Personally I have no problem doing a little PC work for friends, a friend who's a carpenter did our door, a friend who's an insurance assessor helped us sort out an insurance claim so I'm happy to build up a few favours with friends.
Strangers can pay if they want to get me to work for them.(exception if they're hot, coding a trivial java app a few years ago helped get me my girlfiend)
If it were applied to other forms of violent crime committed with the intent to *send a messege* then that would be fine. But it's only applied in a subset of such cases where race is an issue.
You speak as if hate crime is the only violent crime which has a chilling effect. Gang violence (join us or else), extortion with associated kneecappings (the boss wants his money). In fact any violent crime committed with the intent of *sending a messege* or making an example of someone has that exact effect.
"hate" crime is nothing special whatsoever in that respect.
That's a cry that's been repeated forever. "Things were different in my day."
Simple better nutrition moves puberty a few years it's true but unless you're very old that wouldn't be an issue.
when you're around people all the time you don't notice gradual change the same way, the girls with the really massive breasts first got attention but the others would have just gradually changed and been already overshadowed by their counterparts.
Never trust your childhood memories for perceptions of scale.
There really is also a good chance that your memories are from the early end of that spectrum, when you're 11 the 13 year old girls seem vastly older than you and the girls your own age. You wouldn't lump girls in your own class and ones a couple of years older together. 20 or 30 years down the line and telling the difference between kids a few years apart is far harder and you do lump them together.
you just felt older at the time. at 13 you felt far older than a 13 year old looks to you now. plus it's the outlier which catch attention, not the norm.
things change. people stay the same.
it's like how old people are convinced that the world was a safer place in their youth and the teenagers far more respectful.
I'm curious about the USB drives. Are there no software encryption systems which are FIPS compliant? or is this a case of requiring hardware which forces the user to encrypt properly rather than merely allowing them to encrypt properly.
Did you have a bad experience with a professor who got upset that you didn't see the same meaning?
Nope, I just recognise it as about as useful as a glass hammer. Actual psychology would be far more useful for simply understanding people and their points of view.
It taught most of us that even when given the same input, people would come to hugely different (and often equally logically valid) conclusions.
in other news water is wet and ducks go quack. did you doubt this or something?
how else can you explain logical, reasoned analysis of the same input leading to both Smart Conservatives and Smart Liberals?
You get the same divergence between people with even mildly different precepts. Again. water, wet, ducks, quack.
The view tends to be quite common amongst people who actually deal with genuinely understanding the nuts and bolts of the universe.
Try reading "A map of the cat" by feynman and his brush with philosophy.
In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups.
When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar.
They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch.
What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand.
After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"
Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means.
What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"
What gave you the idea that i didn't like math? it was my favorite subject, I'm just not so full of myself as to assume that what I like is the be all and end all of learning.
Where did I say I wanted to cut back anything other than wastes of time? Choice is what I'm talking about.
being good at math and good at linguistics are not mutually exclusive and I did not imply as such (nice strawman BTW). But if someone is not good at math and is good at something else forcing them to waste their time on a subject they don't like and they're not good at is pointless.
"Shame on you for implying they are and shame on you for perpetuating the mythical idea that people are born/destined to be anything in particular. That very concept is self-defeating."
Sure. And I also perpetuate the mythical idea that people are born/destined to be tall or short. If they're not tall enough back on the rack for another hour! Every child has the potential to be a giant!
Children are different. Some are tall, some are short, some are good at math, some are not, some are good at languages, some are not, some have fantastic spacial ability, some do not, some have a knack for working with their hands, some do not.
but that doesn't fit with certain naive and deluded views of the universe.
no, your attitude is the one doing these kids a disservice. I've seen people destined to be fantastic linguists waste huge amounts of their time trying to cope with imaginary numbers and similar useless crap? Similarly kids with a knack for math forced to sit through the musings of some failed author about the meaning of flowers in the writings of a dead poet.
why? because people like you who think that kids are all to stupid to know what the hell they like or want. Some of them are. pleanty of them know damn well what they want to do and shouldn't be help back for the sake of the indecisive.
tallent, interest, personal liking. call it what you like but some kids click with certain subjects and have the potential to be great at them.
Then someone like you comes along and insists that no, *insert their favority pet subject* is far more important than *whatever the kid is good at or loves doing* and insists that the kids waste their time on things they don't need, never will need, don't like and are not good at rather than what they have a tallent for.
People should have the basics of velocity and acceleration before starting physics 101
which is great for the kids who might ever or will ever do physics 101. there's no shortage of kids who know damn well what they want to do and it's not physics 101.
yes, *my* experiences are meaningless but *your* experiences apply to everyone or at least everyone who counts or is educable.
you're absolutely right! pulling random things out of the air and pretending they're what the author really meant is sooooo useful.
Try a fun little game: watch a film by some serious director, do your literary analysis and then have someone else watch with the directors commentary turned on and tick off points from your analysis.
oh? what is that? that doesn't count? because apparently even if the director/author/poet personally says straight out that no, their use of some church bells is not a symbol for neo-colonialism or whatever else you've dreamed up that doesn't count because everyone makes their own meaning.
"And I am no idealist, I know that there are children as stupid as a rock, still, I give a chance at least."
Which has nothing to do with "closing the gap"
Even if you fix the problems which are holding some of the slowest back the best and fastest should still keep charging ahead unless someone is hobbling them to make the parents of the struggling kids feel better about how small the gap is between them.
Right, so in your world the kids who are struggling the most and having the most problems are the ones most capable of learning fast?
if the slowest are to end up at an equal level then you either have to slow/stop the fastest or make the slowest far faster than the ones who are furthest ahead.
play with words however you like but you're either hobbling the best and brightest or making the least capable go faster than the most (while not applying the same methods to teaching the brightest to allow them to learn faster too). Either way doing so would mean being an awful teacher.
Which is insanely arrogant. You speak as if you think the only knowledge worth having is your own.
Someone who doesn't waste their time learning math they don't want or need can spend the same time learning any number of other things. You don't just send the kids home early, you spend that time teaching them something else. How to write a good book, how to build a bookshelf, history, geography, design.
"Yet I don't think I have ever heard anyone voicing the converse sentiment - that they wish they had not wasted so much time on maths."
I have heard exactly that. From someone who spoke 7 languages but for whom math was painful in school.
Myself I have also expressed similar sentiments about (for me) utterly useless non-math subjects which were nothing but a waste of time that could have been better spent on things which would be useful to me.
So the kids who could be tearing far ahead have to loiter around waiting for the slow kids to catch up?
The *nicest* teachers were those who were actually able to close the gap between the students with different abilities. Not the best teachers.
they're the ones who make the parents of the slow kids feel good because their little johnny isn't struggling.
meanwhile the kids who already understand it are getting more and more and more bored wasting time they could be spending learning waiting for their slower classmates.
A good trainer isn't one who has everyone running at the same miserably slow speed at the end of the year.
Abandoning the slowest entirely is bad but dragging back the most able is vastly worse. that's what really awful teachers do.
Writing SA's on how a drum represents Emily Dickinsons conflict with society is 100% useless.
Completely and utterly usless. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. It didn't help me understand anything later life in any way shape or form. It didn't help me understand any news items I read today. There was no hidden understanding conveyed. it was useless in every way.
on the other hand reading simple lists of common logical fallacies(which was not part of any english class I ever took ) did help me to understand and judge news items I read today.
Yes, my big problem with how history is taught where I live is that all the focus is on "how other countries have screwed over ours in the past" and glosses over "how my country has screwed over other countries".
self described "Patriots" should never be allowed to choose a history curriculum. they view their own country through rose tinted glasses.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I have no problem doing a little PC work for friends, a friend who's a carpenter did our door, a friend who's an insurance assessor helped us sort out an insurance claim so I'm happy to build up a few favours with friends.
Strangers can pay if they want to get me to work for them.(exception if they're hot, coding a trivial java app a few years ago helped get me my girlfiend)
If it were applied to other forms of violent crime committed with the intent to *send a messege* then that would be fine.
But it's only applied in a subset of such cases where race is an issue.
You speak as if hate crime is the only violent crime which has a chilling effect.
Gang violence (join us or else), extortion with associated kneecappings (the boss wants his money).
In fact any violent crime committed with the intent of *sending a messege* or making an example of someone has that exact effect.
"hate" crime is nothing special whatsoever in that respect.
That's a cry that's been repeated forever.
"Things were different in my day."
Simple better nutrition moves puberty a few years it's true but unless you're very old that wouldn't be an issue.
when you're around people all the time you don't notice gradual change the same way, the girls with the really massive breasts first got attention but the others would have just gradually changed and been already overshadowed by their counterparts.
Never trust your childhood memories for perceptions of scale.
There really is also a good chance that your memories are from the early end of that spectrum, when you're 11 the 13 year old girls seem vastly older than you and the girls your own age.
You wouldn't lump girls in your own class and ones a couple of years older together.
20 or 30 years down the line and telling the difference between kids a few years apart is far harder and you do lump them together.
you just felt older at the time.
at 13 you felt far older than a 13 year old looks to you now.
plus it's the outlier which catch attention, not the norm.
things change.
people stay the same.
it's like how old people are convinced that the world was a safer place in their youth and the teenagers far more respectful.
Some snake oil still gets through....
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/fips_140-2_leve.html
I'm curious about the USB drives.
Are there no software encryption systems which are FIPS compliant?
or is this a case of requiring hardware which forces the user to encrypt properly rather than merely allowing them to encrypt properly.
Did you have a bad experience with a professor who got upset that you didn't see the same meaning?
Nope, I just recognise it as about as useful as a glass hammer.
Actual psychology would be far more useful for simply understanding people and their points of view.
It taught most of us that even when given the same input, people would come to hugely different (and often equally logically valid) conclusions.
in other news water is wet and ducks go quack.
did you doubt this or something?
how else can you explain logical, reasoned analysis of the same input leading to both Smart Conservatives and Smart Liberals?
You get the same divergence between people with even mildly different precepts.
Again.
water, wet, ducks, quack.
The view tends to be quite common amongst people who actually deal with genuinely understanding the nuts and bolts of the universe.
Try reading "A map of the cat" by feynman and his brush with philosophy.
In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups.
When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar.
They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch.
What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand.
After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"
Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means.
What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"
Th
What gave you the idea that i didn't like math?
it was my favorite subject, I'm just not so full of myself as to assume that what I like is the be all and end all of learning.
Where did I say I wanted to cut back anything other than wastes of time?
Choice is what I'm talking about.
being good at math and good at linguistics are not mutually exclusive and I did not imply as such (nice strawman BTW).
But if someone is not good at math and is good at something else forcing them to waste their time on a subject they don't like and they're not good at is pointless.
"Shame on you for implying they are and shame on you for perpetuating the mythical idea that people are born/destined to be anything in particular. That very concept is self-defeating."
Sure.
And I also perpetuate the mythical idea that people are born/destined to be tall or short.
If they're not tall enough back on the rack for another hour!
Every child has the potential to be a giant!
Children are different.
Some are tall, some are short, some are good at math, some are not, some are good at languages, some are not, some have fantastic spacial ability, some do not, some have a knack for working with their hands, some do not.
but that doesn't fit with certain naive and deluded views of the universe.
no, your attitude is the one doing these kids a disservice.
I've seen people destined to be fantastic linguists waste huge amounts of their time trying to cope with imaginary numbers and similar useless crap?
Similarly kids with a knack for math forced to sit through the musings of some failed author about the meaning of flowers in the writings of a dead poet.
why?
because people like you who think that kids are all to stupid to know what the hell they like or want.
Some of them are. pleanty of them know damn well what they want to do and shouldn't be help back for the sake of the indecisive.
tallent, interest, personal liking.
call it what you like but some kids click with certain subjects and have the potential to be great at them.
Then someone like you comes along and insists that no, *insert their favority pet subject* is far more important than *whatever the kid is good at or loves doing* and insists that the kids waste their time on things they don't need, never will need, don't like and are not good at rather than what they have a tallent for.
none of which requires anything like the kind of stuff which you'll find on most HS math courses.
most people need the basics and a few applications of the basics far more than they need linear algebra or differentiation.
We should also be pushing for everyone to learn ancient greek and hebrew.
Sure it's utterly useless in just about everyone's lives but damnit everyone should be interested in my hobbies!
The problem is that people are afraid of ancient dead languages, not that they really can't do it.
People should have the basics of velocity and acceleration before starting physics 101
which is great for the kids who might ever or will ever do physics 101.
there's no shortage of kids who know damn well what they want to do and it's not physics 101.
looking that up there seems to be more than a little uncertainty that it comes from twain at all.
"Unknown, but often attributed to Mark Twain"
yes, *my* experiences are meaningless but *your* experiences apply to everyone or at least everyone who counts or is educable.
you're absolutely right!
pulling random things out of the air and pretending they're what the author really meant is sooooo useful.
Try a fun little game:
watch a film by some serious director, do your literary analysis and then have someone else watch with the directors commentary turned on and tick off points from your analysis.
oh?
what is that?
that doesn't count?
because apparently even if the director/author/poet personally says straight out that no, their use of some church bells is not a symbol for neo-colonialism or whatever else you've dreamed up that doesn't count because everyone makes their own meaning.
http://xkcd.com/451/
And that kind of basic stats takes what?
2 weeks to learn?
3?
but you kicked out the person who asked questions and tried to learn.
great management there.
Then why did you talk about closing the gap?
If it is such then the difference between the best and worst is irrelevant and makes no sense as a metric or otherwise.
So in the context of anyone living in the western world, ie the context of the quote it's correct then?
glad to know you're agreeing with him while at the same time whining about the state of the world.
"And I am no idealist, I know that there are children as stupid as a rock, still, I give a chance at least."
Which has nothing to do with "closing the gap"
Even if you fix the problems which are holding some of the slowest back the best and fastest should still keep charging ahead unless someone is hobbling them to make the parents of the struggling kids feel better about how small the gap is between them.
Right, so in your world the kids who are struggling the most and having the most problems are the ones most capable of learning fast?
if the slowest are to end up at an equal level then you either have to slow/stop the fastest or make the slowest far faster than the ones who are furthest ahead.
play with words however you like but you're either hobbling the best and brightest or making the least capable go faster than the most (while not applying the same methods to teaching the brightest to allow them to learn faster too).
Either way doing so would mean being an awful teacher.
Which is insanely arrogant.
You speak as if you think the only knowledge worth having is your own.
Someone who doesn't waste their time learning math they don't want or need can spend the same time learning any number of other things.
You don't just send the kids home early, you spend that time teaching them something else.
How to write a good book, how to build a bookshelf, history, geography, design.
there is more in life than math.
I love math but I can recognize that.
great to know the managers left are either knowledgeable or are quiet fools.
"Even a stubborn fool is thought to be wise if he keeps silent. He is considered intelligent if he keeps his lips sealed."
"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever"
great choices there.
"Yet I don't think I have ever heard anyone voicing the converse sentiment - that they wish they had not wasted so much time on maths."
I have heard exactly that.
From someone who spoke 7 languages but for whom math was painful in school.
Myself I have also expressed similar sentiments about (for me) utterly useless non-math subjects which were nothing but a waste of time that could have been better spent on things which would be useful to me.
So the kids who could be tearing far ahead have to loiter around waiting for the slow kids to catch up?
The *nicest* teachers were those who were actually able to close the gap between the students with different abilities.
Not the best teachers.
they're the ones who make the parents of the slow kids feel good because their little johnny isn't struggling.
meanwhile the kids who already understand it are getting more and more and more bored wasting time they could be spending learning waiting for their slower classmates.
A good trainer isn't one who has everyone running at the same miserably slow speed at the end of the year.
Abandoning the slowest entirely is bad but dragging back the most able is vastly worse.
that's what really awful teachers do.
no. just no.
Writing SA's on how a drum represents Emily Dickinsons conflict with society is 100% useless.
Completely and utterly usless.
No redeeming qualities whatsoever.
It didn't help me understand anything later life in any way shape or form.
It didn't help me understand any news items I read today.
There was no hidden understanding conveyed.
it was useless in every way.
on the other hand reading simple lists of common logical fallacies(which was not part of any english class I ever took ) did help me to understand and judge news items I read today.
Yes, my big problem with how history is taught where I live is that all the focus is on "how other countries have screwed over ours in the past" and glosses over "how my country has screwed over other countries".
self described "Patriots" should never be allowed to choose a history curriculum.
they view their own country through rose tinted glasses.