The best math teachers could teach millions of students using video and the Internet
I see an earlier poster addressed this (after crass political digressions on all sides) but I want to come back to it.
What you propose, Kohath, already exists in the form of expert-speakers, professionals who charge $50 a seat and fill a stadium for a two hour lecture on crisis management or starting a business or what-have-you. I've seen ads for lectures by Donald Trump, for example: "Make yourself a millionaire- it's easy, srsly!".
Yeah, I'm sure that worked out for all the thousands in attendance.
It's a stupid idea because the value of a class for the student is interactivity with the teacher, and even in 200 seat university classrooms it's the interactivity that suffers.
You suggest paying TAs to help answer one-to-one questions, and to that I say, great! Except that there is no longer any value provided by the actual prof. Replace them with a textbook, and students will have explanation, interaction and example, and relative freedom to learn at their own pace. It's an infinitely better system. Actually, it's the one we already have.
Don't blame the unions; you cannot teach those who do not wish to be taught. Those who DO wish to be taught, on the other hand, are reasonably well served by our current system. Labor laws have nothing to do with it.
I'll end with a suggestion of my own:
Public service announcements showing Images of the homeless, of a provincial manor with a sign: "Americans use side entrance", of junkies and war, of empty dinner plates, of a decrepit white-house and a statue of liberty sinking into the sea.
I'm no marketer, but perhaps you get the idea: a wake up call. Show your younger generations how much they have to lose - and how much you have already lost for them -- out of ignorance.
a government healthcare system, that has been a failed idea in Canada, the UK and other countries.
Whoah there. I can't speak to the system in the UK. I am Canadian however, and as such I can tell you that while our system has its problems, we certainly don't feel that is has "failed". I'd be interested to know what criteria you used in coming to that conclusion.
calm down, friend. Parent wasn't suggesting that it's unreasonable to ask for those things. Parent was merely attempting to refute the idea implied by grandparent's use of the phrase "almost no questions asked".
It seems that grandparent wanted to suggest that the voters were not really verified as eligible. Parent is merely stating that relevant questions were asked, and rightly so.
Has anyone else noticed he bizarre renaissance of racism going on right now? I know it's garbage trolling and I'm (sort of) taking the bait, but I don't remember Slashdot being this quick or eager to bash black people in the past. It's every thread now, right below first post!
but it won't play on an iPod, which doesn't have a micro-SD memory slot. It has one gigabyte of memory, and the music tracks are played back at high quality.
I don't know about you guys, but my ipod doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, either. Hasn't stopped me yet.
Am I missing something here? Is it supposed to be some kind of deterrent that I can't just shove the thing into my little white music thingy?
The article on the bible is pretty okay. It should be, given the regular pruning it must take from a (rightly) indignant atheist community. There's nothing wrong with your spaghetti monster page either, in fact I found it quite informative.
I suspect that parent was saying the burden of proof must be on the editor who posts the article, otherwise we'll have articles for both jesus and the flying spaghetti monster, each stating as fact that the deity of choice created the universe in a fit of pique after discovering him/her/itself unable to microwave a burrito so hot that he/she/it couldn't eat it
Aside from all the other excellent points cited in this thread, I think everyone should understand that the idea of university is not to make you smarter than other people, but rather to obtain a piece of paper which says as much.
Armed rebellion is really what I was implying. If your politicians refuse to listen to you, they must be taken out of office, by force if absolutely necessary.
They're taking liberties with your legal system that they're supposedly not allowed to take, but there's no real punishment. It's as if instead of having police, you just posted signs everywhere saying "Stealing/Murder is frowned upon (SRSLY WE MEAN IT GUYS)"
You should be taking the appropriate avenues. I know many Americans feel that it's too late for impeachment to really make a difference, but it would certainly send a message: we refuse to take this shit one more second. If that doesn't work, then use that "right to bear arms" you seem to cherish so dearly. THIS is what it was intended for.
Maybe this legitimizes the practice, but since Americans don't seem to be willing to take any real action to curtail these unlawful searches, it's best that they be as transparent as possible. Legitimizing the practice and placing restraints on it is better than trying to pretend that nothing is wrong.
The cbc article you link to provides about 4 direct quotes from the video, and as far as I can tell none of them are actually "I, Osama Bin Laden, was responsible for the attacks on the WTC." The quotes provided seem only to verify that Al-Queda was responsible, and that Osama was part of that group, and approves.
I'm not saying he didn't do it. I'm not saying that he didn't, at some point, claim individual responsibility. This article, however, does not actually indicate either.
A higher standard of evidence is required. We've all been misled before.
Your current president was not elected to his first term. Maybe he would have been, ultimately, but he wasn't. It is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING that Americans didn't make a bigger deal out of that. Maybe if you'd dwelled a little longer in the past, your country wouldn't have elected the man to a second term.
Scenario 2 is undoubtedly a little sketchy. But if, in a tight race, the machine changes every hundredth ballot that way, it could make a difference, and would probably not be noticed.
you seem to have missed the general consensus that if mandatory voting were to be adopted, "None of the above" would of course be an option. In this way participation is encouraged, but no one is actually required to endorse the republicats or the democrans.
I'm glad somebody pointed out that "mistakes" is a subjective term in most situations. Not to mention that "learning" from mistakes implies there is a specific idea that should be learned. More often, there are several paths to resolution. If I fall off a bike, I might learn to improve my balance or I might learn that maybe I should take the bus. Which one is "learning"?
[The driving study] was on a restricted area due to "safety reasons".Why restrict driving for safety reasons and exclude normal people if it's so safe?
Don't be in line in front of me when you rob my bank, by the way.
This is why I don't trust people who argue for the right to posses firearms. You might be very confident in your ability to take control of the situation, but if you fuck up (and don't kid yourself, you might) I'm in the middle of a firefight all of a sudden, thinking, "thanks, asshole."
In theory you could keep the painting, display it, and charge an admission fee to anyone who wanted to see it. You probably wouldn't be successful, but this is somewhat similar to how a museum works, except there you pay on a per-visit or subscription basis to view as many of their works of art as you choose. In fact, a clear analogy becomes apparent between traditional museums and subscription services like second-gen napster. The museum, being the owner of the works, gets paid for them again and again. Obviously the problem is in the definition of ownership; when somebody owns a painting, it is physically in their possession whereas music, well...
It seems to me that the above is the real source of all the trouble we keep having with regards to IP. It is very difficult to logically argue that anyone actually OWNS something which doesn't physically exist, and that ambiguity causes conflict. The reality, however, is that we as consumers, and as the majority, should be allowed to define ownership in a situation where it cannot be logically determined from first principles.
Nobody's right here, neither the record companies nor the consumers who abhor them. There are more of us (consumers) though, and that's why ultimately we should get our way here.
I'd like to retract some of the things I said or implied, based on the comments I've received. I really had no basis for talking about the decline of American gaming, films and intelligence. This is a stereotype I muddled into halfway through my comment, perhaps because I was trying to argue with an article discussing the decline of American intelligence. I argued a point, but agreed with the article's assumptions, and that was intellectual laziness on my part.
To clarify, all I really wanted to say with this comment is that there is at least one (1) instance where videogames have expanded vocabulary, illustrated semantics, and otherwise enriched the life of a young child: me.
Therefore, videogames quite irrefutably do not necessarily lead to intellectual detriment. They might in some cases. But blaming a decline in American intelligence on videogames, whether or not such a decline is actually occurring, is sheer fallacy.
I want some way to mark and block specific traffic or addresses at no charge to me, such as advertisements As nice as that would be, you are describing a situation which would instantaneously kill the internet, assuming the option was widely available and people knew about it. I'm sure I don't have to elaborate, but let's just say that Google without Google ads is a FUCKING CORPSE.
Still, at the time of writing, 45% of voters don't think HD is worth it, and another 23% are holding out for downloads. This makes for a fairly large majority who don't care at all about HD-DVD or blu-ray. And remember, we're talking about a segment of the population which is probably four or five times more likely than average to even know what blu-ray is. I think if you held a referendum in America right now between blu-ray and HD-DVD, they'd choose Betamax.
The only problem I have with this article is the argument that media, not content are to blame. Video games are mentioned as a new development during the course of American intellectual decline, with the obvious implication that they are partially responsible. The author also mentions that she can't prove "hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox" is less beneficial to the young mind than reading, which clearly means that she believes this to be the case.
The problem is, she's right... but the xbox is not to blame.
Anyone who played monkey island and now plays halo knows what I mean. Likewise, anyone who has seen truly great films and now sees "live free or die hard", or worse, "transformers", knows what I mean. The content has become stupider, not the media. This is because people seem to want stupid fare, and that's not a phenomenon I know how to explain.
If I can offer any kind of proof of the innocence of videogames as a medium, it's this: when I was about six, my parents installed some simple games for me on the family computer. The games were educational; with mickey mouse as my avatar, I remember learning the word xylophone. In another game, the concept of opposites was illustrated to me by example. Later, I learned about pioneers in Oregon trail; I learned my sense of humor largely from exposure to lucasfilm games.
This is quickly becoming tl;dr. So, to summarize: this article is bullshit because it blames videogames (among other things) for the crumbling of the American mind; it fails to see that games without intelligent content, and movies of the same nature, are symptoms of modern-day America, not causes.
halt construction on devices related to blu-ray, I can finally stop hearing about this irrelevant crap. The slashdot poll said it best: no one gives a shit.
Slashdot Mirror
The best math teachers could teach millions of students using video and the Internet
I see an earlier poster addressed this (after crass political digressions on all sides) but I want to come back to it. What you propose, Kohath, already exists in the form of expert-speakers, professionals who charge $50 a seat and fill a stadium for a two hour lecture on crisis management or starting a business or what-have-you. I've seen ads for lectures by Donald Trump, for example: "Make yourself a millionaire- it's easy, srsly!".
Yeah, I'm sure that worked out for all the thousands in attendance.
It's a stupid idea because the value of a class for the student is interactivity with the teacher, and even in 200 seat university classrooms it's the interactivity that suffers.
You suggest paying TAs to help answer one-to-one questions, and to that I say, great! Except that there is no longer any value provided by the actual prof. Replace them with a textbook, and students will have explanation, interaction and example, and relative freedom to learn at their own pace. It's an infinitely better system. Actually, it's the one we already have.
Don't blame the unions; you cannot teach those who do not wish to be taught. Those who DO wish to be taught, on the other hand, are reasonably well served by our current system. Labor laws have nothing to do with it. I'll end with a suggestion of my own:
Public service announcements showing Images of the homeless, of a provincial manor with a sign: "Americans use side entrance", of junkies and war, of empty dinner plates, of a decrepit white-house and a statue of liberty sinking into the sea.
I'm no marketer, but perhaps you get the idea: a wake up call. Show your younger generations how much they have to lose - and how much you have already lost for them -- out of ignorance.
a government healthcare system, that has been a failed idea in Canada, the UK and other countries.
Whoah there. I can't speak to the system in the UK. I am Canadian however, and as such I can tell you that while our system has its problems, we certainly don't feel that is has "failed". I'd be interested to know what criteria you used in coming to that conclusion.
calm down, friend. Parent wasn't suggesting that it's unreasonable to ask for those things. Parent was merely attempting to refute the idea implied by grandparent's use of the phrase "almost no questions asked".
It seems that grandparent wanted to suggest that the voters were not really verified as eligible. Parent is merely stating that relevant questions were asked, and rightly so.
Has anyone else noticed he bizarre renaissance of racism going on right now? I know it's garbage trolling and I'm (sort of) taking the bait, but I don't remember Slashdot being this quick or eager to bash black people in the past. It's every thread now, right below first post!
but it won't play on an iPod, which doesn't have a micro-SD memory slot. It has one gigabyte of memory, and the music tracks are played back at high quality.
I don't know about you guys, but my ipod doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, either. Hasn't stopped me yet.
Am I missing something here? Is it supposed to be some kind of deterrent that I can't just shove the thing into my little white music thingy?
The article on the bible is pretty okay. It should be, given the regular pruning it must take from a (rightly) indignant atheist community. There's nothing wrong with your spaghetti monster page either, in fact I found it quite informative.
I suspect that parent was saying the burden of proof must be on the editor who posts the article, otherwise we'll have articles for both jesus and the flying spaghetti monster, each stating as fact that the deity of choice created the universe in a fit of pique after discovering him/her/itself unable to microwave a burrito so hot that he/she/it couldn't eat it
Aside from all the other excellent points cited in this thread, I think everyone should understand that the idea of university is not to make you smarter than other people, but rather to obtain a piece of paper which says as much.
Armed rebellion is really what I was implying. If your politicians refuse to listen to you, they must be taken out of office, by force if absolutely necessary.
They're taking liberties with your legal system that they're supposedly not allowed to take, but there's no real punishment. It's as if instead of having police, you just posted signs everywhere saying "Stealing/Murder is frowned upon (SRSLY WE MEAN IT GUYS)"
You should be taking the appropriate avenues. I know many Americans feel that it's too late for impeachment to really make a difference, but it would certainly send a message: we refuse to take this shit one more second. If that doesn't work, then use that "right to bear arms" you seem to cherish so dearly. THIS is what it was intended for.
Maybe this legitimizes the practice, but since Americans don't seem to be willing to take any real action to curtail these unlawful searches, it's best that they be as transparent as possible. Legitimizing the practice and placing restraints on it is better than trying to pretend that nothing is wrong.
The cbc article you link to provides about 4 direct quotes from the video, and as far as I can tell none of them are actually "I, Osama Bin Laden, was responsible for the attacks on the WTC." The quotes provided seem only to verify that Al-Queda was responsible, and that Osama was part of that group, and approves.
I'm not saying he didn't do it. I'm not saying that he didn't, at some point, claim individual responsibility. This article, however, does not actually indicate either.
A higher standard of evidence is required. We've all been misled before.
when some cold-war era headline gets transcribed and posted without a date. "September 12th, 2008: Russian Nukes Installed in Cuba!"
That big red end-'o'-the-world button seems bigger every day
Your current president was not elected to his first term. Maybe he would have been, ultimately, but he wasn't. It is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING that Americans didn't make a bigger deal out of that. Maybe if you'd dwelled a little longer in the past, your country wouldn't have elected the man to a second term.
Scenario 2 is undoubtedly a little sketchy. But if, in a tight race, the machine changes every hundredth ballot that way, it could make a difference, and would probably not be noticed.
you seem to have missed the general consensus that if mandatory voting were to be adopted, "None of the above" would of course be an option. In this way participation is encouraged, but no one is actually required to endorse the republicats or the democrans.
I'm glad somebody pointed out that "mistakes" is a subjective term in most situations. Not to mention that "learning" from mistakes implies there is a specific idea that should be learned. More often, there are several paths to resolution. If I fall off a bike, I might learn to improve my balance or I might learn that maybe I should take the bus. Which one is "learning"?
[The driving study] was on a restricted area due to "safety reasons".Why restrict driving for safety reasons and exclude normal people if it's so safe?
Because they didn't know if it was safe or not.
That's why they did a study.
Don't be in line in front of me when you rob my bank, by the way.
This is why I don't trust people who argue for the right to posses firearms. You might be very confident in your ability to take control of the situation, but if you fuck up (and don't kid yourself, you might) I'm in the middle of a firefight all of a sudden, thinking, "thanks, asshole."
It seems to me that the above is the real source of all the trouble we keep having with regards to IP. It is very difficult to logically argue that anyone actually OWNS something which doesn't physically exist, and that ambiguity causes conflict. The reality, however, is that we as consumers, and as the majority, should be allowed to define ownership in a situation where it cannot be logically determined from first principles. Nobody's right here, neither the record companies nor the consumers who abhor them. There are more of us (consumers) though, and that's why ultimately we should get our way here.
can brain scanner tell I just shit my pants?
Don't you know that ITT people who aren't creationists disprove creationism to other people who aren't creationists?
I'd like to retract some of the things I said or implied, based on the comments I've received. I really had no basis for talking about the decline of American gaming, films and intelligence. This is a stereotype I muddled into halfway through my comment, perhaps because I was trying to argue with an article discussing the decline of American intelligence. I argued a point, but agreed with the article's assumptions, and that was intellectual laziness on my part.
To clarify, all I really wanted to say with this comment is that there is at least one (1) instance where videogames have expanded vocabulary, illustrated semantics, and otherwise enriched the life of a young child: me.
Therefore, videogames quite irrefutably do not necessarily lead to intellectual detriment. They might in some cases. But blaming a decline in American intelligence on videogames, whether or not such a decline is actually occurring, is sheer fallacy.
Fair enough, sir.
Still, at the time of writing, 45% of voters don't think HD is worth it, and another 23% are holding out for downloads. This makes for a fairly large majority who don't care at all about HD-DVD or blu-ray. And remember, we're talking about a segment of the population which is probably four or five times more likely than average to even know what blu-ray is. I think if you held a referendum in America right now between blu-ray and HD-DVD, they'd choose Betamax.
The only problem I have with this article is the argument that media, not content are to blame. Video games are mentioned as a new development during the course of American intellectual decline, with the obvious implication that they are partially responsible. The author also mentions that she can't prove "hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox" is less beneficial to the young mind than reading, which clearly means that she believes this to be the case.
The problem is, she's right... but the xbox is not to blame.
Anyone who played monkey island and now plays halo knows what I mean. Likewise, anyone who has seen truly great films and now sees "live free or die hard", or worse, "transformers", knows what I mean. The content has become stupider, not the media. This is because people seem to want stupid fare, and that's not a phenomenon I know how to explain.
If I can offer any kind of proof of the innocence of videogames as a medium, it's this: when I was about six, my parents installed some simple games for me on the family computer. The games were educational; with mickey mouse as my avatar, I remember learning the word xylophone. In another game, the concept of opposites was illustrated to me by example. Later, I learned about pioneers in Oregon trail; I learned my sense of humor largely from exposure to lucasfilm games.
This is quickly becoming tl;dr. So, to summarize: this article is bullshit because it blames videogames (among other things) for the crumbling of the American mind; it fails to see that games without intelligent content, and movies of the same nature, are symptoms of modern-day America, not causes.
halt construction on devices related to blu-ray, I can finally stop hearing about this irrelevant crap. The slashdot poll said it best: no one gives a shit.