The reefs in the Caribbean have been dying for decades, but not from acidification.
About a quarter of the way down on this page, http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/201... , you can see what happens as the stony corals die off. The branches of the corals break off and no longer supply refuge to small fish from predators. And there's less
Higher acidity [CO2 dissolved in water forms an acid] in seawater is known to disrupt the life cycles of many marine species — from reef-building corals to shellfish beloved by humans — by interfering with the creatures’ ability to use sea-borne calcium to build their shells.
This bit should be scaring the pants off us. Not because we'll suddenly not be feasting on oysters, but because of zooplankton that form delicate calcium-based shells. If those critters go bye-bye, we will likely see the collapse of more ocean fisheries as food sources dry up.
And, in something of a double-whammy, coastal regions in the tropics are often protected by reefs from the ravages of some tropical storms. If those reefs slow down their growth (that replaces damaged reefs structures), or start dissolving, we're going to be have a tidal wave (bad pun!) of starving refugees.
You don't need to believe in global warming to see those two issues becoming problems. You need enough empathy to see this as being a problem, even if it's not in your own backyard.
If you do believe in global warming, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not the oceans will rise high enough to wipe out their homes before acidification lays a licking on marine ecosystems.
When I was a kid, the math model taught at my school was something along the lines of, "If you show kids the math and some of the underlying principles, it will eventually all come together." It didn't work for me -- I just didn't get it, but it worked well for a handful of my classmates who went on to successful careers in engineering and coding. What did work was hours' worth of flashcards on road trips drilling times tables into my thick skull. Over time, I also picked up some tricks for estimating sums in my head (and for most things in my life, estimates are good enough).
But I was never particularly good at algebra, physics, or trig. They're too abstract for me to wrap my head around.
But give a bunch of prices to add in my head? And figure out the sales tax? And tip? I got that covered -- that stuff I can do faster and more accurately in my head than people who had better than 90% grades in high school math, and, in some cases, university math. As an adult, I've read a lot of popular science books about physics; I love the ideas, but if you show me a page of equations, it's all Greek to me.
My point? Kids learn differently. What works for one, might not work for another. There's no one size fits all method for teaching kids; that's why it's imperative to give kids a variety of different experiences at school and figure out which methods work best for different kids.
FWIW, reading to your kids is also shown to be (arguably) the best thing you can do for ensuring their academic achievement.
Damn straight.
I am at a loss as to why a repository of human knowledge should try to engage as many people with as many different interests as possible.
Oh, wait.
Or Slashdot. It's got really, really bad here over the last couple of years. Things really nose dived after the Beta exodus and a lot of regulars left. Pick any random story about equality and it will be full of people accusing the women involved of attacking them personally and of being whiney bitches. Back when the whole Mozilla controversy was going on there were endless posts about how "just not liking gays" was somehow a perfectly okay position to take, and blaming them for daring to demand equality and human rights.
You're absolutely right.
I think what we're seeing is that
Just pointing something out
I've seen people complain that Microsoft doesn't innovate, doesn't try new things.
And I've now seen people excoriate MS for trying new things and trying to innovate.
And, FWIW, some some aspects of Metro have been popping up elsewhere -- I don't think Metro has been an unmitigated disaster. At the venerable NYT, http://nyt.com/ useful bits can "slide in" from the margins when you move the mouse over to the left side of the window. Tiles are the lingua franca of The Toronto Sun, http://torontosun.com/ .
MS, however, did screw up some things. Well
First, it's a UI designed for media consumption (and single- and double-tasking) -- that ship has sailed. Phones, tablets, and, to a lesser extent, notebooks (and, in my house, the WiiU) are for media consumption. Desktops are for productivity.
Second, Metro is actually pretty decent when you figure out how the keyboard shortcuts (win-key +s for searching, alt-tab to switch windows, alt-f4 to shut a window, etc.). But it's pretty awful if you go at it with a mouse -- and MS did not, at all, make this clear.
Third, the Start button thing is
Fourth, and probably worst of all, MS foisted Metro and its apps on users in situations where it shouldn't have. If you were writing up an email in Outlook (desktop program) and wanted to open the calculator to check your math, it defaulted to a Metro, full-screen, four function calculator. That's stupid. MS has two built-in picture viewers, both relatively equivalent. But, using the default programs app, the Metro app can be set as the default app for several times more file types than the desktop app
I know a bunch of independent filmmakers -- no, none of them can make the Lego movie. They can make low-budget rom-coms. They can make cute animated shorts. And they can make some superb docs
But they don't have the render farm required to make an animated 3d movie (even outsourced, I am thinking that kind of processing power and the pipes required to move the data won't come cheap). They don't have the money to get quality voice actors. They don't have the marketing and negotiating chops to land a serious IP. And artists don't come cheap. The gulf here is rather large.
FWIW, basement sound producers are still having trouble making music sound as good as music (played by musicians on instruments, at least) recorded in a studio with an a-list crew.
With Hachette, I think Amazon is trying to
The full on conspiracy theorist side of me says that the scary thing is that, if Amazon does become something like a traditional publisher with a stable of writers, other retailers will have to buy stock from their largest competitor.
That's the bit that sends shivers up my spine.
With Warner, it seems different. I don't think Amazon wants to make blockbusters; something else is at play. It could be that Amazon senses blood in the water since the physical media business, while lucrative, is slipping away. Maybe, just maybe, Amazon is trying to squeeze Warner on physical media in order to get favourable terms on streaming or digital sales. 48 hours of availability ahead of iTunes? 2 weeks of availability ahead of Netflix?
In parts of Niagara Falls, Canada, it's also possible to bounce between US and Canadian carriers.
I just turn off data roaming for my phone and pick up a SIM for wherever I'm staying.
Long version: see pwnies' (IU designer at MS) posts at reddit, like this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/techno...
Metro has 2 UIs: Metro for casual use; classic for power users / production. MS wasn't particularly clear on the split and made it seem like Metro was the only UI going forward with classic atrophying in the background. That, apparently, is not the case. But MS pulled a boner here and mis-sold the UI.
It was always easy enough to restore the old school start button with either Start8 or a handful of free utilities. But
Classic is for people with multiple windows open, Office users, and so on -- those who can find OS settings and utilities (I think MS' definition of power user might have been overly generous).
Metro is really, really good for what it is. Once you grok the keyboard shortcuts or the gestures (swipe from the sides to make stuff happen), it's actually pretty cool.
What MS screwed up is not the UIs, but, rather, how they interact with each other. With release-era 8, if you opened, say, the picture viewer from classic, it punted you into full-screen Metro. Ditto for the calculator (true story, needed to check some math for an email, opened the calculator, and was presented with a full screen, 22" four function calculator -- that's just stupid). Some settings are accessible only through Metro (again, that's stupid -- hiding settings casual users shouldn't need to touch in Metro was bad design). Some default associations, like those for RAW photos, can only be set through Explorer if you want to use the classic app -- the Set Associations app only shows the Metro viewer as being available for those types. And so on. And forth.
As for the Start menu? It's easy enough to get back
Win8 is flawed. And weird. And occasionally antagonistic. And the dual UI aspect was very, very poorly handled. But its bones are good (fast, stable, secure). I like Win8, but it seemed to take longer to properly set up my desktop than it should've (Modern Mix also helps to control full-screen app pop-ups by running Metro apps windowed).
Craft brewing increasingly has IT bits and gadgets in it -- from tracking and delivery systems to cell counters (and even PCR widgets in larger breweries) to controllers on the brewing equipment (solenoids and the like), often controlled through what looks suspiciously like cheap Android tablets.
I don't know if you could make a living out of solely implementing an IT infrastructures at small breweries (seriously, I know of lots that get into trouble with the feds over poor record keeping), but it's something to consider. Ruggedized, waterproof tablets for brewers to enter notes and logs into. Tracking info for kegs and batches. Record keeping for tax purposes. Mobile connectivity for sales and delivery guys. Accounting. At your smaller breweries, all those systems are ad hoc, if they exist at all.
And, of course, your larger craft breweries may have some systems in place, but, like any other modern business, all those systems need tending to.
It's a growth industry (beer sales are, overall, down, but craft sales are still seeing double digit growth). A reasonably high good person to douche ratio. Beer.
The overall quality of the books is likely to go down -- part of what publishers do is editing (although not always -- increasingly, lesser writers have to hire their own).
I've read a number of (admittedly inexpensive) self-published books
FWIW, people will always write books or make music; many people need to express themselves creatively. What's really going to be cut out of the equation are the people in the middle (editors, researchers, engineers, producers) who help to make those works better as we race to the bottom.
First let me say that I agree that this discussion is pretty silly. That being said, "because someone else does it too" is not a valid justification of bad behavior. And frankly with the supposed intellectual superiority that many (not all) profess, it's even less acceptable. I have a lot harder time forgiving someone for doing something wrong that they understood was wrong, than someone who doesn't even know what they did was wrong in the first place.
However the [nerds] who were not professional were so far past appropriate it was cringe inducing as they self rationalized their behavior as being perfectly acceptable.
A former co-worker would ask waitresses and female hotel staff about their porn preferences. I used to do IT for traders; not even they would go that far.
Yes and yes. While I would agree that proportionally those groups may contain more people who are likely to say something inappropriate. They also tend to accept that they did something wrong when it's pointed out to them and even apologize for being offensive. I've seen many more "nerds" argue this point.
That co-worker? Thought he was being charmy and flirty and never did notice the shocked look on everyone else's faces. When asked to stop, he would say things like, "Just having fun," or, "Loosen up."
Just read through the comments in Four Weeks Without Soap Or Shampoo, http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
Some examples, modded to 5 stars: "She sounds hideous." "A 4 week test on something related to skin and they used a female journalist? Could by chance her skin complexion improved because of her menstrual cycle? There's about a 75% chance that she wasn't coming off of her period right before application so of course she probably noticed improvements to her skin, especially her face, over a 4 week test."
OMG, she's
Some of the comments that were modded less than 5 were
Seriously, folks? Seriously? Aren't nerds supposed to smart? Educated? Sensitive towards bullying?
There's an obnoxious sense of entitlement and superiority in some parts of nerd culture that isn't worthy.
There is a lot of research to be done on human bacteria.
I know many people here react dismissively towards wet science, but there's ample evidence that, for as long as there has been animal life, there have been closely related bacteria hitching a ride with us. And some of those bacteria have co-evolved with us to do useful things -- like termites being able to digest cellulose because of their gut bacteria.
If we wipe out those populations of bacteria that have been evolving with us for tens of millions of years (or more), it seems pretty reasonable to suggest that there will be repercussions.
On the more speculative side, my hay fever is largely gone now (no more runny nose, ever, during pollen season -- but my eyes still get scratchy on the worst days) since I've been dosing myself with bacteria (some commercial, made for sufferers of ileitis colitis, and some wild, homemade kefir and spontaneously pickled veg). I've talked to a researcher in the field; he said I basically hit a home run. Out of the possibly hundreds (thousands?) of species of bacteria I'm missing (sickly kid, lots of antibiotics, born by C-section, bottle-fed), I managed to load myself with probably a couple dozen strains of bacteria (mostly bifido and laco) that managed to help regulate the inflammation causing my seasonal allergies (i.e., my nose dripped like a tap).
FWIW, yogurt as a probiotic is unlikely to do much of anything for you. Most of those bacteria have been bred to produce lactic acid, and little else, as fast and as reliably as possible. Most of them are also unlikely to take up residence in your gut; they've been bred to survive in milk.
I, for one, really want to see more research in this field.
"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah
