To the guy who (Saturday night) moderated me Flamebait -- you'll notice that in fact, great-grandparent which was scored "3" on Saturday night, is now down to "1" on Sunday afternoon.
Very well put. Consider recent New Yorker article: at age 11, Mark Zuckerberg's parents were hiring a private computer tutor for him, and soon thereafter driving him to graduate-level computer classes at Mercy College. How many parents could recognize/ know what to do to develop a prodigy like that? Not many.
"Tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson approaches this question slightly differently; here's an analysis he made a few years ago, with the conclusion that the college investment pays off only about half the time."
Robertson compares income for high school versus college graduates, and concludes that a better payoff would come from taking college tuition and investing in stocks (historical ~7% payoff versus 4% public college and 2% private). However, this overlooks things like the amount of effort put in to make that income.
Take my case as an example: With my Master's degree I can teach college part time, make about the U.S. median income on 10 hours of work/week or so, live in New York, and devote most of my time to artistic pursuits. So my income doesn't look much higher, but it's because I've decided that I'm happy with a given level of income, and having satisfied that, don't need to work any more.
Some data to flesh this out: Robertson concludes, over 40 years, graduates of high school make $1.2M, public college $1.8M [http://michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=226]. U.S. Census bureau reports hours worked per day: graduate of high school 7.86, college 7.42 [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0625.xls]. So median hourly salary is something like (assume 250 days worked per year) high school $15.30, college $24.11.
U.S. median income is approximately $21,587/year [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html]. How much do you have to work per year to make that level of income (assume 8 hour days, 5 days/week)? High school graduates 1,411 hours = 176 days = 35 weeks. College graduates 875 hours = 112 days = 22 weeks. The difference would be more stark if I had data on actual days worked per year (i.e., vacation time, etc.)
I agree that income payoff is one factor that people should look at when considering college (along with things like self-fulfillment, reward of intellectual pursuits, networking potential, etc.) At some hyper-inflated level it definitely wouldn't be worth the risk, but I'm doubtful we're at that point yet. Perhaps more a important gauge is overall quality-of-life or satisfaction level (mine, for example, being exponentially higher than if I hadn't gone to college, even though my total income might actually be less).
Don't worry, it's just Slashdot's regular Saturday-night turnover to right-wing-heavy moderation. Things'll be back to semi-normal come Sunday afternoon.
My take would be that the three "free X" questions are really just rhetorical/philosophical word-games, and that a religious authority can always declare any class of entity to "not really be free" (i.e., instead be compelled by instinct or programming) and it's impossible to prove otherwise. This would serve for aliens, non-human animals, particular ethnic races or genders, Turing-complete machines, etc.
"One could make the argument that accurately targeted ads do benefit the user. They make me aware of products I might be interested in that I was not previously aware of."
Only on Slashdot do you ever see this opinion.
As just one example, compare to the upset/outrage in yesterday's article on "children tracked online by advertisers". Average folks intensely do not like this when you inform them about it.
"Its foolish to say cookies are harmful they are a technology that is required by many online applications and if the end user wants to they can always turn them off or block specific sites from placing a cookie in your cache."
Like most free-market arguments, the validity of this depends on the customer having knowledge of the issue at hand. In this case, the vast majority do not. Particularly so for children.
"Explain to me why you file this lawsuit in a federal court in New York and not a state court in California - where a judge just might be a little less hostile to the trade in 'medical' marijuana."
Yeah, because no one in New York finds marijuana to be acceptable.
"Electronic dictionaries for a long time have allowed note taking and modern dictionaries although small and dedicated are also often complete personal computers with wi-fi connectivity. My university had a policy of completely banning electronic dictionaries. Students could use a paper dictionary and that's it."
That's a good tip, I'll probably start doing that myself now. Thanks.
"How poor is your Community College? I don't know a single person in my maths/stats/etc, classes who doesn't have a graphics calculator."
It has nothing to do with how poor they are. (CUNY is the largest urban university in the U.S. and has generally excellent financial aid.) It's that they're not taking any classes where that's of use; the most common course is a basic algebra class and biology, possibly with introductory statistics, for example.
Community-college math instructor here (CUNY). The first thing I'd ask is: What's the policy (if any) at the college level? Here I'm supported by an official, clear-cut policy at the college level: all electronic communication/media devices have to be shut off and put away while in a classroom (a policy I enforce strictly during tests).
So basically that means dedicated calculators and nothing else -- square root function required minimum in my stats class. I think that's an inexpensive requirement, they're like $1 at Staples or something? Graphing calculators okay for the rare student who has one. The few students with electronic dictionaries I see are small dedicated devices for that, and that's allowed. But phones as calculators, totally prohibited; iPod media player as calculator (or anything), totally prohibited. Not absolutely foolproof, but pretty clear to me.
"Why is it that almost every single privately educated student is better educated than a public school educated student despite massive redistribution of wealth? With a private school, they have to make every dollar count."
That's, like, one of the dumbest and most disingenuous arguments I've ever seen. The actual answer is simply: Because private schools are rich and spend about twice as much money on average.
The secular private schools analyzed in the study spent $20,100 on each student in the 2007-08 school year vs. $10,100 in public schools. [Washington Post, "Per-Student Spending Gaps Wider Than Known", Aug-31, 2009]
The fundamental problem is not the how-prisons-work part. The real problem is the putting-people-in-the-system part.
Reducing the cost of removing people's freedom will not solve the problem, it will incentivize it and increase it. Just like (a) computers didn't create paperless offices, and (b) increased efficiency didn't lead to reduced work hours, and (c) tasers didn't lead to a reduction police abuse, and (d) helmets don't reduce motorcycle accident rates, and (e) unmanned killer drones don't reduce the length of our wars.
Instead, I propose: re-writing drug laws and incarcerating a fraction of the people we do now.
"The Amish community say they reject technology as it degrades their culture, but that is not true. They have simply 'frozen' the evolution of technology at one point."
Amish don't say that, and they don't do that. What they do is have a critical, community-based discussion about new technology and its effects before allowing it, rather than a laissez-faire permissiveness. From Wired:
Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates, and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools?
"You can't win a war of attrition with gorilla fighters ( terrorists ). They will aways find a way to surprise you or sabotage your infrastructure. In my opinion you should aim to remove the objective of your enemy. Utterly destroy what the gorilla fighters are fighting to reclaim/protect. The scotched earth way. For every suicide bombing kill tenfold of the native population of your enemy. Failing that just exterminate them all. I know it sounds vulgar, demented, say what you will. No gorilla fighter can fight you if they have nothing to fight for."
Comments: (1) I wouldn't say that it's vulgar or demented. It's just plain Evil, and I hope an evil shit like you gets removed from the face of the Earth at the earliest opportunity. (2) Is that your reasoning is terrible, that guerrilla fighters are not the same as terrorists, that it's common knowledge that "nothing left to lose" makes for the most dangerous fighter, that there are internationally recognized legal prohibitions against mass punishments like this, etc. (3) Finally, as is always the case, your terrible fucked-in-the-head reasoning is further highlighted by your inability to even correctly spell words such as "guerrilla", "always", and "scorched". 'Tis always thus.
Slashdot Mirror
To the guy who (Saturday night) moderated me Flamebait -- you'll notice that in fact, great-grandparent which was scored "3" on Saturday night, is now down to "1" on Sunday afternoon.
Very well put. Consider recent New Yorker article: at age 11, Mark Zuckerberg's parents were hiring a private computer tutor for him, and soon thereafter driving him to graduate-level computer classes at Mercy College. How many parents could recognize/ know what to do to develop a prodigy like that? Not many.
Link.
"Tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson approaches this question slightly differently; here's an analysis he made a few years ago, with the conclusion that the college investment pays off only about half the time."
Robertson compares income for high school versus college graduates, and concludes that a better payoff would come from taking college tuition and investing in stocks (historical ~7% payoff versus 4% public college and 2% private). However, this overlooks things like the amount of effort put in to make that income.
Take my case as an example: With my Master's degree I can teach college part time, make about the U.S. median income on 10 hours of work/week or so, live in New York, and devote most of my time to artistic pursuits. So my income doesn't look much higher, but it's because I've decided that I'm happy with a given level of income, and having satisfied that, don't need to work any more.
Some data to flesh this out: Robertson concludes, over 40 years, graduates of high school make $1.2M, public college $1.8M [http://michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=226]. U.S. Census bureau reports hours worked per day: graduate of high school 7.86, college 7.42 [http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0625.xls]. So median hourly salary is something like (assume 250 days worked per year) high school $15.30, college $24.11.
U.S. median income is approximately $21,587/year [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html]. How much do you have to work per year to make that level of income (assume 8 hour days, 5 days/week)? High school graduates 1,411 hours = 176 days = 35 weeks. College graduates 875 hours = 112 days = 22 weeks. The difference would be more stark if I had data on actual days worked per year (i.e., vacation time, etc.)
I agree that income payoff is one factor that people should look at when considering college (along with things like self-fulfillment, reward of intellectual pursuits, networking potential, etc.) At some hyper-inflated level it definitely wouldn't be worth the risk, but I'm doubtful we're at that point yet. Perhaps more a important gauge is overall quality-of-life or satisfaction level (mine, for example, being exponentially higher than if I hadn't gone to college, even though my total income might actually be less).
"Insightful, really?"
Don't worry, it's just Slashdot's regular Saturday-night turnover to right-wing-heavy moderation. Things'll be back to semi-normal come Sunday afternoon.
[citation needed]
The probability of success is irrelevant if the expected value (success probability * average profit) is still positive.
"And where does Animal fit in in all of this?"
That's what she said.
Yeah, it's recursive.
Always have a backup plan.
My take would be that the three "free X" questions are really just rhetorical/philosophical word-games, and that a religious authority can always declare any class of entity to "not really be free" (i.e., instead be compelled by instinct or programming) and it's impossible to prove otherwise. This would serve for aliens, non-human animals, particular ethnic races or genders, Turing-complete machines, etc.
Awesome observation. You're already moderated "5", so I'll just acclaim your insight. Sounds like you've got it.
I call astroturfing! (And from a non-native English writer, too.)
"One could make the argument that accurately targeted ads do benefit the user. They make me aware of products I might be interested in that I was not previously aware of."
Only on Slashdot do you ever see this opinion.
As just one example, compare to the upset/outrage in yesterday's article on "children tracked online by advertisers". Average folks intensely do not like this when you inform them about it.
"Its foolish to say cookies are harmful they are a technology that is required by many online applications and if the end user wants to they can always turn them off or block specific sites from placing a cookie in your cache."
Like most free-market arguments, the validity of this depends on the customer having knowledge of the issue at hand. In this case, the vast majority do not. Particularly so for children.
Surprised parent was modded insightful.
"Did I miss the point or do we need the drugs and wrench?"
You missed the point. The primary question of the OP is this: "...is it possible to prove there is encrypted data where you claim there's not?"
Hint: Include the likelihood of false-positives and false-negatives in your "wrench-based" analysis.
"Explain to me why you file this lawsuit in a federal court in New York and not a state court in California - where a judge just might be a little less hostile to the trade in 'medical' marijuana."
Yeah, because no one in New York finds marijuana to be acceptable.
"Above all, IEEE Spectrum tries really hard to associate engineers with terrorism for some reason."
If you're really pissed off about it, you could always go blow up their office or something.
"Electronic dictionaries for a long time have allowed note taking and modern dictionaries although small and dedicated are also often complete personal computers with wi-fi connectivity. My university had a policy of completely banning electronic dictionaries. Students could use a paper dictionary and that's it."
That's a good tip, I'll probably start doing that myself now. Thanks.
"How poor is your Community College? I don't know a single person in my maths/stats/etc, classes who doesn't have a graphics calculator."
It has nothing to do with how poor they are. (CUNY is the largest urban university in the U.S. and has generally excellent financial aid.) It's that they're not taking any classes where that's of use; the most common course is a basic algebra class and biology, possibly with introductory statistics, for example.
"Its not because he's rich, its because its his own fucking plane"
So it's because he's rich.
Community-college math instructor here (CUNY). The first thing I'd ask is: What's the policy (if any) at the college level? Here I'm supported by an official, clear-cut policy at the college level: all electronic communication/media devices have to be shut off and put away while in a classroom (a policy I enforce strictly during tests).
So basically that means dedicated calculators and nothing else -- square root function required minimum in my stats class. I think that's an inexpensive requirement, they're like $1 at Staples or something? Graphing calculators okay for the rare student who has one. The few students with electronic dictionaries I see are small dedicated devices for that, and that's allowed. But phones as calculators, totally prohibited; iPod media player as calculator (or anything), totally prohibited. Not absolutely foolproof, but pretty clear to me.
"Why is it that almost every single privately educated student is better educated than a public school educated student despite massive redistribution of wealth? With a private school, they have to make every dollar count."
That's, like, one of the dumbest and most disingenuous arguments I've ever seen. The actual answer is simply: Because private schools are rich and spend about twice as much money on average.
The secular private schools analyzed in the study spent $20,100 on each student in the 2007-08 school year vs. $10,100 in public schools. [Washington Post, "Per-Student Spending Gaps Wider Than Known", Aug-31, 2009]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/30/AR2009083002335.html
The fundamental problem is not the how-prisons-work part. The real problem is the putting-people-in-the-system part.
Reducing the cost of removing people's freedom will not solve the problem, it will incentivize it and increase it. Just like (a) computers didn't create paperless offices, and (b) increased efficiency didn't lead to reduced work hours, and (c) tasers didn't lead to a reduction police abuse, and (d) helmets don't reduce motorcycle accident rates, and (e) unmanned killer drones don't reduce the length of our wars.
Instead, I propose: re-writing drug laws and incarcerating a fraction of the people we do now.
"The Amish community say they reject technology as it degrades their culture, but that is not true. They have simply 'frozen' the evolution of technology at one point."
Amish don't say that, and they don't do that. What they do is have a critical, community-based discussion about new technology and its effects before allowing it, rather than a laissez-faire permissiveness. From Wired:
Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates, and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish.html
"You can't win a war of attrition with gorilla fighters ( terrorists ). They will aways find a way to surprise you or sabotage your infrastructure. In my opinion you should aim to remove the objective of your enemy. Utterly destroy what the gorilla fighters are fighting to reclaim/protect. The scotched earth way. For every suicide bombing kill tenfold of the native population of your enemy. Failing that just exterminate them all. I know it sounds vulgar, demented, say what you will. No gorilla fighter can fight you if they have nothing to fight for."
Comments:
(1) I wouldn't say that it's vulgar or demented. It's just plain Evil, and I hope an evil shit like you gets removed from the face of the Earth at the earliest opportunity.
(2) Is that your reasoning is terrible, that guerrilla fighters are not the same as terrorists, that it's common knowledge that "nothing left to lose" makes for the most dangerous fighter, that there are internationally recognized legal prohibitions against mass punishments like this, etc.
(3) Finally, as is always the case, your terrible fucked-in-the-head reasoning is further highlighted by your inability to even correctly spell words such as "guerrilla", "always", and "scorched". 'Tis always thus.