Ritzbitts - Slashdot User

Comment Re: Important questions first (Score 2) 73

by Ritzbitts on Wednesday October 02, 2024 @11:28AM (#64833999) Attached to: Microsoft Office 2024 is Now Available For Macs and PCs

I've been using OpenOffice, and then LibreOffice, for nearly 20 years now. The latest versions have had what I would consider 100% compatibility with Office formats for some time. They are full-featured and user friendly. I really don't know why anyone still pays for Office when LibreOffice is available. Of course, I primarily use the word processor. It's possible Office has better spreadsheets etc, but I'm not sure that's a big deal for most users.

Comment Replace "Algorithm" with "some guy" (Score 5, Informative) 109

by Ritzbitts on Thursday July 18, 2024 @02:15PM (#64635533) Attached to: Accused of Using Algorithms To Fix Rental Prices, RealPage Goes on Offensive

If you replace the term "algorithm" with "some guy," it suddenly becomes a lot more clear what's going on. "Some guy" is charging landlords across the country a fee to help them decide how much money they can charge tenants on signing or renewing a lease. Yeah, that sounds like price fixing. It's a stretch to call it competitive behavior. Many industries are prohibited from this kind of behavior, for good reason. In my industry, many professionals will not even discuss their rates on mail lists, because it could be construed as price fixing. Outsourcing the behavior to a software does nothing to change the realities of what's going on.

Submission + - Sweden Brings More Books and Handwriting Practice Back To Its Tech-Heavy Schools (apnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @06:56PM

An anonymous reader writes: As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many of their teachers were putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research and keyboarding skills. The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether the country’s hyper-digitalized approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills. Swedish Minister for Schools Lotta Edholm, who took office 11 months ago as part of a new center-right coalition government, was one of the biggest critics of the all-out embrace of technology. “Sweden’s students need more textbooks,” Edholm said in March. “Physical books are important for student learning.”

The minister announced last month in a statement that the government wants to reverse the decision by the National Agency for Education to make digital devices mandatory in preschools. It plans to go further and to completely end digital learning for children under age 6, the ministry also told The Associated Press. [...] “There’s clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning,” Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement last month on the country’s national digitalization strategy in education. “We believe the focus should return to acquiring knowledge through printed textbooks and teacher expertise, rather than acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy,” said the institute, a highly respected medical school focused on research. To counter Sweden’s decline in 4th grade reading performance, the Swedish government announced an investment worth 685 million kronor (60 million euros or $64.7 million) in book purchases for the country’s schools this year. Another 500 million kronor will be spent annually in 2024 and 2025 to speed up the return of textbooks to schools.

Comment IV Natural Killer T (Score 1) 136

by Ritzbitts on Saturday March 24, 2012 @05:58AM (#39459633) Attached to: Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits

Invariant Natural Killer T? Sounds like a rapper.

Comment I believe Nietzsche . . . (Score 1) 1040

by Ritzbitts on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @02:36AM (#39182555) Attached to: Are Rich People Less Moral?

I believe Nietzsche referred to this as "Noble Morality," not to be confused with "Slave Morality" parameters like those used in the article.

Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance 262

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 27, 2010 @02:06PM from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.

quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."

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