Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Banco, Warez, Fiction
What about a Dvorak-layout program for the number keys? hex4def6 writes "Ticalc.org is back up for business after the unfortunate incident in which "inapropriate Content" was pressed onto the CD's that Texas Instruments included in their "Fun Kit" graphlink kit from the Ticalc archives. New things in the archives include a neat winamp plugin that allows you to control winamp from your Ti-89 webpage. Check it out here. All the archives are back up, but there is a backlisting of new files submited."
Many happy returns! Eileen Gunn writes "Last August, Slashdot ran a story about The Infinite Matrix, an online SF zine aimed at technogeeks, that posted its first and last issue in one fell swoop, after losing its funding (what's new?). The site was slashdotted, of course, and among those visiting it was a Slashdot reader who threw the zine a 6-month financial lifeline. The Infinite Matrix is now posting new material every day from both Bruce Sterling and Terry Bisson. Plus, there's a new story by SF giant Avram Davidson, more fiction by Richard Kadrey and Kathleen Goonan, columns by John Clute and David Langford. Thanks, Slashdot! You've made my life infinitely more complicated."
This is like reading Jules Verne when he was writing newspaper serials -- and no eBook reader is required.
The perils of translation and the world of international banking. Al Giordano of Narco News wrote from Cochabamba, Bolivia, with a correction of my (incorrect) correction on Yesterday's post about First Amendment protections granted online journalism. He provides a better explanation about nomenclature and the Mexican banking system:
"Banamex, or Banco Nacional de Mexico (the way the plaintiff's name appears on the now-dismissed complaint against us), is translated as National Bank of Mexico.The 'Mexican Fed' that you refer to is titled Banco de Mexico, or Bank of Mexico.
So you got it right the first time!
The confusion stems from this: All Mexican banks were nationalized before becoming privatized. It's a long and bloody story and in fact my own story about it is one of the exhibits used by Banamex in its now-fracased SLAPP suit.
When Banamex filed suit against Mario Menendez, Narco News and me, it was still a Mexican bank. The Citibank merger wasn't announced until May 2001 and wasn't finalized until July 20, 2001, ironically, the same day we had our court hearing in New York."
Unfortunately, there's no monopoly on sketchiness. S^(2) writes "Here is a better rundown of the warez crackdowns across the globe. I guess people are running scared a bit and this page is hopping from mirrored site to site, but for now at least check out; http://www.cyberworld.ru/scenebusted/ It breaks down what groups were suspected to have been FEDs, which groups/members will be needing legal defense funds, which groups have shutdown, and a bit on the howto of the crackdown, such as agents raiding a house and watching what connections happened without pulling the plug. That can't be legal, can it? Should I hide my pc behind a wall of something benign, like say VHS bootlegs?"
Or, on the other hand, not distributing warez is an option.
You wait and see how quickly those fuckers "retract" that little blurb by making the whole thread mysteriously disappear. This has been going on for ages...it seems that the authors have been fairly lucky for the most part, as they've only had to cover up those nasty "unwanted" posts on very few occasions.
Information wants to be free my hairy white ass.
That's fucking pure genius. Seriously. Everyone knows that the best way to enact change is to lay low and keep your mouth shut. Works every time, without question.
Complaints, for the most part, should NEVER be modded down or otherwise edited, as long as they are relevant and supported by hard facts, and those who have made a valuable contribution to this "community" should be given a chance to make those complaints heard (via the +2 posting privilege), because that is exactly what Slashdot supposedly stands for - free speech and freedom of information. That's been the central theme of this site for a few years now, and will surely continue in that vein for some time.
And while it might sound like whining, and while you might think that it's uncalled for because we aren't in charge around here, please keep in mind that Slashdot has always promoted itself as a free and open forum to be used freely and openly by anyone with an opinion. If they can't stick to that model, then they need to stop promoting themselves as such. Slashdot IS run by a bunch of hypocritical ingrates who are only concerned with being "in charge." In reality, they care very little about what their audience thinks; this fact should be made known to everyone who frequents this site under the guise that they are going to be heard.
Now if you are so spineless as to turn your head to this - or even worse, defend slashdot - you don't deserve to even have a voice.
I submitted this as a YRO, waiting for rejection now.
We all should submit this story to slashdot...
marotti.com
Jesus fucking christ
You come into my journal to call me a child for having over 700 comments posted?
Perhaps, when an intersting topic comes up, I post not only my opinions, but argue with others opinions? Maybe I like to defend my opinions?
You want to talk about childish, then lets speak of the censorware project, shall we?
I'd been DYING for authors to come in here and give their arguements so we can sort this crap out, but you come in here to insult me?
Who's being the child, michael?
You just proved to me what all the trolls say about you.
And as far as "getting out more", I have a well paying job, a wife, a son (next May), and a life.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I disagree ENTIRELY. If a post is directed at challenging a slashdot editor's statements, as many are, then it is most definitely ON TOPIC. For example, I posted a comment about a month ago, directed against michael. The story was about a Microsoft security flaw; in his post, michael commented that the flaw was a WINDOWS security flaw, when in actuality, it was a flaw in the recent versions of IE. A valid argument, without question, that sat very nicely at +4 Interesting or Insightful for about 30 minutes. Then, suddenly, michael posted a reply to my comment. The rating on my post IMMEDIATELY dropped 3 full points to +1 Troll or something like it. Eventually, the REAL moderators sent some leverage my way and put me back up to +3 or +4. In this situation, the fact that michael's reply was so closely followed by a rash of negative moderation can hardly be called a simple coincidence. The guy doesn't like to be called out on ANYTHING that he says, and he showed it that day.
My question to you is this...knowing that my complaint was VERY RELEVANT to the posted story, where else would you suggest that i post it?
Add the following link to your .sig:
8 1& uid=169099
http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display&id=28
Perhaps if enough people find out about this bullshit, some change will come about...
It would be truly amazing if a moderation system existed that got rid of trolls and flamebaits quickly... but as it is, there's some turds who like noise over signal, and as long as that keeps up I'm fine with /. authors moderating, bitchslapping, whatever.
Don't like it? Ask yourself why.
Mr. Ska
If Slashdot can effectively remove comments from view (setting comments at -2 does this. Yes, I think it can be changed by manually editing the URL, but this is pure lawyerism, and not likely to stand up very well in court) then how can they defend themselves against M$?
/. was aiding and abetting in dissemination of stolen materials or some such? (Don't have a link, and too lazy to look). /. claimed that they don't censor anything. Clearly this is false.
/. is painting themselves into a legal corner.
Remember the lawsuit they got alleging that
I've got no problem with dropped submissions. But bitchslapping, tracking IP's, etc... Sounds like in the effort to make it easier to appeal to advertisers,
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
A *little* professionalism, Mike. We are, after all, your audience/client/reason for getting paid.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
You're not exactly lending any support to your own reputation, michael. You're responding like a child who has been caught lying.
Here's something to think about. I'm the guy who clicks on the ThinkGeek banner ad and buys the t-shirt and the rounded IDE cables. I'm the guys who clicked through to Penguin Computing and convinced the boss to have them set us up with 6 new web servers. I'm the guy who LINES YOUR FUCKING WALLET. And you have the nerve to try and blow me off when I have a complaint. That, my friend, is why you're *still* not a real journalist.
You might want to look at what some of the 'trolls' are posting in this journal entry. They do have some insight into how the Slashdot editors (ab(use) their powers.
No replies made to AC posts. Please log in.
Amen Micheal.
Incidentally, I don't think he understands the point of moderation. HE may think he's posting intelligent things, but he's missing the point of being modded down; others clearly do not agree his self-assesment, which is pretty much the whole damn point of moderation.
I've been at 50 for the last two years, with arond 200 posts, and if I've figured out one thing, its that karma is not a right on a per post basis. It is the case, in many ways, that one or two bitter or whiny posts will ruin your rep and moderators will 'remember' you on subsequent posts, making it more difficult to get modded up. It's called 'just deserts', but I guess A_Non_Moose hasn't figured that out yet, or he'd have grinned and beared (or moosed, groan) it by now. Anyhow, don't stop stickin' up for the system - like anything else, it ain't perfect, but I'll take it over having to manage my own signal to noise ratio any day!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Can this account of yours metamoderate? Assuming positive karma, your account should be able to metamod, given the fairly low UID.
If you cannot metamod, your account probably has been flagged in $rtbl, the Real Time Black List. Flagging the account also makes the account ineligible for moderation, AFAIK. It can be flagged by account, ipid or even subnet. If ipid or subnet is used, any account using said ipid or subnet will be affected by the action. Comments can be sorted by these id's, and the resulting comment list looks like if you were just browsing a user's comments list from clicking a link in a discussion. You also might be on the Top Abusers list, but I'm not too sure. I have yet to use said feature myself.
This account, despite high karma and existing for over 6 months now, never has moderated either. Also, this account has lost metamod capabilities some time ago. I'm pretty certain that my ipid has been $rtbl'ed, put on the Top Abusers list or both.
You gotta admit, it does take care of the multiple account issue, listing by ipid/subnet pretty much merges your accounts together.
Wow, you sure showed him!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Try an experiment: go to kuro5hin.org, advogato.org, any random message board, and start posting "Turd Report" comments. Take note of the mean time before you're banned from the site.
/. up until a couple weeks ago :( -- I'd guess it would probably be modded to zero quickly, where it can't be seen by normal users.
Well, it would depend on the velocity, but having spent a lot of time on k5 -- more then
Yeh, it would be 'censored' but its a completely transparent system, one that any 'trusted' user (basically anyone that posts a lot) can audit.
k5 gets one order of magnitude more hits. But 2 or 4 orders of magnitude fewer 'crap' posts. (there are also safety features to prevent automatic flooding. But unlike slashdot's obnoxious 20 second/2 minute rule and lameness filter, since they are actually applied intelligently and based on the human dependent mod system). In fact There are fewer 'zero' posts every week then there are front page stories.
The real problem with slashdot is that you seem to, basically, hold your readership in contempt (especially CmdrTaco). While other sites try to foster a real sense of community you (guys) seem to be actively discouraging it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've already gotten about 394 comments posted in the month or so I've been here (and karma hovering around 50 now)
When they reimported all the old files into the DB I checked my old account. Almost 4,000 comments. michal is basicaly insulting everyone who uses slashdot 'alot' instaid of just posting boring and poorly thought out stories.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I had a couple posts modded to -5 once, after a bug in slashcode that allowed images to be embeded in comments. I stuck a few in (nothing offensive). After a while a script was run that killed all image tags and modded them to -5.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Who would you rather piss off? Steve Case, or Osama Bin Laden. Both may be 'evil' in a certain light, but while AOL users may be stupid they aren't out on suicide bombing runs.
I wouldn't get into a legal battle LRONs minions over some stupid AC comment.
Microsoft isn't going to make your life into a living hell or anything...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you want to ruin the rest of your life standing up the CoS go ahead. It may be noble to stand up to evil, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. The information was all on the web anyway, a google search would have gotten it for you. Fight evil yes, but choose your battles to.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time? They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation. Alas, I suppose now that HP's discontinuing them, they don't matter to the Slashdot crowd anymore...
Is your company running tools written by ma
Someone should port a TI-89 emulator to the Strong-ARM 206MHz based PDAs, like the new Zaurus. Hardest thing would be to make a good GUI because the regular keypad on the TI-89 would take up too much room.
Damn, it's really shocking to read the crap those agents pulled on the warez groups. Even ignoring the obvious immorality/illegality of it, it seems to me like they put a lot of time into the raids.
/. and go get the papers ready for my companies upcoming audit.
What the hell are they wasting their time for (and our money) on little stuff like this? It's like the federal government has no capability to distinguish between minor crimes and major ones.
If we don't watch out, the next war (after terrorism) will be on software. Damn, imagine if the BSA ever got to use guns. *shudder*
That's not a good thought. Sigh, I'd better stop posting to
Since you mentioned tetris, I had to post this. At my high school, everybody was playing games on their calculators -- from Race to MARIO. However, the 83plus users couldn't play tetris, because it only worked on the 83. Anyway, I created a program called "TETRIS." What it did was displayed "Loading..." on the screen, while it archived every variable, including all of the unusual vars (such as the Str1 and Str2, etc.) except for the lists (I saved them for later). I put their screen in "split mode," while setting the graphing to Polar, with Xmin being larger than Xmax and Ymin larger than Ymax (resulting in a "Window Range" error screen). The program then filled a list named "SYS" up to 999 items, then going on to L1, L2, L3, etc.. until the program filled up the memory and threw an error.
I gave this to another kid (a snobby kid who never stopped playing games on his calc), and it crippled his calculator. He had to pay me five bucks to get it fixed.
I later lost my calculator, and I got it back two weeks with all of my games played repeatedly (with the high score list changed) and all my vars archived, lists filled, etc., resulting in it getting returned (they apparently thought it was broken). I lost it two more times, with the exact same results before it was returned to me.
Is how did they manage to get their site shut down? I mean I can see TI pulling the plug, but how did they manage to pull the site?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As a former high school student, I can tell you that it's not the Tetris that caused students to stop paying attention in your class.
I dunno if you remember what it was like to be a high school student anymore, but if it's not the Tetris it'd be something else, like staring blankly out the window or day dreaming.
The Tetris on the calculator wasn't so fun that I would think about it when I wasn't playing it, it was just something I would do when I was bored to tears and needed a distraction. Rather than blame some calculator game for why your students no longer listen, maybe you should look at other possible causes........and yeah yeah, I know, you don't have a whole lot to be working with there, given the subject you're teaching to high-schoolers, but I have definitely had good and bad math teachers. The good teachers were the ones who made me think, and came up with interesting ways to link the subject back to real life. And even in their classes, I would play calculator games when they were spending too long on a subject (maybe for other people in the class) that I already understood.
So if all your students have stopped paying attention in your class, maybe rather than blaming the easy to blame calculator games, you should look at yourself and how you're teaching them.......
After snooping around a little with Google, it would seem that TI has banned programs featuring:
Profanity
Pornography or sexually explicit content
Drug-related content
Content promoting or depicting terrorism or racial/ethnic hatred.
Content promoting or depicting violence in schools
Programs made exclusively for cheating (e.g. fake memory-clearing programs)
Copyright or trademark violations (e.g. calculator ROMs, text or graphics that violate others' copyrights or trademarks)
Programs that were specifically mentioned by people included Drug Wars (too bad, that was a fun game, but I could see how parental no-fun no-humor censor types could get pissed off) and strip blackjack (which somehow had no pornography in it actually, or so they say).
I draw the "geekiness" line at pissing away your time writing silly crap like that for a computer. A computer is a tool of science and business, not a gaming machine. (s/calculator/computer/g)
Is that you meant to say? I'm guessing that a pencil is a tool of science and business, not a gaming tool, too. Doing anything serious on a TI-89 is a decent challenge, though less than the -83's or -85 that didn't come with a half meg of memory.
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class,
Really? Students will pay attention in math class without TI-89s? That's surprising; I wouldn't think a lot of students would pay attention no matter what you did.
If I recall correctly (it has been a while), one thing that always frustrated me about my physics and math courses is that they always seemed to want a numeric result at the end.
I seem to remember that I would generally solve a problem symbolically down to the point where it was just a matter of arithmetic, at which point I would whip out the calcuator. That last step is really trivial, however, and if it weren't needed, neither would be the calculator.
If calculators are such a problem, then why not just ban them?
As one of my teachers told me, in college, 'lets face it. In real life, if you don't know the answer, you're going to either look it up, or ask somebody. So, on the tests, bring in your text books, go nuts. But the tests WILL be such that if you don't know the underlying theory, you're screwed.' And he did it, too. He'd structure some of the questions such that they looked like english wordings of the equasions, but he'd alter something. He'd go ahead and square root something that the forumla is supposed to, so if you plug it in, you'll square root it again, and fuck up. It was great.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Well I tried submitting a story on this earlier, but it was rejected. Anyways, for some information on what went down from people who are closely involved with the scene, check out this site , a detailed list of who was involved and the 'warez groups' they came from is there, as well as locations.
It just struck me WHY this happened now, to DoD! The group released less than 1% of total releases last year, but they were the ones behind the DeCSS algorithm (though not the code). They couldn't get anything out of punishing a 16 year old foreign national, so this is their tactic. There is no other reason for the FBI to target DoD over other groups with _much_ higher volume.
Welcome to the Corporate Republic.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Customs agent Allan Doody said each computer has between one to two terabytes of stolen software.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
A large part of hacking is making something that's not meant to do cool stuff do cool stuff. Are you suggesting that hacking isn't geeky?
It has gotten so far that we have had to require that only scientific calculators be used on the upcoming midterm exams.
So? There's no reason high school math students need graphing calculators. In fact, with the possible exception of Trig functions, they shouldn't need calculators at all. As a college level math tutor I think it's unfortunate that high school math teachers encourage the use of calculators. I've watched too many freshman flounder in Calculus because they never really understood Algebra. That's certainly not entirely because their high school teachers let them use calculators, but it's certainly a contributing factor. It's really sad to see someone who claimed to get A's in math all through high school who can't even multiply by 10's without picking up their calculator.
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time? They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation.
That would explain their popularity, or lack thereof. Personally I despise RPN, for the same reasons I despise Newtons notations for Calculus. Oh well, I guess if your going to be wrong you might as well be wrong about everything...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Warez kids are the best and the brightest?! Please explain. My notion of "best and brightest" doesn't associate itself with people who produce nothing, steal from those who do, and get caught doing it. This seems more like evolution in action to me.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Of course you can do 842 calculations in 15 seconds if you mindlessly press 2 [ENTER] 2+2+ 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2... I mean how hard is that? But I find that the CAS in the HP series could use some SERIOUS work. I hate that damn equation editor. I hate the stupid menus that you need to do almost everything. My TI-89 can handle things just fine. If you happen to have a short term memory and can't figure out where to put your parenthesis they make PRETTY PRINT for that! I admit that RPN has some nice features and that yes, the 49G can switch between the two systems, but c'mon the 89 is at least as technically advanced as the 49G.
"I don't care what you do, as long as you don't disturb others. Paint your nails or sleep for all I care. While you're in summer school, I'll be teeing off on the golf course at 9am."
If OJ can get away with murder, some 18 year old in a college dorm can get away with IP infringement - with a good lawyer.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
>such as agents raiding a house and watching what connections happened without pulling the plug. That can't be legal, can it
By what logic? They are observing illegal activity taking place. They did not put up the site, they did not instigate people to use it, it's not entrapment.
That's like saying watching a drug transaction go down to find out who is involved instead of stopping it is illegal.
Here's another site that has a list much like cyberworld.ru:
http://phlow.digimagix.org/scenebusts.htm
Amen! I've seen a student who claimed to have gotten straight A's in AP calc get a C followed by an F in first year calculus. He told me ``...if I could just use my calculator, I'd be fine...''. He was partly right; he did know what buttons to push for some familiar problems. But he had never learned calculus, and he had never learned how to learn math. All he knew was how to push buttons, and learn button sequences. He couldn't reason.
See what I've been reading.
Well I hate to say it but I'm somewhat in support of these groups, if only because I'm sick of buying the latest games only to discover that the best part of the game was the free demo. Truly great games are one in a thousand, and even then they don't last long enough.
That's where the warez scene can swoop in and deliver salvation: download a stripped-down rip of whatever game you want, try it out for a couple days, then go out and buy the full-blown masterpiece. Or delete it and forget it ever existed. It encourages the game houses that work hard, while cutting the revenue stream of the half-assed hype-machine con artists, most of which sell their crap at Mallwart and other idiot chains.
Think of it like music: they put a catchy song on the radio, you pop 20$ on the album, then find yourself duped because 8 of the 10 songs are just filler. You can't ask for a refund because you've already 'consumed' the product (because that's what it is: a product). They'll politely tell you you're a pirate and that it would be unlawful for them to return your money. Same thing applies to PC games.
To get back to the point, I say they deserve a fair trial (if such a thing exists), not on the basis that I support organized non-profit piracy, but rather because the law system was most likely manipulated by corporate interests and thus the accused were unjustly treated.
The problem lies within the game market itself: the insane price-gouging that's going on and getting worse every year. Why should I blow 80$ (50 of your U.S. dollars) on a product I haven't seen nor experienced, and that carries no useful warranty ? Just look at Hasbro and how they're destroying the game industry by raping classic titles, making flashy smelly shit with the original concepts and selling them anywhere there's a cash register.
Ironically, the shareware business is practically dead, even though it was probably the most honest form of software marketing in existence. You had a decent game/utility on its own, not just a crippled 5-minute unstable demo. If you enjoyed the experience and wanted to prolong it, you'd pay 15-20$ for 2-3 extra episodes, or a bunch of USEFUL extra features in the case of utilities/mini-applications. And what if you didn't need or want the extras ? Then you just kept on using the shareware version because it was actually a fully enjoyable piece of software on its own.
Warez may be illegal, but it definitely has its place in the world and on the net. And its working members certainly aren't rats. If you want a rat, go find your favorite pro-invasive-law lobbyist. They're the ones making our lives miserable and taking away from everyone. Warez takes away from those who are screwing us in the first place.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's interesting you said that. Back when I was in high school, I took the "Independent Study" Calculus course. It was the only one my school offered, and I was one of three who took it. I took the whole thing on a beat-up TI scientific that a friend of mine had found laying outside on the ground. It was so old, it had batteries only - no solar. Anyway, later that year, I took the Calc AP test. The rules said that a graphing calculator was recommended, but my math teacher said it would probably just get in my way. The morning of the test, my calculator died - big crack through the LCD. The guidance counselor lent me his calculator - a four-function. Ok, it had a square root button too, but that was it. I took the whole test with it, and had to leave a lot of the answers in symbolic form - I think I gave the height of a tree as ln(3.8) + 2 or something.
:)
Anyway, long story short, I got a 4 - first at my high school ever to pass.
So, in conclusion, symbolic answers can be a good thing.
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
Interestingly, in the calculus class I'm taking (final's tomorrow) we're using graphing calculators to help visualize what we're doing. The instructor uses a TI 89, and most of the other students do as well, but I had fond memories of my HP-11C so I went out and bought an HP 49G. So now I've just spent several months observing some differences between the TI and the HP. And guess what? The TI does almost everything the HP does (no RPN that I've seen on the TI, and I must admit that that's one of my favorite things) and the TI has a nicer interface. Frankly, it's a Pain In The Ass to use the HP -- what takes maybe three keystrokes on the TI can take six or more on the HP. Feh. I love my HP geek toy, but I can see why people prefer the TI.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
It seems to me to be a decent way to learn a little programming. The fact that you can carry it around with you and whenever you are bored whip it out and code a few more lines is a plus factor, not like my computer where when I sit down on it there's a lot more to do that distracts me from ever learning how to program on it...
The whole point of hacking is to make things work above their abilities. I wrote a multiplayer Tic Tac Toe type game for the TI-83 that worked over the link cable, which was pretty cool. (Turns out though that the link cable connection isn't good enough to do anything requiring speed or anything close to two way communication, so any multiplayer action type games are out...)
For a lark I am now programming a 3D Wireframe Renderer for my TI-83. It reads XYZ points from a matrix variable and then reads which points to connect with lines from another matrix variable. It is pretty cool, not useful for anything, but still cool.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Like it or not, copying commercial software is ILLEGAL. Although I agree that today's software licensing situation is beyond ridiculous, that methods used by the industry to calculate losses to "piracy" straight out of la-la land, and that small-scale piracy of products such as Windows 2000 have helped companies such as MS by letting would-be MCSE's get more practice, the laws currently on the books and the decisions currently being made by the courts say that unauthorized distribution of commerical software is copyright infringement and that such infringement is illegal.
This isn't about outlawing Linux or personal firewalls. This isn't about invasion of privacy. This isn't about the legal grey area that is file sharing software. This isn't about arresting Torvalds or raiding Transmeta. This is simply the police doing their job, enforcing well-understood and court-tested laws in what appears to be a very well-planned sting operation.
If you think that improvements in motor vehicle technology mean that 65 mph speed limits are too slow, you don't drive 120 and then expect people to listen to you when you are locked up for reckless driving. Similarly, you don't distribute warez and then go whining about censorship and the like once the law catches up with you. You won't get any points for calling it civil disobedience either, because you know full well that these people weren't doing this for the greater good, they were doing it because they wanted Photoshop for free.
Yeah, it sucks. But, as they say, if you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime. Besides, it's not like the police did anything new. Undercover cops posed as warez kiddies much as undercover cops have posed as drug dealers and prostitutes in the real world. With all the security technology out there, if warez kiddies couldn't avoid falling into a trap as simple as this, did they really deserve to survive?
Are you serious? Are you brain dead? A good lawyer could mean freedom, or a reduced sentance. A court appointed attorny could mean getting stuck in a cell with murders rapists and terrorists. Remember 'hacking' is now a crime of terror. Equivalent to blowing up a building with 10,000 people in it.
A good legal defense could get that law removed by the supreme court. How can you compare writing software to keygen an application to taking thousands of lives????
If you think this is just about warez it isn't. This is about people who rob convenience stores being thrown back out after three months while some kid who wrote a keygen gets a life sentance WITHOUT the possibility of parole. Even if you think warez is wrong do you really believe that it is a crime on the level of murder?
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I understand your concern, my school has to battle the same problem. But the teachers have the stance that if they pass the test, they don't seem to fuss. I'd see the previous post about summer school.
Seriously, before a midterm or regents, the teacher in one menu managed to reset the calculator. It wipes out the notes (and games, darn), and resets things like radians, but is the only foolproof thing when everyone's in the test room. Just check inside the cases for cheat sheets.
I was kind of wondering what the general feeling about the lack of discussion on the video today. I feel that while /.'ers can tire very quickly of hearing (not caring) about UBL, having the video and transcrpits online along without having the servers get overloaded was IMHO newsworth for us. Another reason I have been apart of the slashdot community is because this forum has the background to make intelligent comments, rather than the shit that gets posted everywhere else.
"Get them before they get....
Sorry, had to do it. Oblink for them:
i st /glance/-/88810/ref=m_art_dp/107-0093169-3520543
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/art
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
"I didn't know any of this was even going on. Someone must have cracked my box and set up an FTP server. I swear! Ok, then prove I'm lying."
.
load "linux",8,1
Of course, now that the source of 95% of the world's online pirated software has been shut down, big-name software companies will no doubt be dropping their exorbitant pricing -- the justification for which was the rate of online piracy.
Right?
*cough*
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I'm a former mathematics teacher. You should be. Let me pick your post apart line by line. I'll be quite harsh, so stop reading now if you don't want your day ruined...
I'm sorry, but I draw the "geekiness" line at pissing away your time writing silly crap like that for a calculator.
Do you think it's silly for football players to lift weights because there are no weights on the football field? Learning to program in a small space develops excellent mental muscles. Learning to program in Z80 assembler (or whatever language is used) is invaluable to ANYONE who wants to understand computers. YOU don't see the usefulness in it, therefore you conclude it's pointless; I must disagree. I'd point out also (something that you as a teacher MUST come to understand) that anything that motivates a student to learn something, ANYTHING, is invaluable.
A calculator is a tool of science and business, not a gaming machine.
Ever hear of a computer? Ever hear of the IBM PC? Speak of facts, not wishes.
I cannot begin to describe the problems that it has caused me as a high-school math teacher.
Yes, you can. You go on to do so in the next sentence. It would have been better to say "I can only begin to describe..."
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class, but the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests.
You have a classroom management problem. The game-playing and cheating are symptomatic. It could be note-passing, it could be talking, it could be throwing pencils at the ceiling. The problem is not the paper, the mouths, or the pencils, it is the students' lack of respect and motivation. Like it or not, responsibility (if not causation) lies with you. Students play games because they have nothing better to do. As for the cheating, you make it sound as if you didn't understand the potential of these "tools", and I have no patience with this. You have no business teaching with them if you don't understand them. I worked with some of the early pioneers of the graphing calculator in secondary mathematics education, and rapidly learned that a teacher who didn't understand the technology would do more harm than good. Students would not only fail to progress in their mathematical skills; they would regress as they lost competence in skills they'd previously developed.
It has gotten so far that we have had to require that only scientific calculators be used on the upcoming midterm exams.
More evidence that you have NO business teaching with graphing calculators. You apparently hand students a tool, teach them to use it, and test them on their ability to accomplish tasks without the tool. You may as well teach them to do long division with paper and pencil and require oral examiniations in which they do all the work in their head. The analogy is almost exact. Here's what we did to solve your problem. On test days...
1. Students place all books under the desk as class starts; only the calculator and some writing implements are on the desk.
2. Students remove batteries from the calculators.
3. The teacher walks to each desk and verifies that the batteries are out.
4. The students replace batteries and place calculators under their desk.
5. The teacher passes out Part 1 of the test; it measures rote memorization of formulas, proofs, etc. This portion of the test is timed.
6. When Part 1 is completed, the teacher passes out Part 2; students could use their calculators.
This worked quite well for us.
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time?
I believe they have...
They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation.
Right, and Esperanto is far superior from a linguistic standpoint and works better than standard English phonics. But no one speaks Esperanto at my supermarket because everyone speaks English. RPN is a poor choice in a pedagogical environment because you must teach not one, but two mathematical languages. If you want to teach RPN, by all means do so..but teach only RPN and use textbooks whose notation makes RPN obvious.
Alas, I suppose now that HP's discontinuing them, they don't matter to the Slashdot crowd anymore...
Not a homogenous group...but you're probably mostly correct.
Some of this has been pointed out in other posts, but I wanted to be thorough. BTW, I'm a former mathematics teacher because I was a bad mathematics teacher. I loved mathematics, I loved my students, and I loved being in the classroom. I just really, really sucked at it. Anyway, I can see the symptoms from a thousand miles. You really need to either leave the field (as I did) or seek some drastic change to your teaching. A few years reflection on my failure has lead me t believe that classroom management (aka discipline) skills are the core competencies of good teachers.
First: With so many groups with such great organization and skills (obviously more than some software makers) this is part of our culture. If you agree with their actions or not - you must realize these could be the Al Capone & Baby Face Nelsons of our time.
Do they really have the press conference saying:
"Today a judge issued warrants for John Smith also known as; Arsdigi..."
and so forth?
That has to be a riot to the persons parents or whoever. They all know he just sits in his house all day.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I should point out that I'm not referring to Math specifically; I believe the course was actually statistics. Take, for a really basic example, the difference between understanding that the Pythagorian Therom will give you the length of the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle, given the length of the other two sides, and remembering that the actual formula is a^2 + b^2 = c^2. I'll be the first to admit that this might not hold as you move further along the complexity axis, but it tells you where I'm coming from.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I don't know if the parent of this comment was intended to be funny or not. I didn't find it funny.
I'd just like to make a distinction between writing silly games for your calculator, and cheating in class.
I had a great time programming my TI-85 and TI-82 when I was in my high school math classes, I never once used them to cheat, and I went on to major in Math in college. Lots of my other friends played with them when they were bored, but didn't ever cheat. Sure, sometimes we didn't pay attention to the lecture - but we wouldn't have been paying attention to the lecture without a calculator either - often we figured out what was going on in the first 10 minutes of class and were bored, while all of the other students were still struggling.
My suggestion is this: encourage use of graphing calculators to understand math. Tolerate use of calculators during class (but take them away from any students who abuse this privelege). Disallow them during exams.
One other suggestion: if you're a Math teacher, take the time to learn how to use these calculators. If you suspect a student of cheating, take their calculator and examine it for notes. If you want to be fair, you'll tell your students about this policy ahead of time.
You didn't notice the attribution to Reuters at the bottom of that story? That's not NZ journalism.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests
dont let the students use calculators on exams. my best courses were the ones where we were not alowed to use calculators on exams. the problems used easy enough numbers that you didnt get caught up with number crunching on the calc. but you had to demonstrate a clear understanding of the material in order to get a correct answer. if you ask me most people use calculators far far to much for simple problems and they are so reliant on the calculator that they never really stop to think about the problem. or they are so trusting of the calculator that they make stupid typos and never catch them. for example take 100/10=? someone types 100/100 in to the calculator on accident they get 1 as the answer and just write it down. they never think about the problem.
"Shut up brain or ill stab you with a Q-tip" Homer Simpson
... has been a mess since it was nationalized in 1982. Basically, one day all the investments companies like Bank Of America and Citi had in Mexico back then was for all practical purposes stolen, and the country paid the price for the next 15 years - no investment institutions would do business there no matter how good the odds were.
Things have gotten better over the last few years, where now they're at the point of allowing foreign companies to acquire what was once the "pride" of the mexican financial system, Banamex (mentioned in the article). The problem is that Banamex was supremely in bed with the ruling party, and thus it can still do whatever the heck it pleases. Having said that, US law should hopefully shoot them down in this sad case.
FWIW, the mexican 'fed' is technically not the Banco De Mexico, but the board of governors headed by the Minister of Finance and the governor of the bank itself. For many years this 'bank' was really just a money production factory, back in the golden days of the banana republic mindset when the government printed more money if it suddenly ran out for some reason. 40% inflation baby!
Obviously this is pertinent to the case of these busted warez organizations. From my humble participation in the scene in '94 and thereabouts, I never saw anyone from the larger groups (Razor, DoD, PwA, RTS) selling CDs, selling FTP access, or otherwise trying to make a buck from warez. Everybody just wanted to get the biggest and best 0-day releases, the coolest demos, and the hardest cracks, then spend all night in IRC bragging about it and trying to take over channels (yay EFnet).
Have there been any laws since the LaMacchia case that make priacy without profit a federal crime?
If you haven't got the faintest idea what I'm talking about, Google for David LaMacchia and Harvey Silverglate (civil libertarian and author of The Shadow University)
The TI89's do indeed do real time rotation as I am doing them right now. If you are thinking of the 92 which does not, that is a big difference but the 92+ model does. The only lacking feature of the 89 is RPN and yeah, it might be nice, but I find that even the buttons are more comfortable on the 89. And BTW, I do in fact own both calculators.
My TI89 can do that many calculations in about 15 seconds as well... 842! will do exactly what you just claimed was 842 calculations. I doubt anyone could even TYPE the numbers 1-842 with no spaces or enter keys, etcetera on a computer keyboard in under 15 seconds, even 2+2+2+2... is a stretch.... If this guy can do what he claims, I would really love to see an MPEG... there should be a new category in the Guinness Book of World records.
1)Write programs to do my repetitive homework assignments for me while the few morons in my class struggled with something basic.
2)Actually see the full calculation I was attempting to perform, in standard notation, before hitting Enter.
3)Being able to quickly recall the last few things I did... and edit them efficiently to correct mistakes or perform repetitive tasks.
4)Cheat. Polyatomic ions (which I eventually learned just from using them so much). As I recall, that was the extent of my cheating.
5)Check my calculus answers. It was impossible to cheat in my high school calculus class because we always had to show our work. Checking (not cheating) on the calculator saved my butt more than once.
6) Spiffy self-written Pythagorean program clued me in as to whether or not I would get an answer at the end of my work, and if so, what it would be. As I had a mere TI-82, it was actually necessary for me to write this program. (Half-cheating - The pythagorean theorem is so damn easy. I only wrote the program after seeing how much time I was wasting doing it by hand.)
7)Programs to reset the variables to various sets of constants, depending on what class I was in, or after another program had just destroyed my variables... it was so much easier in Chem class to just hit "N" than do the SciNotation for Avogadro's number.
My biggest gripe about graphing calculators in high school are the schools that standardize on one type of calculator and waste valuable time to teach the kids how to use them. There would also be less program (and thus game!) sharing if a few kids had Casios, maybe some HPs for variety, and a few more had various flavors of TI, among which there are minimal compatibilities. (For example, 83 is mostly backwords compatible to 82, but not at all w/ 85. Same with the 86 w.r.t. the 85.).
As I recall, there was only one test on which my high school calculus teacher didn't allow graphing calculators. All the other times it didn't matter, but the multi-line display sure was a much bigger help than anything else in the calculator.
My high school math teacher (had him from precalc/trig through AP calc BC) had the philosophy that "what's allowed on the AP test will be allowed on my tests." Since you can use calculators/notes/programs on the test, he allowed it in his tests as well.
Not only did he have a phenomenal ratio of students that passed the test (80% or so got a 5, and virtually everyone who took the test passed), but most of those who had taken the his class performed significantly better in college math courses than their peers.
Being able to refer to notes doesn't prevent you from learning something -- in fact, it helps you learn to seperate the "theory that you need to understand" from the enormous set of equations that you can always look up if you need.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
What is wrong with busting warez distributors? I mean, I'm all in favor of free speech and I believe that source code (even deCSS) and compiled programs should never be banned from distribution, provided that the copyright owner allows it.
But these people were actually distributing copyrighted material which they *didn't* own the copyright to. I mean, they did something that they new was illegal, is clearly illegal (and has been so for many, many years) and they got caught red-handed. This is not a "free Kevin" or "free Dmitry" type of issue.
Besides, these guys will all get deals to rat out someone else, just like Dmitry did.
I'll probably get flamed, but I had to put up my $0.02.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
Imagine if the FBI had spent millions of dollars setting up dragnets on known jaywalkers around the world. These people KNOW they're breaking the law, and they've been caught red-handed. You don't have the RIGHT to jaywalk. Jail time is the only possible answer, right? And to top it all off, undercover agents secretly were telling suspects how to jaywalk, and where to jaywalk.
Puts things a little more in perspective, right?
(Note: I'm assuming that jaywalking is illegal in most jurisidictions.. if not, insert your own silly law here)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
That means making things so that you no longer have to "guess" what percentage of moderation is being done by the editors, nor having to "think" how many mod points you've spent in a given day.
Make that information publicly available. Have moderation history done by the editors listed in their user info. And fix the notification so that it makes a distinction between moderation done by editors and non-editors.
The more open things are, the better.
Free Hans!
I just want to point out that the guy who got caught at MIT was a sysadmin, not a student..
> 842! will do exactly what you just claimed was 842 calculations. I doubt anyone could even TYPE the numbers 1-842 with no spaces or enter keys, etcetera on a computer keyboard in under 15 seconds
It was five keys on the calculator I had in school. "8" "4" "2" "function shift" "factorial". My calculator would have then displayed an overflow error, but I expect any calculator capable of handling 842! will have a factorial function built in. Or rather an adequately accurate approximation to it - it doesn't actually have to do all those integer multiplications.
http://www.rskey.org/gamma.htm
rant
However, I think that the reason you believe that shareware is almost dead is because the mainstream producers/publishers we got accustomed to (Apogee, Epic Megagames, iD) have either replaced the word 'shareware' with 'demo' or went the commercial boxed route because they were successful enough. Well, that and the exodus of BBS users to the Internet. Anyway, there is still decent shareware gaming to be found. It is admittedly a couple of steps behind the Hollywood-style production process you see in most commercial games today, but in many cases that is made up for by the gameplay itself, the cheaper pricing, and the appreciation from the developer. I've been following the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic and comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.space-sim newsgroups lately, and aside from a 6+ year flamewar there were a couple of suggestions for decent games from small developers. The first, Dominions (http://www.illwinter.com/dominions.html), is a turn-based strategy game that is somewhat similar in style to Master of Magic. The other, Starships Unlimited (http://www.apezone.com/), is a turn-based strategy game that is not unlike Master of Orion. I like turn-based strategy games. Also, I bought a game a couple of months ago called Pontifex (http://www.chroniclogic.com/pfx.html) in which you engineer bridges on a budget that are supposed to hold up under the stress of a train with a variable weight passing over it a variable number of times.
All of these are pretty neat games and meet your definition of shareware. I heard about all of them by wandering off of the normal game-finding path. (http://www.swreg.org) is one avenue many shareware developers (including all of the above) are turning to to sell their games; they should have a storefront on there somewhere where you can browse titles to download or buy, but I think the site might be broken right now. If you don't mind wading through it, Usenet is a good place to spot game reviews or announcements. (http://www.isonews.com) also has a pretty good game review forum on it, though given the general direction of the site these tend to be about standard commercial games and not shareware.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that shareware is still alive and still worthy of trying out if you know where to look.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Rangerinc.com has code developers in Toronto, venture capital from media lawyers in Vancouver, a web page based in Seattle and the scanning operations are in San Diego.
All the big Microsoft busts, MP3, and warez sites have been busted by this outfit. They're basically bounty hunters. You might have been scanned from this address: 209.95.126.167, they probably have others in San Antonio.
They regularly troll IRC chat rooms, web sites, for copyrighted downloads. Its a bad time to be hosting a WAREZ site.
A better idea is to contribute to GNU or some other free software site and don't buy software from the corporate police state. The consumer still has the right of choice.
2. Students remove batteries from the calculators.
3. The teacher walks to each desk and verifies that the batteries are out.
4. The students replace batteries and place calculators under their desk.
Tee hee, I remember my HP48GX had a mega-capacitor inside of it that would keep the memory for up to 10 minutes with no batteries. The idea was to make it easier to change the batteries without losing data, but it made it great for those who didn't understand the technology :)
Not to mention it had symbolic maniuplation and automatic built-in unit conversion YEARS before TI caught up.
Personally, I like the attitude of my calculus teacher. You had to show the steps on the test, so I wrote some programs that used the symbolic maniuplation to come up with the right results. A few of the other students thought this was an unfair advantage, but her opinion was, "If you understand the subject well enough to write a program to do it for you, more power to ya."
I agree. Being able to take a binary that has no code that you know of, and that might have strict anti-piracy measures built in, and being able to adapt the code of that binary to make it bypass all that anti-piracy crap is really, really trivial.
:P
I mean, any 5th grader can do it...
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I can find plenty to interest me in programming languages; that's why I designed one myself. But it damn well does matter how a teacher teaches; the student isn't even going to bother trying to find something interesting in the subject if there's no hint of something interesting being there. IMHO you'd find a lot more kids being interested in Math if they knew the implications of what awaited them when they hit calculus class, but we drown them in seemingly unrelated items without giving them a clue of how they connect, with the result being that a lot of kids are lucky to even see trigonometry before they get done with high school, never mind calculus.
As for entertainment... something tells me you never had a chemistry teacher who blew things up in class. You get a kid's attention by putting a piece of sodium in water, he or she is going to be a lot more interested when you explain the deal with reactive metals than if you simply lay out a few notes in class.
As for your grandmother... what a bitch, if she reacted to life in general with roughly the same attitude. No wonder you grew up to have an attitude like that.
The test arrived. I turned it on. The power drain was so great that it was unusable. I sighed and stuck a paperclip into the reset hole.
I got a 3, though. Good enough to skip a semester at college!
[pink beam of light]
You need to start shopping at EB. If decide you don't like a game and you still have the reciept, you can bring it back. Even if you've already opened it and played it. Works great when you find out that a game only takes 2 hours to play and has no replay value.
What does "put it up" mean?
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Jaywalking law is legitamite because it establishes culpability in an accident. If someone walks out from between two cars in the middle of the street and I hit them, it's not my fault; they were the ones breaking the law (and I can sue for damage to my car!). However, if they are in a crosswalk and I hit them then it's my fault.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
great for those who didn't understand the technology
Yup. Those who don't understand the technology have NO business using it for teaching. I have more patience for Luddites (those who disallow technology out of fear that it may someday replace them) than technophiles (those who incorporate as much technology as possible, regardless of the benefits) when it comes to teaching.
The calculators my students used were Casios (FX something I think? It's been nearly ten years...) and the backup battery was easily removable. Both sets of batteries were removed before tests. Come to think of it, though, all that's needed is a simple, failsafe memory-wipe method. Someone else mentioned a capacitor that maintained memory for ten minutes; that won't be removable, obviously. I'd have no problem with a calculator that had a paperclip-sized hole with a reset button under it...walk around the room with a paperclip, and in two minutes the room is ready for the test.
So did John Ashcroft want to send a signal here? If he did it's muddy. You would think that DeCSS would have been mentioned explicitly as a reason for the raid. The reasons given were music and M$ junk, and other coppied cracked comercial software. Also, if he wanted the public to confuse thak kind of trash with banned free software he would have mentioned it as an "encryption circumvention device".
He might have wanted the news to filter up through the community through some kind of Mad_Quacker.... Ahhhh! the conspiracy theorists are the conspirators.
Disinformation Nation: where the un fettered flow of non peer moderated publications has exactly the opposite effect of free speech.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
In most municipalities Jay Walking laws also cover crossing with/against the light, and yet in most cases the driver is still culpable if you hit the pedestrian in the crosswalk (take a look at how Cali law says motorists have to stop as soon as the pedestrian enters the crosswalk).
Yet in New York for instance, Jay Walking laws aren't enforced (even though there are definate times when they should be), simply because its impractical. Heck I know several friends who ended up getting Jay Walking tickets in other cities specifically because they were from New York where Jay Walking is viewed as rediculous (ie. a person should be brighter than to run between cars, and if you do it and no one gets hurt/no accident or traffic hicup, then all is good).
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
At my university each candidate is issued a standard calculator at the start of each exam, and they're collected up afterwards. You're not allowed to bring your own calculator into the exam room any more than your own answer booklet to write on. (Your own pens are okay since nobody's found a magical cheat-helping pen.)
Calculators are so cheap nowadays that you don't have much excuse not to do this. Although your solution of requiring only 'scientific' (I assume this means, not graphical) calculators is also a good answer.
Unfortunately, people aren't going to stop building features into calculators just because teachers would prefer it that way. It's the schools' responsibility to decide what type of calculators are and are not acceptable in class or in tests.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
For the record, I wasn't suggesting that the banks were victims of the big bad corrupt mexican government - not at all. They were all in cahoots at one time or another. You seem to know about all this. Remember the director of Banca Cremi that had to hide in Spain or get busted for financial fraud?
As for the independence of the monetary boards from the government, yes, that's beggining to look better every day. Under president Zedillo the Finance minister was given a lot more leeway than in all previous administrations (at least that I remember), and I see this trend being continued and expanded under Fox.
Here's hoping that Mexico can one day be a lot more than a banana republic with make believe banks =)
You're actually quite right. I've downloaded warez quite often (with so much crap going about, according to my own dubious morals it's perfectly ok to check out "extended" demos before buying software)and the names on the list mean squat to me. These are not the people who have ripped any game, graphic app or audio app I've ever seen, and as for movies and mp3's, a lot of those are ripped by ordinary home users who rent or buy cd's and dvd's, encode them for their own personal use and then share them. So what makes these groups special, I don't know. Maybe they were just easy to bust...
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
sorry to reply to my own post, but it just occured to me to ask if someone knows whether these are the groups that crack Windows/Office/etc?. (now there's software I'll just buy, because even though it's crap I know for sure I need it).
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
My, what responses I got. They were all pretty much along the lines of "these kids are so smart because they got into top schools and they crack". Of course it takes a kind of "intelligence" to crack things, but I must reiterate that this does not make them the best and the brightest.
They fail to see the forest for the trees. What truly useful inventions could such genius produce? Maybe they could have been like Dean Kamen, producing medical devices and earning enough money to sink it into pie in the sky scooter projects. Maybe they could be "cracking" the human genome for cancer cures. Maybe a lot of things I can't even imagine. We will never know. They were too busy ripping into other people's work.
Intelligence is only part of being "best and brightest". These kids are like burly men with big hammers. Instead of using their hammers to pound nails, they use them to smash Windows. When you look at these people, and multiply their "best" factor by their "brightest" factor, the product is futility.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Nobody learns math from books, you have to have a good teacher. By the time I got to Calc III I had gotten to the point where I could figure out from the book how to solve most of the problems, but I didn't really understand the concepts until they were explained to me by someone who really knew them.
I think part of the problem was that my teachers seemed to be 'naturals' at math so it was hard for them to translate for the 'un-naturals', so to speak.
This is really an excellent point. One of the things that made me a good tutor was that I actually had to work at it myself, and it hadn't been so long that I couldn't remember how hard it had been. One of the things I always told my most struggling students was that I took Calc I 4(!) times. The first 3 times I don't feel too bad about dropping. In each of those classes there were over 40 students the first day, and no more than 3 ever took the final. I transfered to a different school before I took it again, and I passed with little difficulty.
I think mathematicians make terrible teachers. All the good math teachers I've had were Engineers and Physicists by training. Understanding the connection between math and the real world is essential to teaching math. For the record, my first 3 Calc I teachers were mathematicians, the last was a Nuclear Engineer.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I would like to mod this +1 "good thought out post from someone who understands WTH he's talking about"
Its Ironic that someone who can use hindsight to relize that they where a bad teacher and why, isn't teaching. I think a lot of teachers need to step back and think this way about there teaching. So they can constantly improve there skills.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not in the "mathematically simple" sense, but in the "of little worth or importance" sense.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
RPN only makes no sense if you've never used it. Look at it this way:
When you're doing a math or physics or whatever problem, you generally have a bunch of numbers, and you need to figure out what to do with them.
In RPN, you put in the bunch of numbers. Then you decide what to do with them. When you hit the * key, for example, the bottom two numbers get multiplied together, and that result is now in your bunch of numbers in their place.
In algebraic notation, you have to concentrate on the formula, because of keeping track of where the parentheses go and all that. You also have to either do everything in one step, or use something like the [Ans] key to keep using a number that you got as a result. In RPN notation, the numbers you get as results are immediately ready for you to use. Once you learn it, it really feels like you're working with the numbers.
The one drawback to RPN is that you can't directly put in a formula you see on paper - but this does not slow you down if you understand what the formula does.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Here in the US they usually call him "Osama Bin Laden" as well - but they abbreviate his name UBL. I speculate that the problem is that "Usama" begins with "USA".
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Hmm... I wonder what would happen if he found out that I was the "michael is a wanker" troll. Ooops. =)
501 Not Implemented
True, that does address the problem of "no warranty" I had mentioned, but why should I need to return a game in the first place ? Remember the dark ages of software, before the www became moderately mainstream around 4-5 years ago. You'd run down to the local radioshack or EB (which was much less game-oriented back then) and paid 5$ for a shareware disc of Duke Nukem or Quake. You played it to the bone, had a digital orgasm and called the 1-800-idsoftware to buy the full game, which arrived shortly in your mailbox. If you didn't like the 5$ episode, then you just deleted it and handed it to a friend.
Now with the net, it's even easier : just download the first episode for free, play it out, then order online if you liked it. Often they will let you download the full game minutes after you've paid for it.
You don't have to get off your fat ass and find a parking spot in the downtown frenzy. You don't have to endure nosey mindless sales kids who don't know a thing about _service_. Most importantly, when you call or email for tech support, you get a personal and useful answer, not just a corporate autoreply and some incompetent clerk's copy-paste solution.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I mean, it's shaky..
If they put up a site, and just let people 'do whatever'...
Thing is... I mean, I think entrapment is wrong.
But... I think there is some legal (and common sense) validity to allowing them to pose as drug dealers, or put up a warez site, or whatever, to catch people. I mean, in one sense, they are encouraging it.. but in another, they are merely posing as one of many, many such sites out there. In other words, it's fairly easy to see they are not trying to 'trick' someone into doing something they would not otherwise do.
How this gets modded as a troll never ceases to amaze me, when "you need to adjust your tinfoil hat" (a la michael) gets passed over *and* other post pointing out the *exact* same thing I was talking about are passed over or even modded up!
You see this is the exact kind of hypocritical behaviour that this discussion is targeting.
And whilst I'm at it: Does metamoderation actually *DO* anything? Seriously, Mike, does it?
Consider that if a post is marked as a troll, and it is not a troll, does the moderation get *undone*? Or is the moderator just marked for a period of time?
If you see my point of view, you have to admit that if a moderator is doing a bad job, his/her moderations *should* be undone if at all possible.
Because the point we are making is: No good deed goes unpunished and the opposite is also true.
On the whole, Slashdot is doing an excellent job.
But, that good job is being undermined by (and this is my opinion, mind you) by a certain few.
{I'd also be willing to bet that Galvatron recently got mod points on that day. If it were possible...hey, a new slashcode idea...I'd bet, oh, say 10 karma points---what else are they good for? Nothing, really--- that it was him. J'accuse! If I am right I get 10 of his, If I am wrong, he/she gets 10 of mine}
:)
Gotta love the new math, tho, at the kap, got a +4 from a comment...but one -1 and now at 49.
Heh, 50+4-1=49? cute.
Oh, well, ever since hitting the cap on the other account, I stopped taking moderation seriously (and metamoding for that matter)... I just post here to realax.
hasta.
Moose
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I'm with you on the meta-moderation...
I go through the meta-mods fairly quickly, looking for things that have been down-mod'd, and if it's Redundant or Over-rated, I check the context of the post (but not the author), and it usually gets mod'd back up.
Redundant is actually the one I'm hardest on...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Yes.
In the field displaying the post's vital information (posted by, subject, etc.), the ipid and Subnet are also displayed. Clicking the displayed info lists all posts made from the ipid or Subnet. Anyone with editor status may view the ipid and Subnet hashes.
The info is discarded in approximately two weeks.
Just a throw away comment but over the years I have noticed this abuse from Michael as well. In fact I recall the original outcries when he was made an admin.
Oh well as a free community we can't... oh wait a second these guys get PAID for this. And we pay for it by looking at ADs and contributing content.
--- I do not moderate.