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Comment Re:probably (Score 1) 179

Below are some other recommended magazines for depth. These are worth supporting much more than your average newspaper.

The New Yorker
The Atlantic
Harper's
Lapham's Quarterly (not news coverage, exactly, but still great)
(Canadian) The Walrus
(Australian) The Monthly
(Australian) Quarterly Essay
(UK) Standpoint
(UK) Prospect
(India) The Caravan
(Spain) Catalan International View

Comment Re:Facebook is a public forumn (Score 1) 478

Exactly. From TFA:

"These people announced on their Internet sites that they planned to come here and cause disruptions, and told their friends. We were able to contact other foreign ministries and simply give them links," Palmor said.

Facebook, the company, didn't permit Israel to do this. It was Facebook users who don't know how to restrict access to their groups and posts.

Comment Re:Amen (Score 1) 588

Phillip doesn't take criticism very well. You can read through the comments section of any of his articles to see how he responds to those who disagree with him. Usually he just re-states a phrase from his article while implying that "you just don't get it" rather than rationally addressing the content of the argument. I've never seen him acknowledge a comment that conflicts with his article's premise as being valid or reasonable, though I've mostly stopped reading his stuff. All the rationality in the world won't change his mind when it's set on something. His constant, overly-defensive nature when someone critiques his articles, combined with his tendency to "Like" only comments that agree with himself suggest that he is probably relatively insecure and needs the acceptance of others to feel good about himself. He may have placed so much of his self-worth into these articles that it feels like people are critiquing him, not his argument. Just a suggestion, Phillip: try to be a little more flexible and receptive to criticism. You're still a valuable person regardless of what random people on the internet think of your arguments, but you'll expand your mind considerably if you remain open to rational viewpoints that run counter to your own.
Education

Submission + - Help for a new, non-specialist science teacher

SlashJoel writes: My sister recently received her degree in education, and just last week accepted a job teaching French at a local high school. However, in addition to French, she is also teaching two classes of grade 9 science, a subject she never liked in school and that she isn't thrilled about teaching. She has confessed that she doesn't remember most of the things she will be teaching and that she's worried about not being able to engage the students as her grasp on the subject matter is tenuous at best.
And so I come to ask Slashdot: what can be done to help her? Are there any good resources out there that you're aware of? I'm trying to find things to get her excited about Science so she can pass that excitement on to her students, but she also obviously needs to beef up her knowledge of a subject she's not terribly fond of. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.

Comment Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score 1) 420

You seem to be taking this idea seriously, so I'm going to seriously discourage you from implementing it. It's noble to have faith that if each citizen is given a blank slate and the power to shape a governing structure for themselves, something wholly democratic and wonderful will come out of it. But it's also hopelessly wrong. Someone on Slashdot has a sig that I really like that says "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner." I wouldn't trust the average citizen with filing my taxes, let along determining my country's monetary policy.

Now, you sound like a smart person. And you seem to be fed up with the current electoral/legislative/governmental processes. I can understand that. But please don't put your energies into fashioning a way for every citizen to come together and instantly form some new system of government that could be anything from direct democracy to elected dictator and somehow have the flexibility to become the very opposite on a whim. This will never happen. And if it did happen, it wouldn't work out like you hope. You don't have a plan for a new government system. You have a plan for allowing other people to figure out a new government system. Pardon my harshness, but that's intellectually lazy. Instead trying to figure out how to create an infrastructure that would allow everyone to create a new governing structure, I encourage you to come up with your own idea for a new electoral/legislative/governing structure. Think you know the perfect system that can satisfy Libertarians and Socialists, Centralists and Decentralists, Rich and Poor, Rural and Urban? Please, for the love of god, tell us! But if you think that getting all those people together in a virtual room is going to spontaneously generate the perfect system of government, you're fucking crazy.

AMD

Submission + - AMD/ATi to release graphics specs

Ganesh999 writes: A recent Phoronix article hinted that despite the large number of substantially improved AMD/ATi drivers just released, there was more exciting news in the pipeline.

This seems to have been confirmed at the Linux kernel summit yesterday. From LWN :

'AMD's representative at the summit has announced that the company has made a decision to enable the development of open source drivers for all of its (ATI) graphics processors from the R500 going forward. There will be specifications available and a skeleton driver as well; a free 2D driver is anticipated by the end of the year. The rest will have to be written; freeing of the existing binary-only driver is not in the cards, and "that is better for everybody." Things are looking good on this front. More in the kernel summit report to come.'

General reaction from the kernel developers seems to be positive :

'It's definitely not a 'you're on your own' kind of proposition: this is exactly what was asked for, giving the community all the information it needs to complete a proper driver.'

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