I love robots. I work in robotics. This is not an anti-robot rant. This is a rant about using technolgy inappropriately.
I know the develpers mean well, but it is clear the developers know nothing about neurology and child development. Kids with mobility problems don't need a machine that removes the need for them to develop. Kids with mobility development issues need 10X to 100X or maybe 1000X the mobility inputs. It needs to be broken down into smaller constituent components and trained intensively. Kids that can't creep, need to crawl. Kids that can't crawl, need to be patterned. Kids with mobility issues need 10X-1000X *MORE* movement inputs, not less movement input. If they can't do it themselves, then pattern them. A kid that can't creep by the normal age needs to spend nearly every waking hour crawling, wriggling, being patterned. When they can creep, they need to creep miles every day until the mid-brain comes together in good, cross-body coordinated creeping. Knee-walking needs to be eliminated so that they are forced to creep. That is the only way to fix the mid-brain injuries and other neurological injuries that these kids have. The brain grows by use. The brain shrinks by dis-use. Got that?
A robot that removes the need for them to move their legs is almost criminally stupid. It would be much better to build a robot that helps pattern the kids by putting the muscles through the correct natural movements.
This project is the poster child for why engineers need to gets their noses out of technology once in a while and understand some other part of the world's knowledge base. Anyone who knows anything about neurological development can see this is a well-meaning but naive disaster that is equivalent to injecting poison into these kids' nervous systems.
hmmm.... I found a page for sheet music listed by composer, and the search function will hit on composer names.
As to editions, my daughter plays violin, so yeah, I understand the edition issue -- editing is huge with string instruments because the editor usually puts in bowings and sometimes suggested fingerings. But in the case of one Pablo de Sarasate piece that I looked up, it looked like the sheet music was a scan of an out-of-copyright edition from a prominent 19th Century German publisher. So the edition question probably hangs on what they managed to find where the copyright hasn't been kept up. Anyway, that's my one data point, so this being slashdot and all, one data point seems more than sufficient to jump to a conclusion. Excessive, even.
Aside about editions: my daughter is currently studying the Bach sonatas and partitas for violin -- the edition our teacher recommended has both edited music in modern (OK, 80 or so year old) engraving and a facsimile of the original manuscript. It is interesting to look at the differences -- the original was very spare in terms of even the most basic articulations. I wonder if the Musopen project will be scanning facsimiles? For serious students being able to compare editions not only to each other but to the original manuscript is useful and sometimes important.
A recent news article (sorry, don't have link) reported that a recent medical study shows that heath risk rises dramatically if you sit for more than 3 hours a day. Wow! Getting under 3 hours a day of sitting is tough to do as an office drone of any kind.
If you can, get an adjustable desk. My wife has issues (pinched nerve) that caused us to invest in a computer desk with a motorized mechanism to raise and lower the top. It is really slick. My advice would be to sit as little as possible, work standing up as much as possible, and generally have the option of selecting from multiple ergonomically correct work positions. A motorized desk greatly facilitates those kinds of adjustments. We bought a complete desk unit, but after doing that I found that the manufacturer will sell you just the leg/motor/controller parts so that you can slap a custom top of your own onto it. The controller can handle up to 3 legs, so you can do large L-shaped tops and what-not.
Also, get rid of your visitor chair. If someone needs to talk at the whiteboard, both of you should stand. I bet the meetings will be shorter and more focussed:) Years ago I worked for a V.P. whose personal conference room was arranged with a stand-up conference table and zero chairs. It worked wonders for his schedule -- nobody lingered after the work was done.
But what about native Wayland aps? (Is there such a thing?) Will I be able to run those across the network? (Asking, I don't know.) Like the GP, I use X over the network. If I can run *every* graphical ap on my machine over the network, then, sorry, no sale.
Speaking for myself, yes I use calculus. But I lean towards the EE side of computers. For the pure CS side, discrete math is very important. Followed by linear algebra and abstract algebra. Calculus, not so much. For game programming, I would prioritize it linear algebra, then discrete math, then calculus (for understanding game physics), then *maybe* abstract algebra. You may not use the math every day, but on the days when you *do* need it, the insight it gives you and the power of the tools gives you the "passing power" to solve in short order the kinds of problems that your colleagues will struggle with for weeks. It really depends on how you want to spend your life -- implementing other peoples' ideas, or deploying people to implement your ideas. If you desire the latter, get the toolbox inside your brain well-stocked.
Open your eyes. Your laws have only raised the prices. The last data I saw showed that a gun that can be had in Nevada for US$600 will cost US$700 in California because we have stricter laws, and the same gun can be had illegally on the streets of London for the equivalent of US$800. All you have done is disarm the victims while slightly raising the costs of being a criminal. Remember those London riots not so long ago where the criminal had guns and the shop owners had cricket bats? All your gun control laws did is guarantee to the criminals that no one would be shooting back. I note that the police gave up, and they didn't shoot back either -- they simply let the neighborhoods burn. You, sir, are a sheep.
Partially correct, partially wrong. Some states ban automatics automatics all together. Everywhere else, you have federal hoops. You must pay for a federal tax stamp, around US$200, and spend months doing paperwork and passing background checks. Then, since these are "collectable" expect to pay US$10K or more for an automatic weapon.
When I was a kid on the farm we read our own power meters. The farm had 3, I think. The power company figured that they were out often enough (every couple of years or so) doing work and upgrades that they could catch cheaters. And they also could simply eyeball the bill: "So.... your corn drier has been running non-stop all of November, yet your power bill is the same as in May? How does that work?" (Corn driers are propane fired, but have large blower motors.) It saved them a lot of money because in a land of 1 family every 1 or 2 square miles a meter reader can rack up a lot of mileage.
These days I have a cabin in the mountains -- there are two-way and cell phone towers up on the ridge. PG&E sends out meter readers, but only a couple times a year. In fact, one time I was up there and a meter reader on loan from some town in the central valley bumbled into my cabin to ask for directions -- she was lost so bad she coun't find her own butt with two hands and a flashlight -- basically, the local folks sent her up into the crazy mountain roads as a kind of hazing ritual, although she did get so see some beautiful backwoods country.
Well, actually all laser tubes have a limited lifetime. So they do have to be replaced after a few thousand hours even if operated correctly. The tube does have to be a FRU.
I presume you would put some kind of sacrificial material behind it and adjust power to cut through the work piece but not the sacrificial. I've only used long-wave CO2 lasers that aren't much use on metal since that wavelength reflects instead of absorbing.
Wow. So I can't say "sub-millimeter" without you deducting a dozen IQ points from me? Sheesh. The terminology I use depends on the tools I'm using. I talk thousandths when my work is in Imperial and I'm working on a Bridgeport or a CNC mill. I talk millimeters when I'm working on drawings dimension in millimeters, as I do with my laser cutter or 3D printer, or metric work on CNC. I'm an amateur machinist, and have written G-code (and other) CAM back ends. Professionally, I'm an electrical engineer -- when I worked in the semiconductor industry we talked in microns and nano-acres. So, I don't know what all machine tools you have used, and how many different fab technologies you have worked with, but unless you have 10+ years as a professional machinist, I doubt if the list is longer than mine.
BTW TechShop (TM) is a reference to the chain of open-access workshops, not a generic reference to machine shops.
I'll tell you this, I doubt if you are machinist -- I've met a lot of old time machinists, and they don't carry around your attitude. The more grey in the hair, the more modest they are -- there is always something to learn and machine tools keep you humble.
All the TechShops have laser cutters. They are very popular. Once you have access to a laser cutter, every problem starts looking like it can be solved by dicing up something thin and flat. That's not quite true, but acrylic and hardwood plywood both cut very nicely and can build some great things. The nice thing about laser cutters is there are zero fixturing problems -- just lay the material on the cutting bed and start the cutting program. You get exquisitely straight cuts and sub-millimeter precision, so assembly and glue up go very smoothly without any fiddling.
Commercial laser cutters are pricey. Here is an open source cutter project that I have been watching, I'll probably build one of these when my current cutter craps out: http://labs.nortd.com/lasersaur/ (I have an ancient laser cutter that is no longer support by the manufacturer -- when the tube goes, it's a paperweight, so I'm always looking for good options for when the fatal day arrives.)
While I've never made time to go do the experiments, I've often wondered why someone hasn't done a Python IDE that provides a Scratch-like UI, but manipulates the Python AST directly. Seems like that should be doable.
Anyway, I believe Scratch-like interfaces are the future of programming languages. Much as when Backus discovered Noam Chomsky's formal grammars and compilers development as it was done in FORTRAN and COBOL was replaced by a grammar-driven parser in the development of Algol, and pretty much all languages since, eventually, the Scratch-ification of the IDE will become the "obvious" replacement for linear streams of ASCII character codes.
So.... I'm thinking you're not a parent, and that you are not speaking from actual experience. This is pretty much the exact opposite of advice I gave below. A toy microscope will be nothing but frustration and will kill the child's interest. My daughter had a proper microscope at 7. I had a proper microscope at 8. A toy microscope is nothing but demotivating frustration in a box.
Motor skill considerations are key, though. I'm on the board of a small science education non-profit, we teach kids from ages 5-12. At 7, there are fine motor skill limitations that won't be resolved until somewhere in the 11 to 13 year old range. We spend a lot of time designing lessons around that. So a microscope for a 7 year old needs smooth controls. No toy will have smooth controls. Only better lab microscopes will have suitable controls.
When you do have children, don't hold them back by giving them crap imitations of real tools and instruments -- that's just cruel. Unfortunately, it's not unusual.
Get a decent microscope. "Child friendly" means "not frustrating" -- good light, smooth focus, good light, real optics, and good light. Mechanical stage for bonus points, because little fingers have a hard time moving the slide around in tiny increments.
Stereo vision isn't a big deal, but with a child of 7, I *strongly* suggest getting a "dual head" microscope. This is designed for teaching, the student has one viewing tube, and the other viewing tube can be used by the teacher or the eyepiece of the second tube can be replaced with a standard microscope video camera eyepiece. That way a parent can help with focusing, which is tricky for kids to learn. You can also talk about what they are seeing and give them a guided tour.
Remember that real optics will give a much, much sharper view than any USB microscope or video eyepiece, so adjust expectations accordingly, but we've found that it is a much more fun family activity when the microscope is set up with video in the second tube so that everyone can see and talk about the video while taking turns looking at the eye-poppingly sharp view through the optic path.
A 60-day acceptance period sounds generous to me. Have them sign off on an acceptance letter. After that, it could be hourly, or they could pay monthly support that covers things like pro-active security patching and the right to call you with questions.
Major software packages are sold with support. Oracle, for instance, gives their salesfolk lots of discretion to negotiate price, but *not* to discount the monthly support contract. That should tell you something about how the big boys think.
The STAR tests are my poster child for how testing should not be done. I have looked at the 5th grade STAR test. It has questions where not of the answer choices are correct. It has answers where the correct answer is listed as a distractor and graded as an *incorrect* response, because "fifth graders shouldn't know that" -- the simplistic answer is graded correct. $DEITY help the child that actually *knows* some science -- they will not be a top scorer.
Home schooling is for parents who's religious views are so extreme that they cannot integrate with normal society.
No, homeschooling is for parents who care about their child's education. We homeschool, and belong to several homeschooling groups. I'd say about 1/2 of the families we know do it for religious reasons. Christians being the largest group, and Muslim being the second largest. We know some Hindi homeschoolers, can't think of any Bhuddists off-hand. The other half of the families homeschool because they don't feel the other options are good for their child. The public schools are not very challenging. The private schools around here are kill-them-with-homework factories that leave no time to build rockets and robots and take music and gymnastics lessons.
So there is some actual real-world data for you, based on several hundred homeschool families and dozens of school choices. You're spouting off without either data or experience.
In our case, we homeschool in order to find the point of optimal challenge. My daughter doesn't need a mountain of homework to 'get it', and she needs to be challenged in order not to get bored out of her nut. At 13, she took the AP Chem this spring. That's her third AP exam. She is probably going to jump into the third quarter of freshmen engineering calculus this fall at a local university. There are simply no local schools that would have let her accelerate enough to keep her sanity.
I'm amazed at the number of people debating the objectivity question. What about the effectiveness question? What about the emotional pain question? One of your closest coworkers that you have known for years, worked with for years, has just died. And now somebody wants you to investigate the accident. Oooof. The grieving process has been studied extensively, and I don't think you want someone who is grieving to be conducting the investigation, purely from effectiveness reasons. And I'm pretty sure they would want to do something else, too. Like maybe see if his friend's kids are OK or need anything. These men's best friends have more imporant things to do right now than document an accident scene.
NO attorney who has been admitted to the bar would allow their admission to lapse voluntarily except in VERY unusual circumstances.
Not true. My wife is an attorney, and is keeping her ticket alive despite a stint as a stay-at-home mom, because she plans to use it again and the California bar has a 45% pass rate -- no way is there any way she wants to submit to that hellish 3 day long exam again. But there are hassles, she has to keep up with bar dues, she has to earn CLE credits (Continuing Legal Education), and such. And she has to put up with legal questions from friends.
I have another friend who dropped his ticket because the hassle just wasn't worth it. He decided he wasn't going to ever practice law again, so there was little incentive to keep it. Plus he is a very popular guy with a lot of friends -- so every yahoo with a landlord gripe was calling him for advice. He didn't enjoy explaining to them that if he said anything meaningful it could potentially create an attorney-client relationship and all the labilities that come with that. Let's see... keep paying premiums on legal malpractice insurance, or have a vacation in Hawaii this year... think think think....
Wow. You can't honestly believe that, do you? Chemicals can be absorbed.
Having grown up surrounded by hundreds of acres of my dad's corn and soy beans, I don't get too worked up about eating GMO corn, because I know how and why it was modified. My brother now runs the family farm. He plants GMO corn that has been modified to be resistant to the corn root worm. State law requires that 20% of the rows in any field be planted to non-GMO corn so that the root worms have some place to go and don't develop resistance. Because he plants GMO corn, he uses far less pesticide to reduce infestations of the corn root worm moth. I would rather eat GMO corn that has not been sprayed than eat corn sprayed with heavy doses of chemicals.
The problem is that nobody looks at the basic science. And very few people any more have any understanding at all of where their food comes from and how it is produced.
Bar code on the skin? Nothing new at all. This is so last millennium. My high school shop teacher had a numeric code tattooed on his arm. In order to avoid problems with miss-identification, just like Elizabeth proposes. It was a little gift he got as part of the welcome package when he checked into the German Stalag.
I somehow don't think he would have much positive to say about Elizabeth's proposal if he were alive to hear it.
Woz was/is good at the 'clever hack'. Getting something for nothing. As in the Apple II, where DRAM needs to be refreshed, and Video needs to read memory in a systematic pattern, so lets just make sure the video access read pattern satisfies the refresh requirement, and never have to worry about refresh after that. Also the color video by 'color artifacts' instead of adding an honest color sub-carrier to the video. Another thing I particularly liked about the Apple II is that a certain area of ROM space was set aside for every I/O slot, so installing new hardware and the driver was trivial. No crazy jumpers and interrupt routing, and no driver software to install. It astounds me to this day that when USB was specified, that a mechanism for downloading a driver in some kind of universal byte code that could be flash-compiled for any architecture wasn't specified -- that would have made USB as good as what we had in 1974, but no.
On the other hand, Woz's software architectures were often a little bit simplistic, and that painted the Apple II into some uncomfortable corners. For instance, the I/O slot ROM software protocol was weird and limiting. Another instance is the floppy controller being squeezed down to such a small amount of hardware that the driver was full of software timing loops that forever doomed Apple II software to be locked into timing loops.
And one trick he missed that could have been done cheaply... if the video vertical sync pulse had been made available someplace in the I/O space as a bit you could test, then it would have been trivial to know when you were in the vertical blanking interval so that you could flip video buffers cleanly.
Slashdot Mirror
I love robots. I work in robotics. This is not an anti-robot rant. This is a rant about using technolgy inappropriately.
I know the develpers mean well, but it is clear the developers know nothing about neurology and child development. Kids with mobility problems don't need a machine that removes the need for them to develop. Kids with mobility development issues need 10X to 100X or maybe 1000X the mobility inputs. It needs to be broken down into smaller constituent components and trained intensively. Kids that can't creep, need to crawl. Kids that can't crawl, need to be patterned. Kids with mobility issues need 10X-1000X *MORE* movement inputs, not less movement input. If they can't do it themselves, then pattern them. A kid that can't creep by the normal age needs to spend nearly every waking hour crawling, wriggling, being patterned. When they can creep, they need to creep miles every day until the mid-brain comes together in good, cross-body coordinated creeping. Knee-walking needs to be eliminated so that they are forced to creep. That is the only way to fix the mid-brain injuries and other neurological injuries that these kids have. The brain grows by use. The brain shrinks by dis-use. Got that?
A robot that removes the need for them to move their legs is almost criminally stupid. It would be much better to build a robot that helps pattern the kids by putting the muscles through the correct natural movements.
This project is the poster child for why engineers need to gets their noses out of technology once in a while and understand some other part of the world's knowledge base. Anyone who knows anything about neurological development can see this is a well-meaning but naive disaster that is equivalent to injecting poison into these kids' nervous systems.
hmmm.... I found a page for sheet music listed by composer, and the search function will hit on composer names.
As to editions, my daughter plays violin, so yeah, I understand the edition issue -- editing is huge with string instruments because the editor usually puts in bowings and sometimes suggested fingerings. But in the case of one Pablo de Sarasate piece that I looked up, it looked like the sheet music was a scan of an out-of-copyright edition from a prominent 19th Century German publisher. So the edition question probably hangs on what they managed to find where the copyright hasn't been kept up. Anyway, that's my one data point, so this being slashdot and all, one data point seems more than sufficient to jump to a conclusion. Excessive, even.
Aside about editions: my daughter is currently studying the Bach sonatas and partitas for violin -- the edition our teacher recommended has both edited music in modern (OK, 80 or so year old) engraving and a facsimile of the original manuscript. It is interesting to look at the differences -- the original was very spare in terms of even the most basic articulations. I wonder if the Musopen project will be scanning facsimiles? For serious students being able to compare editions not only to each other but to the original manuscript is useful and sometimes important.
A recent news article (sorry, don't have link) reported that a recent medical study shows that heath risk rises dramatically if you sit for more than 3 hours a day. Wow! Getting under 3 hours a day of sitting is tough to do as an office drone of any kind.
If you can, get an adjustable desk. My wife has issues (pinched nerve) that caused us to invest in a computer desk with a motorized mechanism to raise and lower the top. It is really slick. My advice would be to sit as little as possible, work standing up as much as possible, and generally have the option of selecting from multiple ergonomically correct work positions. A motorized desk greatly facilitates those kinds of adjustments. We bought a complete desk unit, but after doing that I found that the manufacturer will sell you just the leg/motor/controller parts so that you can slap a custom top of your own onto it. The controller can handle up to 3 legs, so you can do large L-shaped tops and what-not.
Also, get rid of your visitor chair. If someone needs to talk at the whiteboard, both of you should stand. I bet the meetings will be shorter and more focussed :) Years ago I worked for a V.P. whose personal conference room was arranged with a stand-up conference table and zero chairs. It worked wonders for his schedule -- nobody lingered after the work was done.
But what about native Wayland aps? (Is there such a thing?) Will I be able to run those across the network? (Asking, I don't know.) Like the GP, I use X over the network. If I can run *every* graphical ap on my machine over the network, then, sorry, no sale.
Speaking for myself, yes I use calculus. But I lean towards the EE side of computers. For the pure CS side, discrete math is very important. Followed by linear algebra and abstract algebra. Calculus, not so much. For game programming, I would prioritize it linear algebra, then discrete math, then calculus (for understanding game physics), then *maybe* abstract algebra. You may not use the math every day, but on the days when you *do* need it, the insight it gives you and the power of the tools gives you the "passing power" to solve in short order the kinds of problems that your colleagues will struggle with for weeks. It really depends on how you want to spend your life -- implementing other peoples' ideas, or deploying people to implement your ideas. If you desire the latter, get the toolbox inside your brain well-stocked.
I actually like gun control laws,
Open your eyes. Your laws have only raised the prices. The last data I saw showed that a gun that can be had in Nevada for US$600 will cost US$700 in California because we have stricter laws, and the same gun can be had illegally on the streets of London for the equivalent of US$800. All you have done is disarm the victims while slightly raising the costs of being a criminal. Remember those London riots not so long ago where the criminal had guns and the shop owners had cricket bats? All your gun control laws did is guarantee to the criminals that no one would be shooting back. I note that the police gave up, and they didn't shoot back either -- they simply let the neighborhoods burn. You, sir, are a sheep.
Partially correct, partially wrong. Some states ban automatics automatics all together. Everywhere else, you have federal hoops. You must pay for a federal tax stamp, around US$200, and spend months doing paperwork and passing background checks. Then, since these are "collectable" expect to pay US$10K or more for an automatic weapon.
When I was a kid on the farm we read our own power meters. The farm had 3, I think. The power company figured that they were out often enough (every couple of years or so) doing work and upgrades that they could catch cheaters. And they also could simply eyeball the bill: "So.... your corn drier has been running non-stop all of November, yet your power bill is the same as in May? How does that work?" (Corn driers are propane fired, but have large blower motors.) It saved them a lot of money because in a land of 1 family every 1 or 2 square miles a meter reader can rack up a lot of mileage.
These days I have a cabin in the mountains -- there are two-way and cell phone towers up on the ridge. PG&E sends out meter readers, but only a couple times a year. In fact, one time I was up there and a meter reader on loan from some town in the central valley bumbled into my cabin to ask for directions -- she was lost so bad she coun't find her own butt with two hands and a flashlight -- basically, the local folks sent her up into the crazy mountain roads as a kind of hazing ritual, although she did get so see some beautiful backwoods country.
Well, actually all laser tubes have a limited lifetime. So they do have to be replaced after a few thousand hours even if operated correctly. The tube does have to be a FRU.
I presume you would put some kind of sacrificial material behind it and adjust power to cut through the work piece but not the sacrificial. I've only used long-wave CO2 lasers that aren't much use on metal since that wavelength reflects instead of absorbing.
Half a thou == roughing? Ha ha.
Wow. So I can't say "sub-millimeter" without you deducting a dozen IQ points from me? Sheesh. The terminology I use depends on the tools I'm using. I talk thousandths when my work is in Imperial and I'm working on a Bridgeport or a CNC mill. I talk millimeters when I'm working on drawings dimension in millimeters, as I do with my laser cutter or 3D printer, or metric work on CNC. I'm an amateur machinist, and have written G-code (and other) CAM back ends. Professionally, I'm an electrical engineer -- when I worked in the semiconductor industry we talked in microns and nano-acres. So, I don't know what all machine tools you have used, and how many different fab technologies you have worked with, but unless you have 10+ years as a professional machinist, I doubt if the list is longer than mine.
BTW TechShop (TM) is a reference to the chain of open-access workshops, not a generic reference to machine shops.
I'll tell you this, I doubt if you are machinist -- I've met a lot of old time machinists, and they don't carry around your attitude. The more grey in the hair, the more modest they are -- there is always something to learn and machine tools keep you humble.
All the TechShops have laser cutters. They are very popular. Once you have access to a laser cutter, every problem starts looking like it can be solved by dicing up something thin and flat. That's not quite true, but acrylic and hardwood plywood both cut very nicely and can build some great things. The nice thing about laser cutters is there are zero fixturing problems -- just lay the material on the cutting bed and start the cutting program. You get exquisitely straight cuts and sub-millimeter precision, so assembly and glue up go very smoothly without any fiddling.
Commercial laser cutters are pricey. Here is an open source cutter project that I have been watching, I'll probably build one of these when my current cutter craps out:
http://labs.nortd.com/lasersaur/
(I have an ancient laser cutter that is no longer support by the manufacturer -- when the tube goes, it's a paperweight, so I'm always looking for good options for when the fatal day arrives.)
While I've never made time to go do the experiments, I've often wondered why someone hasn't done a Python IDE that provides a Scratch-like UI, but manipulates the Python AST directly. Seems like that should be doable.
Anyway, I believe Scratch-like interfaces are the future of programming languages. Much as when Backus discovered Noam Chomsky's formal grammars and compilers development as it was done in FORTRAN and COBOL was replaced by a grammar-driven parser in the development of Algol, and pretty much all languages since, eventually, the Scratch-ification of the IDE will become the "obvious" replacement for linear streams of ASCII character codes.
So.... I'm thinking you're not a parent, and that you are not speaking from actual experience. This is pretty much the exact opposite of advice I gave below. A toy microscope will be nothing but frustration and will kill the child's interest. My daughter had a proper microscope at 7. I had a proper microscope at 8. A toy microscope is nothing but demotivating frustration in a box.
Motor skill considerations are key, though. I'm on the board of a small science education non-profit, we teach kids from ages 5-12. At 7, there are fine motor skill limitations that won't be resolved until somewhere in the 11 to 13 year old range. We spend a lot of time designing lessons around that. So a microscope for a 7 year old needs smooth controls. No toy will have smooth controls. Only better lab microscopes will have suitable controls.
When you do have children, don't hold them back by giving them crap imitations of real tools and instruments -- that's just cruel. Unfortunately, it's not unusual.
Get a decent microscope. "Child friendly" means "not frustrating" -- good light, smooth focus, good light, real optics, and good light. Mechanical stage for bonus points, because little fingers have a hard time moving the slide around in tiny increments.
Stereo vision isn't a big deal, but with a child of 7, I *strongly* suggest getting a "dual head" microscope. This is designed for teaching, the student has one viewing tube, and the other viewing tube can be used by the teacher or the eyepiece of the second tube can be replaced with a standard microscope video camera eyepiece. That way a parent can help with focusing, which is tricky for kids to learn. You can also talk about what they are seeing and give them a guided tour.
Remember that real optics will give a much, much sharper view than any USB microscope or video eyepiece, so adjust expectations accordingly, but we've found that it is a much more fun family activity when the microscope is set up with video in the second tube so that everyone can see and talk about the video while taking turns looking at the eye-poppingly sharp view through the optic path.
We bought our home microscope here:
http://www.hometrainingtools.com/microscopes/c/10/
they seem to have decent prices on nicer microscopes.
A 60-day acceptance period sounds generous to me. Have them sign off on an acceptance letter. After that, it could be hourly, or they could pay monthly support that covers things like pro-active security patching and the right to call you with questions.
Major software packages are sold with support. Oracle, for instance, gives their salesfolk lots of discretion to negotiate price, but *not* to discount the monthly support contract. That should tell you something about how the big boys think.
From what I've heard, it wasn't 50% -- it was more like 3% that were openly and vocally defiant. Most people simply ducked and covered.
The STAR tests are my poster child for how testing should not be done. I have looked at the 5th grade STAR test. It has questions where not of the answer choices are correct. It has answers where the correct answer is listed as a distractor and graded as an *incorrect* response, because "fifth graders shouldn't know that" -- the simplistic answer is graded correct. $DEITY help the child that actually *knows* some science -- they will not be a top scorer.
Home schooling is for parents who's religious views are so extreme that they cannot integrate with normal society.
No, homeschooling is for parents who care about their child's education. We homeschool, and belong to several homeschooling groups. I'd say about 1/2 of the families we know do it for religious reasons. Christians being the largest group, and Muslim being the second largest. We know some Hindi homeschoolers, can't think of any Bhuddists off-hand. The other half of the families homeschool because they don't feel the other options are good for their child. The public schools are not very challenging. The private schools around here are kill-them-with-homework factories that leave no time to build rockets and robots and take music and gymnastics lessons.
So there is some actual real-world data for you, based on several hundred homeschool families and dozens of school choices. You're spouting off without either data or experience.
In our case, we homeschool in order to find the point of optimal challenge. My daughter doesn't need a mountain of homework to 'get it', and she needs to be challenged in order not to get bored out of her nut. At 13, she took the AP Chem this spring. That's her third AP exam. She is probably going to jump into the third quarter of freshmen engineering calculus this fall at a local university. There are simply no local schools that would have let her accelerate enough to keep her sanity.
I'm amazed at the number of people debating the objectivity question. What about the effectiveness question? What about the emotional pain question? One of your closest coworkers that you have known for years, worked with for years, has just died. And now somebody wants you to investigate the accident. Oooof. The grieving process has been studied extensively, and I don't think you want someone who is grieving to be conducting the investigation, purely from effectiveness reasons. And I'm pretty sure they would want to do something else, too. Like maybe see if his friend's kids are OK or need anything. These men's best friends have more imporant things to do right now than document an accident scene.
NO attorney who has been admitted to the bar would allow their admission to lapse voluntarily except in VERY unusual circumstances.
Not true. My wife is an attorney, and is keeping her ticket alive despite a stint as a stay-at-home mom, because she plans to use it again and the California bar has a 45% pass rate -- no way is there any way she wants to submit to that hellish 3 day long exam again. But there are hassles, she has to keep up with bar dues, she has to earn CLE credits (Continuing Legal Education), and such. And she has to put up with legal questions from friends.
I have another friend who dropped his ticket because the hassle just wasn't worth it. He decided he wasn't going to ever practice law again, so there was little incentive to keep it. Plus he is a very popular guy with a lot of friends -- so every yahoo with a landlord gripe was calling him for advice. He didn't enjoy explaining to them that if he said anything meaningful it could potentially create an attorney-client relationship and all the labilities that come with that. Let's see... keep paying premiums on legal malpractice insurance, or have a vacation in Hawaii this year... think think think....
Wow. You can't honestly believe that, do you? Chemicals can be absorbed.
Having grown up surrounded by hundreds of acres of my dad's corn and soy beans, I don't get too worked up about eating GMO corn, because I know how and why it was modified. My brother now runs the family farm. He plants GMO corn that has been modified to be resistant to the corn root worm. State law requires that 20% of the rows in any field be planted to non-GMO corn so that the root worms have some place to go and don't develop resistance. Because he plants GMO corn, he uses far less pesticide to reduce infestations of the corn root worm moth. I would rather eat GMO corn that has not been sprayed than eat corn sprayed with heavy doses of chemicals.
The problem is that nobody looks at the basic science. And very few people any more have any understanding at all of where their food comes from and how it is produced.
Bar code on the skin? Nothing new at all. This is so last millennium. My high school shop teacher had a numeric code tattooed on his arm. In order to avoid problems with miss-identification, just like Elizabeth proposes. It was a little gift he got as part of the welcome package when he checked into the German Stalag.
I somehow don't think he would have much positive to say about Elizabeth's proposal if he were alive to hear it.
Woz was/is good at the 'clever hack'. Getting something for nothing. As in the Apple II, where DRAM needs to be refreshed, and Video needs to read memory in a systematic pattern, so lets just make sure the video access read pattern satisfies the refresh requirement, and never have to worry about refresh after that. Also the color video by 'color artifacts' instead of adding an honest color sub-carrier to the video. Another thing I particularly liked about the Apple II is that a certain area of ROM space was set aside for every I/O slot, so installing new hardware and the driver was trivial. No crazy jumpers and interrupt routing, and no driver software to install. It astounds me to this day that when USB was specified, that a mechanism for downloading a driver in some kind of universal byte code that could be flash-compiled for any architecture wasn't specified -- that would have made USB as good as what we had in 1974, but no.
On the other hand, Woz's software architectures were often a little bit simplistic, and that painted the Apple II into some uncomfortable corners. For instance, the I/O slot ROM software protocol was weird and limiting. Another instance is the floppy controller being squeezed down to such a small amount of hardware that the driver was full of software timing loops that forever doomed Apple II software to be locked into timing loops.
And one trick he missed that could have been done cheaply... if the video vertical sync pulse had been made available someplace in the I/O space as a bit you could test, then it would have been trivial to know when you were in the vertical blanking interval so that you could flip video buffers cleanly.