course, the ISP's--and, more importantly, the courts--will not set the bar that high. What is "reasonable" to download is subjective, but 5GB is very clearly reasonable and easily attainable.
Of course, the best way to avoid any of this is to avoid advertising "unlimited". Unfortunately, laymen currently define "unlimited" as "at least a little more than I would ever use", and relatively few are ever going to complain about Verizon's and others' like policies.
Slashdot Mirror
Flickr HQ has since issued an apology for the removal of her post.
What confuses me is when they decided tricking the students was a good idea.
The point of drills is not to educate on what to do when you're scared, the point is to educate on what to do in this specific situation. Take fire drills, for example: are students tricked into thinking their school is burning down? No, of course not. The point of the drill is to inculcate the directions that all students must follow in order to avoid chaos. Tricking the students achieves nothing but emotional distress--which is not helpful in any way--and disorder. Drills are there to make the procedure second nature so that disorder does not happen; they're there so that students in distress don't have to make decisions, because the drill spells out all decisions beforehand.
Parental consent is ALWAYS necessary when anything out of the ordinary happens, especially when said extraordinary thing causes emotional distress. Unfortunately, the article didn't make it clear whether this was teachers acting on their own authority during a field trip, or whether this was sanctioned by the administration without parental consent, but whichever it was, this was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Here ya go.
True, it's not for Windows, but you take what you can get.
On a less sarcastic note, you're wrong. You like dual analog? Power to you. I've been trying to use it for months now. Still hate it, still suck terribly without my mouse. I think the best thing would be a mouse for aiming and an analog stick for movement. I'm also interested in how well the Wii controls will turn out.Mmm, true. But then I turned off look inversion, and it was perfect.
That's the same fallacy that the FOSS zealots are prone to. They say, if you want a feature, or don't like a bug, write it or fix it yourself. Well, not everybody has the knowledge or time to do that.
Same goes for Wikipedia articles. How can you fix an overly esoteric article if you don't understand the subject in the first place (and that's why you came to Wikipedia)? Answer: you can't. Even those who can may not have the time, and those who do have time may not have the ability to write about it coherently.
So for those who write FOSS or Wikipedia articles: cool. Awesome. You contribute to the community. But, please, don't blame inadequacies on those of us who don't/can't contribute. That's weak.
Remember: what's the purpose of Wikipedia? Is it a simple repository of articles intending to include every esoteric detail known to the sub-sub-subfield? No, it's an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are not a compilation of research papers, they're a compilation of summaries. Summaries, by definition, do not include everything. The quality and completeness of knowledge are worthless if they can't be spread to others. Science does not advance because of discoveries, science advances because of the spread of those discoveries.
Wikipedia can provide the best of both worlds. It itself is a compilation of summaries, providing basic understanding, but to those who want or need more, there are links at the bottom to more detailed explanations, more thorough information. A Wikipedia with every detail possible would turn away people who want to understand something new simply because of the ridiculous principle that if one is to learn something, one must (futilely) attempt to learn everything at once. Imagine, for example, if someone went to Wikipedia to learn about the immune system, and came upon this:[taken from my bio class notes]
Yeah, it's informative. Great. But who wants to try to understand that if all they want is a basic understanding? Having an article written this way will turn away people who would otherwise learn something. That defeats the purpose of the encyclopedia. That defeats the purpose of Wikipedia.
Leave your elitist "learn everything or you're inadequate" shit at your graduate research lab. Not everyone is willing, or has the time, to wade through what is otherwise white noise to get to the relevant info. Forcing mundane details down the throats of interested parties is doing a disservice to the spread of science.
Seriously. How many times must we go through this? I can maybe understand oblivious Windows users buying into the only-because-of-lesser-market-share bullshit, but computer world? Come on.
Let's regurgitate what I keep telling my friendly Windows trolls. In a certain year, market share of Linux/Apache was 60%, Microsoft's IIS had 20%, 60-something worms spread that year, ALL of them for Microsoft's product.
There. It's not that hard to understand. This claim of security only through obscurity is completely and patently false, and the propagation of this nonsense boils my blood.
They just switched to Intel chips less than two years ago! There are still a few apps here and there that are still dependent on Rosetta. And Apple is supposed to just pick up a new microchip like a teenager picks up a new favorite song every other week? Intel's not the only one that would be pissed (and rightly so!), but we customers, as well. I don't want to deal with another switch, and neither does anyone else. Plus, I don't think Apple wants to throw its years of work away after only two very successful years.
No shit. In fact, they're not quite done with the transition to Intel just yet. Apple was lucky in that it had the foresight--or fortune--to maintain a secret Intel-native OS X build for years. I highly doubt they have another one for AMD. So, however long it's taken for the Intel switch, it's going to take much longer for AMD. That won't go over well with anyone involved.
I think our time is better spent arguing whether Apple should buy out Nintendo. Or vice versa. Whichever one incites the more amusing flamewar.
But do most people know about these differences? Hell, I'll admit that even I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is that mutations in cells's DNA can cause them to replicate uncontrollably, hence cancer. There are differences in lung/blod/colon/skin cancer? Sounds plausible! ... but I have no idea what they are. To me, and to most normal people, "cancer" encompasses all cancers.
... and yet, we all understand what is meant when we say something advances "science".
I guess it's like saying a certain finding advances "science". But wait, you say, there are a lot of sciences! Yes, there are, and the finding most likely only really advances one of the sciences
That oughta teach me to pay more attention to subject lines.... Whoops ...
You're either thinking of an excellent line of tech books, or you're thinking of a far-right-wing Fox pundit infamous for cutting the mic of his guests, his sometimes uncontrollable temper, his misinformative Talking Points, and his outrageous, illogical, irresponsible, and despicable "opinions", showcased by, for example, his blaming immigration policy for a drink driving incident and his general insensitivity and partisan agenda-pushing.
Either is good.
Solution to telemarketers: just hang up!
Solution to junk mail: just throw it away!
Solution to spam: just delete it!
Are you serious?? Are you mad??
I'm not. It seems like a logical choice.
Want to test different angles precisely? Use some sort of robot.
Only going to build it once, and want it to be easy to build? Use Legos.
Need only rudimentary instructions (e.g. "rotate for 0.2 seconds") to rotate something on said robot? Use Mindstorms.
Nothing beats the satisfaction of soldering one's own circuit board and programming in C, but for something quick, easy to use, and powerful, Legos are the best solution.
...it's just a case of those in power thinking they're above the law.
"Accidentally"? My ass! So much for doing no evil! What a hypocritical bunch of crock...!
Oh. Intel. Sorry, thought for a second this was the daily Google article. Nothing to see here, I'll be moving along now.
Obviously not. Sheltering kids from sex and violence is not an ancient, irrational tradition brought down from the puritans; believe it or not, it actually has scientific backing. Young children exposed to domestic violence statistically develop social and emotional deficiencies and disorders. Children exposed to excessive (i.e., R-rated) movie violence statistically are more aggressive and prone to rage and temper. Even adults exposed to the front lines frequently develop depression, and they tend to drift away from society because they don't fit in--they have experienced too much.
So, yeah, there is reason behind sheltering children. Perhaps America's puritan views on sexuality are too strict, but those on violence are certainly not. Popular violence has led to aggression and arrogance, which the world now attributes to the typical "ugly American".
Frankly, sir, you and your views scare me.
FWIW, Crecente seems to have some pretty reasonable rules here.
Something almost all Slashdotters seem to be missing is that many players already support AAC. AAC is already supported in audio players by Nokia, Sandisk, and Sony. (Did you know that AAC is the native audio format for the PS3?) It's even supported by the Zune, if that ever becomes relevant (*ducks*). Even without this added incentive, there was already a bit of a silent momentum behind the adoption of AAC--due in part to its costs, but also because it's open and it takes less power to decode (very important in portables). It wouldn't have been long before Creative, Toshiba, Philips, and others adopted it; after Apple's recent DRM-shedding move, however, we could make bets as to how many weeks it will take to release AAC-compatibles.
To say that AAC is iPod/iTunes exclusive is pretty ignorant, and I'd be pretty surprised if it weren't supported by all new portable audio players in about a year.
Of course, the best way to avoid any of this is to avoid advertising "unlimited". Unfortunately, laymen currently define "unlimited" as "at least a little more than I would ever use", and relatively few are ever going to complain about Verizon's and others' like policies.
There needs to be a mod for unoriginality.
Oh, wait. There's one.
*click*